Papillon


Vacancy of a boardwalk hotel that has never been full, or which vanishes into the sea, as at Degirmendere, or sinks three stories down into the earth, as at Adapazari. It was an icy morning of idleness, my heart in Turkey, my bones propped in a window overlooking Amsterdam Avenue, windswept and dark, over the bridge of which there crept a miniscule and poignant group of three dressed in red and white coats, whom I felt, inexplicably, that I must know.