Two
Victoria had a decent apartment on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. New York City was a wild place that excited Cara. There were terrible things and beautiful things, all things were here in five boroughs. People chasing dreams, people dying in the street, drug addicts and millionaires, prostitutes and princes, the AIDS epidemic and an indelible mix of cultures like a microcosm of the world. It was all here in New York.
Cara had seen the news reports on how bad it was in Brooklyn. The words, “Heroin is a poem without words,” stuck in her mind. She had heard it in an interview with a homeless drug addict in Bushwick. She remembered all the ornate graffiti murals friends and loved ones made to commemorate those they had lost. There was something like an 83% drop out rate and the commu
