Way Down in the Hole

Seven Years

For twenty minutes I crouched beside a parked car on Fleet Street, my camera and attention aimed on a thirty-foot ladder leaned against the side of Super Linens. I was waiting for someone to walk underneath it, to capture the would-be baptism of nearly a decade of ill-fortune.

Not a single person walked under it. Not a trio of barhounds evacuating the cramped alleyway of Regester Street, not the bumbling, topsy-turvy family of churchgoers on their way into the Point for brunch. Even a homeless man jumped into traffic and back onto the sidewalk in order to avoid the curse. It did not dissuade him from trying to sell me a scratched and water-logged copy of a Stephen Marley CD (asking price was a dollar; I had fifty cents — I was promptly told to fuck off).

At best, I captured a pair of elderly men with their walkers and orthopedic shoes maneuvering precariously along the curb to get around the ladder. They looked at me and laughed. My knees were dirty from kneeling in the gutter for so long.

Oh well. It was worth it to learn that superstition is alive and well. I could not be happier.

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