I pass the pizza place and continue to the corner deli—the one with all the flowers in front and the good coffee. I had already gone by the neon-lit aisles of the large chain. They had nothing I wanted. Here in the warmth of dark wood and broad terra cotta tiles, the aisles are filled with health food, fancy peanut butter, craft beer, and gourmet beverages. I grab a can of low-fat, turkey-chili. The guiltless version of bad food clinks against the counter.
“Is that all?” The man is tall, mid-twenties. He has an honest looking mouth.
“Yes. That’s all I need.” I say, smiling. “How is your night?”
“You know. It is a Friday.”
“Yes. Probably not the place you want to be right now.”
He rings the can into the register. I wiggle a debit card from the tight-slit in the wallet.
Noticing the card, the clerk points to a tiny hand-doodled sign scotched to the register. It reads: “$10.00 Minimum.” The letters are somewhat childish and bubbly.
“Oh. I’m sorry. Let me put this back,” I say. I begin to turn.
“No cash?”
“I should have gone to an ATM. I’m so sorry.” And I am sorry. I have no idea why, but I am sorry for the trouble.
He picks up the can and puts it in a bag. “No. You should eat tonight. Pay me another time.”
I am not a regular. The few times I have been in were easily overlooked by the swarms of Carnegie Hill people rushing through their days and nights like storm clouds.
New York is full of paradox, particularly in the off-hours. People want to be kind but the days do not provide time or a space. In crowded bars, slit-eyes blur and claw through drunkenness towards bodies they will touch but not know. They speak without remembering. In the days, the games of business make playmates into enemies. When alone, they want. When crowded, they do not. No one watching, people find space in the dark. They want connection. Sometimes the streets are too crowded to stand apart—and the crowds are lonely.
On the brink of destitution—refrigerator empty and this broken apartment emptying of me—the coffers of friendship are full as the ocean. V wires me grocery money. He knows better than to ask and my thanks are mute. D brings me an umbrella wider than I am tall. J offers me his metrocard. K takes me out, keeping me from the white noise of anxiety. Poverty is such a relative word. I have nothing, but so much.
I write V a letter. His grocery money had taken him with me to shop. Each egg has his name on it. Usually we only keep each other from existential loneliness—having IM conversations over respective bottles of wine late into the night, sharing frustrations and philosophy over thousands of miles.
“Dearest V—,”
I tell him that the City is manic. It is a conflicted lover that never returns your calls, and then collects photographs of you. Occasionally, she sends you something to spell out a love letter that redeems the distance—a lock of her hair, a late night phone call, a confession. But cities speak differently to those they love. Driving down the FDR, the smell of garbage and struggle breaking you, suddenly the East River stands in the window, waiting in a negligee beaded with city lights.
Negligee—it is from the French and literally means “neglect”. And the beauty of the City is what you realize notice has abandoned. The stress has left you dwelling on the morning in her breath, the screaming horns of frustration, and the happiness of other couples. We all need our attention drawn to what stands before us.
When strangers do nice things, I feel prettier. And I feel shy, gentler, and humble.
These are not transactions.
Funny that people can be so kind when there is nothing to gain, no tomorrow. It defies the brutal functionalism of evolutionary biology.
Dear V–… it is almost as thought expectation births a sense of commerce between us. We are social creatures but the rise of agrarian culture meant we no longer needed everyone to gather resources. We have abundance. It has created the myth of a scarcity of resources.
Perhaps this is another reason the last evil in Pandora’s Box was hope. I have always thought hope was an evil to the Greeks because it refuses to accept fate—it includes a modicum of cowardice. Hope gives war pause. It demands change that threatens the peace of civil government. But perhaps it is also the related distortion of time that comes with hope. When we hope for something, we act towards a future we seek to control. It takes us away from the pure being of now.
So here they are, the late night clerks stuck to what welters across the doorsill. Strangers give for the pleasure of it. Their generosity expects nothing. And I wonder if it is easier to be kind sans expectation, is that more or less of who we are? Do we neglect people we know, forgetting to hear that they need us to see their beauty? Do we demand something from people and so lose the pure experience of knowing them right now?
