by November Tuesday

The color of the girl's skin was amalgam, urban, taut and fine. She walked down the street, breasts high and firm under the tank top, nails talon-like, with the haughty high carriage of a black girl, a diamond stud glittering in the crease of her nose.

Humidity gathered and rose, in the midmorning sun, in sweat rising behind her curled hair, in the fusty updraft of a basement air conditioning unit, in the tight recesses under her panties where the sweating lips rubbed together, clop clop, rhythm of step and step and step eliciting tangy moisture despite the shower still damp in her hair. Humidity owned the day, permeating and congealing the air.

A car horn cut the silence and ebbed with the faraway bass rumble of a car stereo. She felt sweat rising on her belly, pooling in the hollow of her back. The new shoes were tight and sweating too. On this street the whole world was sweating.

She walked along, unaware of the listless barber watching her from his corner shop, of the kids wobbling by on bikes, of the gridlock forming on the overpass ahead and above the street.

She crossed the street, unaware also of the three men on the corner stoop opposite, greasy youths, long and wiry bodies in stained tank tops, drooping new moustaches, jeans riding down low over their bony hips. They spat and grabbed their balls and called out to her, calls stale as the day. Hey baby, whyontchoo come on over here, hey baby, let me suck that pussy, hey baby, why dontchoo come over here and suck this, huh? Their smiles were dopey; they thought the joke was on her.

The girl walked on with unflagging black- girl posture, eyes slits, platform shoes not missing one step, and the humidity rose and the catcalls rose, angry that she didn't respond, words like bitch and whore and the less incisive hoochie-mamma, and horns on the overpass began to bicker back and forth. A broad, brown woman yanked open the sash of a window above the barber's shop and yelled down to the kids on the stoop, You all stop this racket I have a baby son up here and What kinda way is that to talk, aint no one ever told you about the lord Jesus and What are you doin' down there anyway Whyn't you go get a job or somthin' stead of sittin around there scratching youselves! The woman's voice carried for blocks, rising like the hysteria of crows, taking with it the city and the heat and the horns and the hot rush and uptake of unforgiving breezes.

Still, the girl strode. Rhythm breaking, standing at the red light. Like schools of fish people swam across the crosswalks, on the rusty ebb and flow of green and yellow-red, walk and don't-walk, human breath through the gills of a filthy city. Across the street a man yelled at another man, hot fast shouts of I'm gonna whoop your ass, and the fight erupted into a punch, a dart away, and then a brawl of brown fists and red blood. Pigeons smattering, forgetting, coming back for an old crust of food. A passing horn blared with an unintelligible shout, they waxed and waned in distance and were carried away.

The girl's eyes were impossibly jungle green and they narrowed at a glint in the distance. The light changed and she walked, walked toward the shiny thing; it was an oasis and it glittered; as she approached she could see the rippling of water in a triangular median where there was once crusted mud and parched grass; to her eyes it glistened like silver.

Switch, ebb and flux and the cars changed direction, discordant thud of radios playing catch-the-leader in a manic cycle, and the girl moved in slow motion and bent over to slide her shoes off, dropping them on the sidewalk and walking barefoot, lifting the hem of her tank top, pulling it above her small round breasts. As she waded barefoot into the water she unhooked her bra, unpeeling its milky translucence from her hot skin and dropped it, She bent over one thigh, unzipped the skirt and pushed down both it and the panties.

In front of her the hydrant was gushing, emitting a near-solid rush of water that cascaded over the dry earth and eddied around her toes. The hot wind enflamed her flesh and she knelt down, hunkering, spreading her legs and lying back. She arched; her bottom rooting into earth of the same color. Her tight legs flexed and her glistening mound is pulled toward the water, hot and aching to receive its coolness, droplets nesting in the curly hairs like the diamond in the crease of her nose. She laid back, and her hair soaks into the water. She spread her legs, pulling forward, wriggling under the stream.

At the second the crystal water swept over her hot sex she felt its coolness, knew suddenly its sound; the low rumble of its falling coupled with the tinkling swish of its surface, her green eyes closed and she quivered instantly, chest heaving with unbearable bliss, hips gyrating up and down and side to side with the water's flow, and the second sound she heard is the rising crescendo of her own heart. Touched, her hand fluttered to cover it and pressed there, felt firsthand its quickening beat.

Her breasts were more pale than her arm, and her hand covered the hollow between them, dark on the paler skin, clenching as she began to convulse, eyelids fluttering and rolling back as she arched and bucked and fucked the water stream.

Then she lay limp and her hand rose and fell back into the mud. She was stretched and spent and more languid than anything in the city, though her cunt vibrated and clenched and oozed in waves, waves and waves with no pattern, slowing as her breath stilled and her legs fell heavily to the mud.

All around the sun rose and the city flowed, ebb and flood, eyes on cars and streets and signs and meaning and lunch plans, cursing the heat and the noise and the lack of air. She closed her eyes, stretching in bliss, rooting in the mud, warming to the day.