552 days, 13 hours, 31 minutes, 8.2 seconds

Mayor Bloomberg's plan to charge traffic coming into Manhattan has been rejected without even a vote, without much discussion. Clear to some this was Bloomberg testing the waters of national attention, feeling out a run for president. But he's probably too short to be president anyway. Maybe next year they can vote on a modified plan proposed by Sheldon Silver, after the MTA has announced its expansion plans. This 90 degree heatwave won't continue forever. Not that many people walking in midtown will be overcome by fumes in the meantime. Easier to jump in front of a train, when you come right down to it.

553 days, 11 hours, 31 minutes, 32 seconds

She’s been fat, crazy, scared, uncoordinated, uncooperative, antisocial, insecure, agoraphobic, angry, depressed, reclusive, nauseous, an insomniac, weird, wired, clumsy, self-centered, a hypochondriac, vindictive, respected, eccentric, greedy, a drop-out, pessimistic, befriended, anorexic, exhausted, bored, shy, frustrated, ambitious, competitive, happy, uncertain, nervous, hysterical, gullible, over-medicated, restless, immature, optimistic, sick, mad, worried, ungrateful, boastful, a good driver, ultra-responsible, ignored, cherished, a picky eater, loving, small for her age, ugly, disgusted, lucky, a dreamer, loved, terrified, jealous, a workaholic, preoccupied, teased, an outcast, hot, shivering, frigid, lonely. But she’s never thought of herself as a drip before.

553 days, 12 hours, 8 minutes, 2 seconds

Today’s the deadline for getting senate approval for Mayor Bloomberg’s plan for charging cars and trucks coming into Manhattan below 86th St., If he wants to tap into five million dollars of federal funding. He says it will encourage people to take subways and buses. He says it will reduce congestion and pollution. He says we’ll all be healthier.

553 days, 13 hours, 5 minutes, 37 seconds

She’s starting to notice the art in doctors’ offices. Her neurologist with paintings by his wife and landscape photos he took up in Westchester near where he lives. Mostly it’s generic, though. Reproductions of masterworks, often flowers. Announcements for exhibitions. Here though, over the desk, right across from where she’s sitting, beside the black phone on the wall, is a photograph. Shades of a veined green leaf, enlarged out of proportion, blurred, with a caterpillar-like insect attached to it. One eye looks straight at her. He looks like something her father used to kill.

553 days, 13 hours, 16 minutes, 47 seconds

IV in, blood out. Squirting all over the opposite leg of his pants. She means all over. This is not her. It happened to her husband once, though. In the emergency room at St. Vincent’s, the night he sliced his finger. Something he’d rested it on at Second Ave. Deli (closed now, after over fifty years). There’d been a rush of activity that same night, after a woman drove her Mercedes out of a garage and into the crowded restaurant across the street. So they came to stitch him up two hours later and still he squirted. Even the technician jumped back.

553 days, 14 hours, 11 minutes, 12 seconds

Short sleeves (displaying scarred arms) or long sleeves (hot as hell, having to be rolled up)? Dressy or casual? And just how casual. As always there’s the question of what to wear. As if she’s meeting a lover here.

553 days, 22 hours, 20 minutes, 36 seconds

Pretend it’s the night before childbirth. Your first child. A C-section. A few hours’ pain. Twenty years of pain. Pretend.

554 days, 8 hours, 6 minutes, 24 seconds

Seems like Hairy's not the only one.

So okay, time to come out of herself, time to look around her. In the coffee shop, two mothers (maybe sisters), one fat, one thin, with two boys, one fat, one thin, the fat one maybe ten years old. Old enough to be civilized. They've got skates on, no, those sneakers with wheels in the heels (meals on wheels, she thinks). They go sliding up and down the aisles, the mothers doing nothing to stop them. Then they go outside, staying within the mothers' field of view, skating into guardrails, swinging from guardrails, running in and out the emergency exit, pounding on the windows. The fat mother orders French fries and couldn't care less.

And the other day, in front of the Whitney, she saw all the paparazzi in wait. Amateurs, mostly. And some blonde haired woman came out with a fat old man who couldn't protect her and they started flashing. And she darted back in. And he came out alone and got a cab and they flashed again, trailing the cab down the street, trying to peer in the windows. She has no idea who the woman was. Probably someone connected with the "summer of love" show now at the museum. She has no idea what the show might be. It was her first summer back from vegetation, and she couldn't have cared less about whatever love might be.

Aren't you ashamed of yourself? the immigrant fruit vendor chided one of the photographers, kneeling by his stand, packing up his camera.

