and tasty too

When I first moved to Brooklyn five years ago, I lived in Williamsburg. Around the corner from my apartment was a funeral home that displayed in its window a large, garish clock. I called it The Death Clock. The Death Clock was huge, easily visible from all corners of the street. It filled the whole window. The Death Clock had numbers on its face written in a crawly roman numeral in a font reminiscent of a Burton film. And finally, The Death Clock was neon, glowing whitely all hours of the day and night. It was in all, a very strange way to advertise a funeral home.

The Death Clock glowed at us impassively as we strode past towards the subway late for work, as we brooded over our lives on our way back. When we walked home drunkenly in the middle of the night, it washed the street with a blue and white light that followed us all the way home. I never once used it to tell time. I just shrugged past its message of inevitable endings until I was safely past.

Last week, walking home to Greenpoint late one night, I found myself on my old block. The clock was gone. The funeral home was gone. In its place was an Edible Arrangements store, a glossy, manhattanesq trophy of the New Williamsburg. Oddly enough, the store still glowed at night. This time it was red.