It was the summer of '82, my first year at Saint Vincent's. I'd just arrived in the city, a newly minted nurse from the Midwest, and taken an apartment on Perry Street with three other nurses. He was ... [+]
In the glow of this neon mountain, framing her face like a fluorescent halo from behind the bar, she glances now and then out the window to the highway. Near sunset, the air is dry. Dusty with cigarette smoke that settles into the silky remains of unkept promises. She's nearly forgotten the orange taste of hope – Instead – compromised, bartered, given, what mattered. Her life is divided decidedly in two: who she is and who she used to be. Thin skin, her face has aged too quickly. Her hair stopped growing once it snaked to somewhere past her hips. And now she sometimes notices that it is