The days were long. To break up the monotony of topping garlic, I would rise from my stooped or kneeling position and treat myself to a long, luxurious, cone-shaped cup of water at the Igloo cooler. Others would gossip, joke around, or sing along to the lachrymose rralcheras on their transistor radios. But of all the workaday distractions, none were no fascinating as the oracular musings of Primi. The workers would sporadically lob questions at him, and he would swat them back with elan.

"Primi, you wanna get married? Don't you wanna wife?"

He mulled over the question like an ascended guru.

"No, ese. I don't have money, so I can't attract someone better-looking than me. Imagine a woman with looks like mine. Sad, huh? Nope. Chafe. No marriage. Besides, it's cheaper to rent."

"Primi, what's the best beer?"

"Whichever one is in my hand, loco."

"Priori, why do dogs love humans?"

"If you gave me free cans of meat and cleaned up my caca, I'd love you too, homeboy. Woof."

Head and Shoulders' last day at Gyrich Farms came within a week of the wedding just as the garlic season was winding down. Two olive Immigration and Naturalization Service trucks and one van descended upon the garlic fields just before midmorning. They braked hard, kicking up clouds of dust and dirt clods.

"La Migra, La Migra!" shouted several garlic toppers. Six khakied INS agents exploded from the vehicles. It frightened me when several young workers bolted. The guys seemed to adult to me just seconds before, an full of bravado and that physical competence of young men, hefting heaping bushels of garlic onto their shoulders with thoughtless ease. Ina moment, they had been stripped of that, and had been made into prey, fleeing to hide beneath cars or behind the garlic crates. I panicked and turned wide-eyed towards my mother.

"Should we run, mami, should we run?"

"What are you talking about? You're a citizen, born here. They can't take you away."

Now that she is free, she is in New York to raise funds for victims of trafficking still in captivity. Whether for tsunami victims or child brides, fund-raisers always seem to me like a necessary evil. A performance for the powerful.

On this occasion she surveys the catered spread from the top of Trffieca, nearly eye-level with the lofty tip of the Freedom Tower. She finds the buffet choices distasteful, and whispers softly, "Everything looks uncooked. So far in America, I only like the Mexican fried shrimp." She serves herself a few grapes and a piece of cheese. The austere gaping space, adorned with a few select prints notable for their rarity, has an air of isolation meant to Ire envied. One that penetrates her in the most unenviable way.

She stands off to the side as the guests gather. A nouveau riche, cultured, socially conscious crowd—people for whom an invitation to such events is an increasingly necessary symbol of status. The type of crowd that admires both the Fendi Casa coffee table and the copy of "Guerrilla Warfare" conspicuously lying on it.

They come bearing their power, ready for the one transaction (via tax-deductible gift) they are happy to conduct themselves. They will defer to her pain, and demand inspiration from it.

In December of 2016, I spent four days under suicide watch at Metropolitan Hospital in New York City. If I had known that calling the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline meant involuntary admission to the nearest psych ward, I never would have called. Cutting is a walk on a tightrope. One slip and it's all over. Dangerous, I know, but when I slice into my own skin, I am god, and fuck, does having that kind of power feel good. There is a difference between the desire to cut myself and the desire to kill myself. The trouble is they sometimes overlap, crashing into each other like rolling waves. I called the hotline because in that particular moment, both waves were sweeping me under. [...]

Residents of the area call it the crematorium.
It has revealed the undercurrents of our age.
The poor who thought voting for the rich would save them.
The poor who believed all that the papers said.
The poor who listened with their fears.
The poor who live in their rooms and dream for their kids.
The poor are you and I, you in your garden of flowers,
In your house of books, who gaze from afar
At a destiny that draws near with another name.
Sometimes it takes an image to wake up a nation
From its secret shame. And here it is every name
Of someone burnt to death, on the stairs or in their room,
Who had no idea what they died for, or how they were betrayed.
They did not die when they died; their deaths happened long
Before. It happened in the minds of people who never saw
Them. It happened in the profit margins. It happened
In the laws. They died because money could be saved and made.

They called the tower ugly; they named it an eyesore.
All around the beautiful people in their beautiful houses
Didn’t want the ugly tower to ruin their house prices.
Ten million was spent to encase the tower in cladding.
Had it ever been tested before except on this eyesore,
Had it ever been tested for fire, been tried in a blaze?
But it made the tower look pretty, yes it made the tower look pretty.
But in twenty four storeys, not a single sprinkler.
In twenty four storeys not a single alarm that worked.
In twenty four storeys not a single fire escape,
Only a single stairwell designed in hell, waiting
For an inferno. That’s the story of our times.
Make it pretty on the outside, but a death trap
On the inside. Make the hollow sound nice, make
The empty look nice. That’s all they will see,
How it looks, how it sounds, not how it really is, unseen.
But if you really look you can see it, if you really listen
You can hear it. You’ve got to look beneath the cladding.
There’s cladding everywhere. Political cladding,
Economic cladding, intellectual cladding — things that look good
But have no centre, have no heart, only moral padding.
They say the words but the words are hollow.
They make the gestures and the gestures are shallow.
Their bodies come to the burnt tower but their souls don’t follow.

I am not an overly confident person. Not physically. It's all I can do to stand my full height. I have an enduring terror of photos. There are many photographs of me trying to escape the camera, or looking tense and unhappy at having been caught in frame. [...]

Later, from one of the foundry workers, I learned the prerequisite net worth for invitees that night. Heads of successful companies, each having amassed such and such a fortune by age forty. How many zeroes was it? A considerable number of zeroes.

The idea was that the honored (i.e., wealthy) guests and their plus-ones would arrive from touring the foundry for - surprise! - a pre-dinner sculpting lesson, and I would be there - surprise! - like a showgirl sprung from an oversize cake.

When I emerged, the studio was empty. Everyone presumably retired to the plastic marquee for dinner, leaving behind a woeful little army of clay humanoid stalagmites. At the foot of the gantry, repelled by the clinking of glassware and laughter, I slipped back towards the back of the workshop, where the foundry workers stood around with beers cracked, lighting smokes beside the cooling furnace.

"You okay?" one of them asked. "That looked ... a bit rough."

"I could do with one of those."

He offered the packet, a light. "Saw some real masterpieces up there," he added, brows raised.

They found me a chair [...] Most were artists themselves, working partly for access to the foundry and materials [...]

No, I told not a soul. I may have been only ten years of age, but even I knew that confessing to being spied upon by a snazzily dressed senior citizen who flitted into and out of reality was not a clever move. My adolescence came and went, but still I felt no need to 'explain' the Watcher to myself. Lots of things in the world we don't understand. Endocrinology. Airline ticket pricing. Spousal intentions. Life trundles on regardless. The Watcher was just an occasional blip in my otherwise normal existence. Very occasional, very normal. [...]