After a recession party

He said as we were leaving, "I'll go home with you and Redbeard and be your valet."

That is the kind of thing people say when they are putting on their coats after a recession party.

To buy time we walked him home through Brooklyn's small hours, and then we kept walking, for we live furthest. All the stores were shut. Mist congregated under the streetlamps. We passed Prospect Park, a slumbering beast, its foliage black-green, and the tangled gardens of the houses on its outskirts. We saw a Ghostbusters car. We ran across the barren roundabout at the entrance to Fort Hamilton Parkway.

When the rain began again, the muddied leaves smelled like the forest meeting the sea.

We did not reach the sea. The night closed its clammy fist around us as if we were a secret that would not keep quiet, and sang to us about tired birds on a wire.