His hair, his skin, his cuts. It hits me like a blast of hyperlife. It knocks me sideways so I can’t get up. I am six, learning to roller-skate, falling on my coccyx again and again. But it’s worth it for the five seconds I’m on wheels, not holding on to the railings, my pink ra-ra skirt blowing above my waist, kneepads strapped to my black leggings. I always fall over just as the mad old man from the next street turns the corner. My body is throbbing with the pain of concrete on butt and the mad old man is whispering obscenities right up close against my ear. I can smell the cabbage and scotch and pornographic magazines oozing from his pores. I can’t get up. I can’t get away. I can’t tell Manny. I have to stay in bed with a satin eye-mask on my head and eat white grapes with the skin peeled off. I don’t think Drew would eat the skin, although I’m not sure. I am certain he pulls the string off the banana flesh before biting it and spits the pips out of apples and folds them neatly in a tissue.
