He could live in the woods for weeks with a pocket knife and rope. But he couldn't stand the city. It made him hard and bitter as an acorn. He hated cars, and animals in cages. He may have meant the swatch of linden trees we used to climb.
Houses grow there now.
They hated it when he talked that way, like he did on the day he broke down the door of the dayroom and took a taxi home. It wasn't long before he was back in lockup where the sturdy cloth of his Boy Scout shirt made a nifty noose. Lawyer's Daughter A splotch of red rose in her face where she'd rubbed rouge into her makeup, this girl who'd never blushed before, my freckle-faced girl whose skin belongs to the beach. Pink streaks, smeared like blood on fleshy bandages, ran from each cheekbone to the diamonds in her lobes. Tears left trails across her blush like streams of sweat on dirty children.