Real connections between people in New York
Lost: a left glove, dark green wool, with a mended thumb in orange thread. I lost it on Saturday afternoon, probably along a path in Prospect Park or on the walk to the train afterwards. It would be worth a look if you pass a bench or a fence post where people hang found things. It matters because the pair is old and I cannot replace it. I will check this board again on Sunday.
The 7 train stopped for forty minutes near Jackson Heights on a Thursday and the man across from me took out a deck of cards, shuffled, and began a game of solitaire on his knee. After ten minutes he held up a card and asked, you know this one? I did. We played gin for thirty minutes on a paper bag. He won. He was annoyed that I did not mind. We have not played again but I carry a deck now. I would like to apologise for losing so politely.
In my first week I walked down a street in Astoria in the evening and thought something had gone wrong. Black bags were stacked along the curb, whole rows of them, like a collection nobody had come for. Where I come from we have containers, and I kept looking for one. Here you put the bags out and the truck comes. Nobody found it strange except me. I walked in the road to get around them, then noticed everyone else was doing exactly that.
On a Saturday afternoon on the High Line, a crowd of us stopped walking at the same time and looked up, the way people do when a hawk is circling. Nobody said a word. The hawk dropped over the railing and everyone began walking again, slightly different. A man next to me said, did that happen? I said, I think so. He said, good. We kept walking in the same direction for two blocks without discussing it. I have not seen the hawk since but I look up on that stretch every Saturday.
You sat on the F train at rush hour on Tuesday holding a full white cake in a box on your lap, with your whole body, like a person on a mission. Nobody bumped you. Every passenger made a small invisible circle around that cake. I held a pole and a very particular fear that someone would sneeze. At Delancey you got off and the whole carriage exhaled. I counted forty people and zero incidents. Whoever the cake was for is lucky. I hope it was a birthday. I hope it was a big one.
A large and very confident dog walked up to me on a bench in Prospect Park one Sunday morning and put his chin on my knee like we had agreed on it. The owner apologised four times. We sat there for an hour. The dog never moved. Now the three of us walk the same loop every Sunday and the owner says the dog talks about me at home. I do not ask what he says. I think it is mostly about my knee.
I was watching the sun go down behind New Jersey from Hudson River Park when a man next to me lifted an old film camera and asked, do you mind if I take this with you in it? I said, fine. He took one frame and said, thanks. I never saw the picture. I like to think there is a print somewhere of me on a bench in good light. I sit on the same bench most Tuesdays. I have not seen him. I am looking my best.
A sudden rain in Harlem caught me on 125th Street with no raincoat and a document I could not get wet. A man selling ponchos from a cart looked at me, sold me the cheapest one, then handed me a plastic bag for the document for free. He said, you are going to need both. I did. The poncho split in a week. The bag is still in my drawer. It has held three documents since. It is the best thing I own.
The elevator was out at the Astoria station and I was staring at a long flight of steps with a suitcase the size of a person. A woman in a nurse's uniform took one end without asking and we carried it up together, quickly, like a rescue. She said, I do this twice a week. At the top she went her way and I went mine. I think about those steps whenever I hear that nobody helps in New York. It is not true. It took forty seconds and a stranger.
We were stuck between stations on the L train one Tuesday morning for eleven minutes and the whole carriage went silent in the way only New York can. You were holding a striped scarf and a very old paperback. I looked at the book. You looked at me and held it up so I could read the cover. We both nodded as if that settled something. The doors opened and you got off first. I have since read the book. It was good. I would like to tell you the ending.