557 days, 8 hours, 16 minutes, 32 seconds

Hairy's deflated.

557 days, 8 hours, 39 minutes, 11 seconds

558 days, 22 hours, 40 minutes, 6.3 seconds

Tonight again, like so many nights over the past two weeks, he tries to get to bed as close to midnight as possible, knowing he might get a call from London at 3:00 a.m., when the stock market opens there. His program for the Futures is fucking up.

560 days, 8 hours, 57 minutes, 6.8 seconds

She's not going to find many cigarette butts next to flowers if she looks in parks, she realizes. In parks they work hard to protect the flowers.

560 days, 9 hours, 11 minutes, 44 seconds

It's so hot even the pigeons in the park across from the hospital are lying down, some on the parched grass, some on the cooler concrete posts of benches. Sitting ducks, she'd call them, if she hadn't already killed the ducks.

560 days, 9 hours, 47 minutes, 15 seconds

She can't get the image of musical chairs out of her mind. Four chairs. Four IV poles. The small room with not much space to run around in. The blanket on every chair. Set to cover the body, she supposes. She didn't have to fight for a chair this time, but by next month, who knows?

The record player's scratchy needle. The boy with pointed finger. Bang, bang. You're dead. And she can't get up till he tells her to.

Then there was the musical chairs of all those childhood parties. At least the ones she was invited to, along with the diabetic girl who wore two hearing aids and the sweet retard who was her doctor's daughter.

560 days, 10 hours, 4 minutes, 39 seconds

This isn't the Bush League, she has to remind herself. These are doctors at the top of their game. NYC will soon be back at the top of its game again. The Amazin' Mets. The Bronx Bombers... Shit. She covers her head in terror of the explosion. She runs to hide under the nearest desk, but there's a waste basket and paper shredder there already.

560 days, 12 hours, 40 minutes, 58 seconds

81 degrees when she wakes up, going up to 95 today (if you believe the underground weather site), 97 if you believe last night's tv. Last night they slept with the air conditioner on, something they haven't done since 1991, the last July she spent in the city. She was trying so hard, for his sake, to make it through the heat. Then, at about two o'clock, they gave up, shut the windows, put the air on, slept. It was probably not more than an hour later that someone jumped (or was pushed) out a window on the fourteenth floor. Because of her he missed all the action.

561 days, 8 hours, 33 minutes, 45 seconds

She had a cat once. They hated each other. Still , she kept it until the week she moved in with him. Nearly sixteen years. He loved a cat once. It was in the barn, and every morning it would be there by the door, just waiting for him to pet it. He was too young to know it was dead. Every weekend, the pet shop two blocks away holds pet adoptions, and every weekend she stops to peer in the cages, and every weekend he has to hurry her along. Now he asks if she wants a cat, to keep her company while he's at work. He has to get back to work. She says it would probably grow to hate her. He says there's always the compactor. She looks out the window.

562 days, 10 hours, 55 minutes, 35 seconds

She was headed somewhere else with that focus on the recliner, but her husband intruded (husbands always intrude). She was headed for the doctor's office once again, for the little room in the back with its own restroom, the wastebasket filled high with snack wrappers – potato chips, corn chips, all the rest of the gunk parents today say isn't good for their children. That little room with a VCR, personal DVD players, and four recliners. That's where she was headed. Is headed.

562 days, 11 hours, 51 minutes, 45 seconds

July 7, 2007. 7-7-7. This was supposed to be his lucky day. He was supposed to have flown from Los Angeles to Las Vegas. He looked forward to slot machines. He thought maybe he'd play some craps. If he had the time, he'd study more about poker and hit the tables there. Maybe he'd just walk around the strip, find a place outside where he could eat lunch and dinner. It's going up to 116 in Las Vegas today. He would have been so happy just to be there.

562 days, 12 hours, 4 minutes, 21 seconds

A poem she wrote a few months ago is up on the Internet today: "Recliner saves man who was shot in head." He was shot by his wife.

A recliner was what her parents bought her when they realized she was going to be doing nothing but sit in her room reading all day. They'd taken out the other twin bed, giving up on her having friends over. It was a green recliner, and she used it every day all day until she left their house.

The next time she had a recliner was over fifteen years later, when she moved into his apartment. They'd sit there and cuddle, like they did in bed this morning. He'd been up for hours. She'd been lying there awake, not wanting to get up, not wanting to start the day. But her cough gave her away, and he was there a moment later, fully dressed, cuddling her, tears welling up in his eyes. She could hear them.