Against the Cycle of the Virus

After I had explained to the friend that had emerged from my friend group that the proudest moment in a parent's life is to watch a child fail at a task, and had settled the ensuing argument when I saw the police tighten their semicircle on the suspected rapist's house.

"That," I said my friend group friend, "is a relief."

Of course, Christmas Eve in the jazzy district of the Circle can carry with it a bustling guilt. Why you're not home with your family getting the duck ready and such. It shot through us, front to end, in a ripple. Faster walking ensued. We passed tight-assed little bars squeezed with sexy red light bulbs, yellow, blue, one after the next, but got no further from the police action fisting about the nutmeg colored house in which the worst imaginable person existed entirely without regard for the daily motions that got bread made, schools funded, shoes bought.

So we gave up, headed for the house.