went back out to the street, yanked the ticket off my windshield, pretended to myself that it didn’t hurt, got into the car, and headed home. I drove past squat buildings whose facades looked like the flattened faces of sad old men. There were sallow boys walking the streets with bare concave chests, graying T-shirts hanging from their back pockets. Street hustlers, slouching toward nowhere. I thought of Kyle and his scared eyes. I flashed on how our ties to things we love will sooner or later pull us down. I saw all those ties like so many sticky spider webs trapping us at every turn. Those
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