1 A week before Superstorm Bernice, I was walking home from the 24/7 when I saw it. It was in the spot where the old bodega had been for ten years, years in which I’d gotten to know the owner, Abdul, and in which he’d always let me know when the oussies had come in. Abdul had told me a while back he’d be closing up, that he couldn’t afford the rent anymore, not now, not since the neighborhood had gotten a new name from the chum slingers that made it sound more like an extension of the nearby, more fashionable neighborhood. It was sinking more smash in to make it the kind of place that the new neighborhood residents (the kind of people who never knew to ask about the oussies, or even needed them) wanted, or pack up and leave. And he’d decided to pack up.

The it I saw that night was another store. But when you’ve slagged all day for smash enough to barely pay your rent and not do much else, there’s the bodegas like Abdul ran, where you can maybe go and get little bits of something, a cup of noodles or a dollar bag of chips, and then there’s places that make you feel like you’re too poor to walk inside. And feeling very poor, being very poor is like going down a street and realizing that all the beautiful places you walk by, places that have wine and good food and music, are locked when you try to walk through their doors. And so, after a while, you stop looking at them and start looking down at your feet, hoping maybe to find a hundred-dollar bill that will act as a key to one of those doors, or a drug or a dream that will make you forget those doors are there at all.