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The Voice Lesson Walking down that street, she felt like a pea teased forward on the blade of a knife. The sidewalk was steep or it was the angle of some mood that threatened her. Ah, happiness, your ankle is broken! High up, a window washer waved a stinging rag signaling some suicides perched at different levels. No one followed through with it. So many glum constructions, each with a bad purpose: at noon, a big clock prayed on the church roof. It must have been payday, the way people acted. Men walked the way men walk with cash on them, and girls circled the public fountain watching the water churn their soiled wishes. Nothing's worth a penny to me, she thought, as she watched the locksmith duplicate keys for some hospital workers, for the closet with the morphine elixirs. Next door, a clerk tore the dress from a mannequin. One arm unscrewed, the dummy rocked on its pedestal, its glossy waist was beautiful. What scenes, what scenes from what memory? Salesmen carried the white mice of their names in shiny coat linings and whispered company slogans which were slightly erotic. I'm just taking a walk without any money, she said. Then the mayor came out of city hall toting a large scissors; a child shadowed him with a spool of gold ribbon, a piece so wide 56 it might hold back the tangled hair of angels and all those left unattended in heaven. It must be a new business opening, but when she followed them there it was only a hole in the ground and a crane with its neck hanging. It's good commerce to own the sun and owe to one moon. Also, there's the cheap publicity of rain, the several selling points of stars. Even so, billboards are peeling, perhaps the best use for time-lapse photography. She reached a place where someone took a voice lesson. The tune was odd, a formless wavering, and like the day, a note held much too long. So she knew it was a drunk at practice or someone too lonesome to keep quiet. Thank God There Is No God, a stern vibrato accompanied by a crescendo of sharp instruments. It's just the barber with a customer. But who is this coming? The boy who sweeps the clippings off the stoop as if it were everything, everybody'searnings, a vile tangle, proof of God. 57 ...

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