Jeffie, a tough old bird with a young boy’s name, had had lung cancer. I’d spent a good bit of time with her before I left, helping her out now and then, or just talking. She had bright blue eyes. She was scared to die. She was happy that I was moving to New York City. She did not want me to grow old and alone in that building, as she had.
When I went down to say a last goodbye to Jeffie, she insisted I take something of hers with me. Anything I wanted, it could be. I had always loved her dusty old table lamp—a mid-century piece actually bought at mid-century. “It’s yours,” she said, and so it is, sitting now on my desk as I write this. The lamp’s shade casts the softest, warm amber glow, as if suffused with her; indeed, it is tobacco-stained from her years and years of cigarette smoking.
After getting the news about Jeffie, I dashed down the six flights in my building and went straight into the German restaurant across the street. I ordered a beer and stood by the window, so I could watch for the truck delivery. I got to talking to a man standing there. Larry was his name; a big guy in a well-worn gray suit. He was waiting for his wife. I told him I’d just moved here, and without another word he gestured to the bartender.
“Patrón,” he said.
We clinked shot glasses.
“Welcome,” Larry said, “welcome to New York,” and the tequila tasted as clean and bright as metal—like an element with a name I couldn’t pronounce.
I hadn’t finished half my beer when the truck pulled up.
“There’s my bed.”
“Now you’ve officially got a home. Tab’s on me, go for it.”
He gave me his card and told me if I ever needed help, help of any kind, give a call. After all this time, almost ten years later, I still have it: Lawrence H. Stein, Attorney at Law.
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I had visited New York many times over the years but living here, as I soon discovered, is a whole different ballgame. On the other hand, one doesn’t become a New Yorker by virtue of having a New York address. For me, the moment came the first time I left the city. I flew back to Seattle for Christmas to see family. No sooner had the plane lifted off than I felt a pang of regret. To be a New Yorker is to be away from the city and feel like you are missing something, I wrote on a cocktail napkin. By this I didn’t mean missing the Rockettes at Radio City, New Year’s Eve in Times Square, or some amazing exhibition at the Met. In New York, there is always something amazing happening somewhere that one ends up hearing about only later.
What I meant instead was missing the evanescent, the eavesdropped, the unexpected: a snowfall that blankets the city and turns it into a peaceful new world. Or, in summer, the sight of the first fireflies in the park at twilight. The clop-clop of horses’ hooves on cobblestones in the West Village, mounted police patrolling late at night, or a lovers’ quarrel within earshot of all passersby. Of course, what is music to my ears may be intolerable to another’s. Life here is a John Cage score, dissonance made eloquent.
It’s in the subway where I find the essence of this. Every car on every train on every line holds a surprise, a random sampling of humanity brought together in a confined space for a minute or two—a living Rubik’s Cube. You never know whom you might meet, or who might be sitting next to whom. I prefer standing to sitting and would never doze or read while I ride. To do so would be to miss some astonishing sights—for instance, when two trains depart simultaneously and, like racehorses just out of the gate, run neck and neck for a time.
If it’s late at night, I try to get into the first car and stand up front, so I have a clear view through the windshield. As the subway barrels ahead, star-like lights flickering on either side, I feel as though I am on a rocket hurtling through deep time, with no idea where we will land, or how, or when.
The Dry Cleaner’s Daughter
SUBWAY LIFER
During my first year in New York, I took the A/C line to work each day. I had a full-time job raising money for a global nonprofit dedicated to developing an AIDS vaccine. The West Fourth Street station was five minutes from my apartment. My favorite time was early morning. The station wasn’t crowded yet, riders weren’t rushed. People did not talk but read or listened to iPods. The smokers hacked their smokers’ coughs. Water drops—rusty tears in winter, I’d imagine, beads of sweat in summer—leaked from the steel I-beams overhead. The air was soft, as if unfinished dreams still emanated from everyone’s skin.