City on Fire

by Garth Risk Hallberg

FOIL-EMBOSSED FRONTALS uncoupling from diadems, confetti dull with soot, business ends of noisemakers trampled under boots, cracked bottoms of disposable champagne flutes, butts of khaki Luckies and pale Pall Malls, nickelbags like punctured lungs, plus bottles: half-full, empty, broken off at the neck for the commission of crimes or smashed into green and brown explosions the red flash of a peep-show sign makes look romantic, in a sleazoid kind of way. Here is the stuff you don’t get on TV. Extraneous footage, B-roll of the aftermath. Broadcast personalities let their Fruit of Islam bundle them into the plush rear cabins of towncars. A union technician in a satin jacket winds cable around his forearm like a hawser; its loose end scrimshaws the snow. By the time the ball, that descended monorchid, goes dark above Times Square, the last masses have drained underground.

“Take a picture, it’ll last longer.”