—and so hearing of the famous man’s death, they sat on the steps of the New York Public Library, between Patience and Fortitude...

TECHNIQUE BY SETH GANNON 34THPARALLEL MAGAZINE ISSUE 80

—and so hearing of the famous man’s death, they sat on the front steps of the New York Public Library, which after an afternoon in the reading room is where they happened to be, between Patience and Fortitude, the two of them with his legs stretched out across three or four steps and with her feet on the same level as her butt so that her knees came to her chest and could be hugged in hollow comfort, thank God for pants, coming to grips in this first moment with the loss of a literary lion, who if he killed himself had done so in a slower, more chronic sense and not with the gun as had his quasi-nemesis one year and four days ago, three hundred and sixty-nine days, thought the man on the steps of the New York Public Library as he removed his hat in recognition of the occasion and in surrender to the urban heat, to the July sun that sat down with them and started him sweating underneath his suit, finding himself more affected than…