“What about the people who fall through the cracks?” she said.
Yes, what about the people who fall through the cracks. Where are these cracks? Have they always been there, unavoidable bottomless pits penciled into the original schematic with achtung warnings via an outpost of orange cones, “Jesus Christ, whatever you do, don’t step here, just keep moving”? Or were they formed after the fact, disrupting the previously clean and ever-extending concrete, the world’s pressures shivering fissures due to intense swings of heat and freeze, feast and famine, quakes and foot traffic?
And these people, these people who fell through these cracks, where were they headed when they suddenly dropped from view, swished through the cragged canyons of life with cartoon speed lines and vertical hair, while the rest of us herd onward, eyes forward, hats crisp, shoulders slouched from the weight of alternating shades of gray overcoats, trudging down that broad New York sidewalk none the wiser, except for those Brave Few, those Brave Few who cock their heads at the sudden gust of downward wind and wonder, “What about the people who fall through the cracks?
What about them, indeed?