The New Boogeymen

Someone just pulled one of the hallway fire alarms in my building, most likely the same maladjust(s) who left a cigarette burn on an elevator flyer and a broken beer bottle there weeks later, nothing like which has ever happened pre-maladjust(s), and yet according to my neighbor, the building manager just told the fire department a homeless person pulled the alarm, as both "homeless person" and "antifa" are the new go-to boogeymen here and now--offered as the only plausible explanation with a straight face, no less, an insistence on fiction presented through bared teeth barring empathy, or reality.

I Suppose.

This morning, at the coffee shop, still out of grinds somehow, and there is someone yelling and honking, a thing that seldom happens here and the vibe of that narrow slice of the population that yells and honks was again of someone just racing through, passing by as fast as possible, the main character in his own play, everyone else extras to scatter, and the same peculiar self-absorption again of the only two unmasked people among several dozen of us following basic healthcare guidelines during a pandemic that has killed nearly a million, who had someone maneuvered themselves to the center of the sidewalk, recalling the loud guy behind me at the supermarket recently, one line over, talking so loud to the lowkey man in front of him, forcing that conversation about some item in lowkey man's cart, and of course he wasn't wearing a mask and we all had to see, we all had to hear the horn honking, for them to feel anything at all, 

I suppose.