     He likes to walk.      His meager earnings as a vendor afford him little more than a moldy basement and a bed on the island; his time is rarely spent at home. The air is too oppressive and thereâs nothing to do but sit and read. It gets old. There are times when it seems like the walls are trying to absorb him entirely, syphoning his overabundant static energy and draining it into the expansion cracks in the walls. That yellow overhead bulb is too sickly to endure.      So he walks.      From LaTourette to Fresh Kills and back, sometimes to Willowbrook to feed the gulls. These excursions exhaust him of his unbalanced ardors. With nothing else but his own ruminations to drain him dry, heâs grateful for it. He ventures in and out of bodegas book-ended by shiny metal and glass co-ops. He never buys anything, only loiters and watches. This routine is no different in Zabelleâs Antiques.      Alan shoulders through the front door and the little black ball in his coat chatters with excitement. The lights here are warmer than the fluorescents of the bodegas and they always succeed in drawing him in. A little place of respite for the cold, wet thing that lives underneath Staten Island. âI brought him.â His voice is rough, he hasnât spoken in a long time. He shakes out his skull cap. âYou g---guh-got a water dish?â
a starter for @ameloratesâ
