(interlude)

In the city to the comicshop thru the highstreet past the crowds behind the shopping centre, a shadowy street.
A huge rack of new comics and fanzines. Daredevil and his affiliations, all the mutant comics which have diversified in response to their popularity, multi-coloured covers choking the display, like a series of  mini-soap operas competing to distract. And I wonder what Captain America's up to these days.
I move into my tiny room in my spacious new flat.
I take with me my duvet and pillow. Or perhaps there's a florid blanket that my flatmate has spread out to dry or hung in the airing cupboard draped over a clothes horse and I won't have to bother. I halt, talking to strangers, confused in the pigeon-infested boulevards. A duvet is the most basic of necessities.
(I remember, in the kitchen, by the fruitbowl, for my sister's amusement I did my impression of "toothless Joe", then, preoccupied, felt my rows of hard, shiny teeth, and posed like for a photo, as though papparazzi'd, the flash of teeth in a blur. Vanity and insecurity.)