The Street Explodes

There was a fire engine at the top of my street where it meets the Avenue. i was coming home from work and it was already dark. i walked to the top of the hill and past my house, which was only a few yards away from some serious activity. yellow police tape cordoned off the intersection. my feet crunched over shattered glass as i lifted the tape and ducked under, because there was no reason not to continue on to the corner and get a better look. my neighbor's mom was there at the corner and we exchanged amazed pleasantries, marveling at the hole in the street. i surmised that there had been an explosion. further on, some firemen were finishing up with what had been a burning car and was now a steaming, blackened shell of metal. behind me, the classy real-estate brokers/art gallery stood. it's front window was shattered. the glass i had walked over came from the third floor window of the apartments above it: the rest of the window hung dangerously in its frame.

a small young woman said, "what happened?" and Margie, my neighbor's mom, who is no taller than 5', told her something, but it was still not exactly clear, what had gone down. i said something about the hole being about the size of an average New York City pothole and the small young woman laughed and Margie nodded and smiled. it was actually much bigger and perfectly rectangular, and what appeared to have happened, i thought, was that the hole had been covered by a heavy cast iron grate. well, something solid enough to be taken for part of the street, when it wasn't exploding. the grate lay in two pieces some distance from the hole. one of the pieces was resting a few feet from me, so i could nearly stretch my leg out and toe it from where i stood at the head of the curb. Jeez, i thought solemnly, someone could have been seriously effed up here. i went inside.

and to my surprise, the Red Cross was on the scene. i passed their mobile command center a short time later as i walked down 5th. they were a couple blocks from the hole and the burnt out car. i didn't see anyone receiving aid. i wondered what kind of aid was available. i passed a cop sitting motionless in his patrol car, which was parked in the intersection of 5th and Berkeley. the presence of three huge Con Edison trucks back toward my street and numerous Con Ed workers told me that what had happened was related to the electrical. sometimes in Winter the salt-melt they set down on the street ends up melting more than the snow. last winter a woman had been killed while walking her dog in the East Village. her dog walked over a manhole cover that had become charged with electricity from corrupted cables below the street level. the woman was electrocuted when she tried to help her dog. i stepped gingerly off the curb.

when i got home again i turned on the news to see if they were reporting on the explosion. the anchor man said, "dogs are shocked by a live mahole cover on the upper west side, when we return from these messages." outside, the grinding of of heavy generators and machinery. the lights in my apartment flickered. i massaged my right shoulder with my left hand and switched the channel.