[part of something else]

apart from Every thing

hair still wet, branches a'quiver at eight in the morning, he pulled the new year out of the mail box and tore it open on the dirty grey streets of our city. he lifted his leg over the shaky steel frame and pushed forward, tires half inflated, dirty chain grinding on sharpened teeth-- he pushed that old machine ten miles south and west, from white doors and rose bushes, through broken glass and boarded windows, to grid-locked streets and high-tension, frenzied, choking on benzine. 

The office was tucked inside an alley just outside the major business district, an orderly grid of high-rises in the center of town, hidden just well enough that no one ever had to know it existed. A handful of strange men sat on milk crates, reading newspapers, waiting for work.

He was extended the rare privilege of seeing every facet of our city from every angle. From the penthouses of the tallest buildings, sterile waiting rooms and offices with glass stairways, lush leather couches, waterfall fountains, crystalline dishes filled with disposable pens, white carpets and polished oak desktops, all the way down to the lowest, poorest slums. Wide, cracked, crumbling roads lined with unused trolley tracks, abandoned factories, relics from an era that prized productivity. Tiny cobbled streets, practically alleys, littered with broken bottles, bungee cords, scraps of old wood--the city's pencil shavings. Hospitals in the bad lands where Puerto Rican mothers cried over their sick children on dirty plastic chairs. From underground passages into loading docks and mail rooms, to the shipping yards at the edge of town. From private firms to city, state, and federal halls. Dense mazes of anonymous rooms where men and women sat at computers all day long, twisting numbers around and pulling money out of thin air. From the FBI to the IRS. Municipal Services to Superior Court. Many people might be surprised if they knew how easy it is to get into these places. He didn't have any credentials. The only difference between him and anyone else walking through those doors was a paycheck.