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Hongvan Nguyen Page 2
Baltimore Streets
Baltimore streets next to the Harbor Place at noon were filled up with business men and women jostling among hobos and kids looking like those who had just
relinquished from home and crazily wanted to shop and to wander. Cold winds couldn’t slow them down, nor could the hurrying traffic. Rushing passengers pulled their wheeled caddies
along the pavement while black and white pushed carts of food along the aisles in crowded supermarkets. Inside a restaurant, young couples and families enjoyed their
appetite meals with spicy color-looking dishes. No effeminate figures, nor languid activities were seen in this enclave of a big city on a dry day. Then in the afternoon, when the snow
suddenly started to fall down thick and hard ; we could see kids among adults were hasting to get on and off their own vehicles or buses. Flows of passengers ran out of office buildings
and shops trying to get home as soon and as fast as possible. At buses stop, a lady wearing a short skirt was shivering in her dress shoes with thin, sheer pantyhose and no thick socks to
wait for the bus to come.
New York
We jump off the bus, feeling like normal people doing the shopping after an hour of being lost and being driven around by the driver who couldn’t find a place to stop. Then the two ladies who walks with me found themselves the fresh coconuts that can substitute for a soda stopped to buy them while I keep on walking. Until I can’t hear their voice answering me, I know I lost them. I turn my head to look back and see them a block away. Hurriedly, I walk back to where they are standing and join them with my purchasing, a can of soda.
“I want to have some Chinese steamed buns in that store!” I point my finger toward a Chinese store in front of us. Suddenly, another group of ladies passing by say loudly, “Are you coming with us to eat some pho?” The other two ladies haven’t yet know what to say. I reply quickly, “No, don’t have much money!” She beckons her hand to show the sign of her disapproval about what I’d just said, and they walk away without waiting for us. Suddenly, I remember that just a month ago, we grouped together to demonstrate our opposition to China’s invasion and their seizure of the Spratly and the Paracel islands from our country, and think that she had consequently expressed her abomination toward the Chinese about that matter.
© Copyright, 2014,
Hongvan Nguyen. |