What Changes Everything Read Online Free PDF Page B

the toilet, bladder full, eyes bleary, and glance out his apartment window to the empty lot below, Danil would seem an unlikely dancer responding to absent music, a drunk or whackjob ripe for the Kingsboro Psychiatric Center. The can‟s rattling magnified in the night air, resounding off the concrete around him. The corner of Bergen and Albany remained sunk into post-midnight somnolence, the darkness gobbling up noise and movement and regurgitating them as indistinct fragments of dreams. In this space of relative obscurity, he began.
           As if in a private ritual of nightly prayer, Danil‟s holy paint met the sanctified wall. He moved his arm in graceful waves. After several minutes, he lowered the spray can to his side and then touched a corner of the paint with the tip of his left baby finger to test for dryness. He pulled off the paper, refolded it quickly, and extracted the next layer of stencil from where he‟d stashed it under a parked car. With painter‟s tape, he put the new cutout in place, holding his flashlight in
    his mouth so he could see to line it up properly.
           As he worked, he sang "Mr. Tambourine Man" softly, just loud enough to make the back of his mouth vibrate Dylan had been Danil‟s quirky brother Piotr‟s favorite singer, and just a few weeks ago, Danil had heard that song covered by a gutter punk band whose name he couldn‟t remember in the Rock Star Bar under the Williamsburg Bridge. A dive with a great view of the span over the East River, a neon air hockey table, and two carved ship figureheads that hung above the liquor shelves, the bar was an odd place peeled off an earlier, rougher time; Danil liked it mainly because of the layers of scrawled tags that covered every inch of the bathroom, which was often where people gathered to talk, smoke, share drugs. And when the band of forgotten name performed, the Dylan song was etched onto the night like a Sunday choir‟s hymn by a rope of a man with tattoos running up both arms. The singer forewent the harmonica and his voice was raspier than Dylan‟s but it made Danil wish he could call Piotr. And it planted in his brain lyrics perfect for a street artist hoping to be immune to the night.
           Danil killed the flashlight, dug in his backpack for the can of white and silenced himself in concentration. This was the most important coat, the detail layer, full of fine cuts. It would take him a few minutes longer than the others, but it was manageable, assuming no one came strolling down the street. In this neighborhood at this hour, he was less worried about being arrested than being jumped.
           As he moved the can back and forth, he felt awake to the blood flowing in his arms, to the white paint as it spewed out, and to the goose-bump quality of the brick wall coated with a thin, patchy layer of cement. This is what it meant to be alive. Near the edges of the paper, he shortened his swing to avoid over-spray. His mind was doing double duty, checking the coverage while listening so intently for any unusual street noise that he imagined his ears turned inside out. He glanced over his shoulder and then turned back to the wall, conscious of the cool night air sailing over his arms.
           Danil was 31, too old for vandalism, maybe too old for all this shit, even in the name of protest art. But nothing beat the feeling he got when painting the street. Only then did he feel light, an organic part of the world around him, and yet disconnected from the dark thoughts of Piotr or his mother. Piotr, younger and so much more talented than Danil, had been drawn to bugs and small creatures, a collector of butterfly wings and ladybug shells, and such an easy target for grade-school thugs. Where the older brother was mild, the younger veered all the way to timid, and bullies sensed this. "It‟s your job to look after him," their mother used to tell Danil. "You are four years older, and so much stronger, and not