Garbage Can Symphony (Part Two)
Down at the bus station backroom, on Hoyt Street near Fulton.
Ralph is upset because the boss never notices him. Ralph dreams of playing golf with the boss. What he doesn't know, though, is that the boss would never play golf with Ralph Kramden. The boss went to college. The boss has a beautiful home in the country, somewhere out in New Jersey.
Once a year at Christmastime, the boss eats dinner and drinks champagne at the bus company President's mansion in Connecticut. The boss doesn't give a fuck about Ralph Kramden.
And then one day the boss gets instructions one day to get rid of ten men. Ridership has been down and times are tough. Kramden's name is on the list.
That night Ralph wanders through the downtown streets of midnight Brooklyn, drunk. He looks at the bridge and wonders how it would feel to jump into the East River in the middle of the night, to plunge off the Brooklyn Bridge, smash into the cold water and plunge deep like a fat bullet. To die in the dark deep blue among the concrete sunken piers and discarded tin cans and tough city fish --
-- and Kramden wonders: are city fish really tougher and meaner than fish who aren't from Brooklyn?
