Untitled (State Street, 2007). Oil on canvas. Artwork and text copyright Danny Grosso. From my book, Out in the Street, available at Amazon Books.
In the springtime, the afternoon shadows would conspire with the lake breeze to divide State Street in two, with the shady side ten degrees colder. Prematurely optimistic girls in airy white blouses would navigate the hot-cold, hot-cold walk to the train beside guys in leather jackets, bundled up for the shadows and bounding out of the alleys. The boisterousness of the season would get the best of some of them, and they’d jump around on parked cars like children on playground sets. Unwittingly, they were creating diversions for the real shadow people of the city, who were filling white vans with burgled goods in quiet, workmanlike fashion. They’d finish quickly and dissolve into traffic, losing themselves within another hundred white vans, chasing the sunset down the Kennedy.
-Danny Grosso
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Glare (2012). Watercolor on paper. From my book, Opening Acts and Other Stories, available at Amazon Books.
Excerpt – Happens every year. That first sunny and warm day in February, that false spring, is the one that captivates enough to distract everyone from the reality that this thaw is fleeting. Office workers head to lunch in shirtsleeves.College boys run to class in shorts.Dapper men of ambiguous means, unwilling to disrobe, unbutton their topcoats as they make thier rounds.
Carlo turned from an alleyway onto the sidewalk.The sun coming from the west blinded him. This happens often when a city’s street grid lines up just so. But no one ever gets used to the several seconds of sightlessness and glare, all while moving with and against the flow of pedestrian traffic. Shoulders bounce off one another, folded umbrelas get caught in briefcase handles, packages get knocked to the pavement.Sunglesses might help, but Carlo won’t wear them because they hide his green eyes. Of ambiguous utility is the shield of the gloved hand, which just exposes the elbow, and a strangers head, to damage. Still, the sun is welcomed in winter by everyone, and some tempt fate by closing their eyes and tilting their heads up, as if to catch a quick walking tan.
Carlo had only taken a few steps from the alley, so he was still blind when he heard the POP!
It was a backfire, some old car, but Carlo was jumpy. He’d had threats all week from the family of his ex. Now he remembered how one of her brothers used to make a sound like that backfire in grade school, by stomping on a closed but empty carton of cafeteria milk.
Carlo had started up with her for the same reason he chased the others – blinded by beauty. She was a stunner. He disregarded the instant notion that the exit from this one might be a little sticky. In addition to her clinginess, he has been shilling for the legit side of a guy that was opposed to her family, and her brothers knew this. Could get ugly.
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