Читать книгу The Three of U.S.: A New Life in New York - Peter Godwin - Страница 27

At 3.45 a.m. I get up to go for a pee and on the way back I notice the bent figure of a tramp trundling a shopping trolley down Gansevoort Street. He parks it adjacent to the fire hydrant beneath our window and from the trolley’s lower shelf he produces a long cast-iron tool – his own, personal hydrant spanner. He opens the hydrant, adjusting it carefully to allow a modest spout of water to flow. Then he goes about his ablutions. First, he fills up his three plastic water bottles; then he fussily rinses out a carrier bag, turns it inside out and vigorously shakes it dry. From his trolley he lifts out a tray of peaches and fastidiously washes them, one by one. After checking on his plastic bag again, which is drying, he eats two of his peaches, dabbing at his beard with a faded bandanna. He carefully eases the tray of remaining peaches into the newly cleaned carrier bag, ties its handles and gingerly places it back in his supermarket trolley. Then he washes his face over and over again and swills out his mouth.

From somewhere inside his grubby full-length gabardine coat he retrieves a little plastic box. I can’t quite make out what it is. Tobacco? Snuff? Crack? Then he pulls something long and white from the box and breaks it off. It is a length of dental floss, and he proceeds to floss his teeth with great thoroughness.

In the gloom of the early morning Joanna appears, naked, on her way to the bathroom.

‘Check this out,’ I tell her. ‘A tramp who flosses.’

Joanna observes the scene silently for a moment and then announces that her breasts ache.

‘Look at them,’ she murmurs, ‘they’re enormous.’

They loom, ghostly white globes in the half-light, and indeed they do look considerably expanded. I reach for one and cup it in the palm of my outstretched hand like the Sikh cab driver did to Ru.

‘Wow, that’s some boob,’ I exclaim, in what I hope is an admiring tone.

Below us the tramp closes the fire hydrant, replaces his spanner in the trolley, and trundles it slowly down Gansevoort Street, turning north on to the West Side Highway. I look at the clock. The whole ritual has taken nearly an hour.