WEDNESDAY
From the window you can see buses coming up Avenue A.
Knowing this, she decides it is worth the effort to get to her office: no
matter what else needs be done, the chance to recharge our phones is a primary
concern. (What you found out later is that the time it spends searching for
signals is also what drains the batteries.) You think of the clusters of people
you’d seen yesterday about the generator the Irish bar on 13th had
set up for people to get some cellular power and the prospect of a similar
vigil leads you to agree with her. And this will also afford a trip to the
Whole Foods around the corner on 57th to restock supplies. This
reminds you of the semi-prophetic song “Life During Wartime” by the Talking
Heads, with the verse that ends: “I’ve got groceries/Some peanut butter/Should
last a couple of days/But ain’t got no TV/Ain’t got no headphones/Ain’t got no
records to play.” If they were up for a rewrite, it might be more pointed to
revise: “Ain’t got no smartphone/Ain’t got no signal/Power’s dead anyways”.
A rendezvous is set up for 1PM at “a Chase bank between 53rd
and—no, between 54th and 55th…” as she can’t remember her
office address just then. It is only later that you will realize she didn’t
give you the cross street. Morning calls also confirm that there will be
another business holiday and your Brooklynite friend expresses, for the first
time in history, sympathy for your plight of living in Manhattan.
To make the scheduled appointment, you have set aside an
hour-and-a-half, thinking that a prudent reserve. When you get to 1st
and 14th, however, you realize there is nothing prudent in anything
today. As two buses approach and a third stands stalled, you see you are one of
dozens, probably closer to 40 or 50 people, all swarming in on the latest
arrivals, most of which are so full they can’t even open their doors to more of
the horde. The bus starter the MTA has placed here is one of those veterans who
know how to appeal to the better instincts of mob scenes—via the
now-trademarked, long-suffering Queens—with a
combination of humor, gentle persuasion and simple repetition. “Room for one
more? Ok. Another? Over here. Squeeze in. Please get a little closer so we can
close up. Little more. Think ‘intimate’. Bit more. Ok, close ‘em!” The mass
moves in gnat clouds, trailing the buses while they roll to a stop; it reminds
you of nothing so much as a those pictures of 3rd world jitneys
where frustrated commuters sit on top or hang off the sides rather than wait on
possible space. You hear a mother apologizing to her son for missing their
opportunity at a cram-in because she was out-of-place when the window presented
itself. “So, you were following another guy with a backward-turned baseball
cap—LIKE I’M NOT WEARING?” Even when three arrive at once, the gaps of
departures are filled before they can clear the portals by the fast and
unencumbered. The helplessness on faces are as eloquent as the dispatcher’s
sighs.
You drift down to 8th
Street, thinking that you might upstage the later
streets but find that all buses are now express and don’t even stop there. You
briefly debate whether you might have better luck going down to Houston but that’s no
guarantee either. You weigh the cost: you could walk down and try for a better
position, or simply start now and walk up, but in the eventuality that you’d
have to walk home with a full backpack... While these factors are spinning
around in your head, you notice a taxi stopping about a block away to answer a
hail. Words are exchanged with the driver and you can see others already inside
moving over.
This was a YELLOW taxi, a fact in comparison that triggers
the instant comprehension that the local economic model has changed. Today
rides are a Seller’s market. The 20-something has stepped in front of you and
flagged the next, and asks: “Can you take me to 73rd and Broadway?”
The Indo-accented driver says: “I’m only going up to 83rd and 1st
and no place else.” I hold out a twenty. “55th is fine with me,”
which gets me the front jump seat. The backseat is already occupied by a
waifish blonde who smiles and nods. Once we get above 23rd we pick
up a guy with a Northern Euro accent—maybe scandian, who’ll settle for 59th Street—and
the jam begins. But the driver is adept enough to do a bit of weaving and when
he sees other driver’s taking the bus-reserved lanes, he follows suit. Pointing
at the dead traffic lights, “If the lights don’t work, neither do the cameras.”
Of his license plate, of course. Another part of the new economy. He says it is
like this all over; it took him 3 and a half hours to just get to his garage from
Queens, most of that walking. He got lucky and
saw another cab from his fleet and got a lift just before he hit the TriBoro Bridge.
As is often the case, emergency situations makes everyone
more liable to talk to one another. “What news?” “I heard six days.” “I was
told a week.” “Well, you should probably split the difference on that one. Its
like when Kirk would ask Scotty how long it would take to repair the engines
this time, he gets told one number and then asks again later and its done. So
he says: Chief Engineer, why is it you always tell me twice the time it will
take to do the job? And Scotty says: How else will I maintain my reputation as
a miracle worker?” This gets a chuckle from the backseat and even a smile from
the driver, but probably more out of nervousness than recognition: none of them
was born when this first aired.
Just below the UN, the snarl doubles as the driver has to
make a choice between underpass and over, like it matters. But the one thing to
be said about the over: you get a choice of lanes NOT to be moving in. The Euro
guy can’t wait any long and asks what he owes him. He gestures vaguely at the
running meter and says “Whatever.” He forks over two singles and a five, and
you wish you’d waited on that twenty.
As it is, by 50th
Street the clotting has become thick enough for
curds and the driver says he’s going to take the FDR at the next opportunity so
you can hoof it at any time. Crossing the avenue is no different than a parking
lot. You wonder where anything is moving. Which is also the subject of a couple
of stroller moms and a matron, and some German tourists you pass in you line of
march.
When you finally figure out that the cross-street is
missing, you have to say: How many Chase outlets could there be on the East
side, between 54th and 55th? Well, she originally said 53rd,
but made you cross that out on the envelope with the grocery list, which might
be a factor. Then you have to double your immediate possible choices as it
could be either side of the street. This process requires drifting into the
center of every avenue to scan the storefronts for any sign of the bank logo.
And there are a LOT of banks. When you find
one on Park Avenue that fits the description
you are certain…except that after ten minutes, the obsessive-compulsive
significant other is nowhere to be seen on HER schedule. Taking a risk, you
ascend from the ATM lobby to the second floor. The place is practically
deserted: one or two tellers, and a couple of guys that look like desk clerks
at a Marriot stand at the help island. Surprising as anything these days, they
not only check the listing of branches between the specified zones but offer to
call her as well! “…beep beep beep beep…” “We get a lot of line failures in
this area.” Lacking anything better to do, you go back to the lobby and wait
another ten minutes before trying again. This time is works. And she insists
you weren’t listening when she gave you the cross street of Third Avenue. You point out to her that,
according to your new best buddies at this branch, there IS NO Chase on Third
between 54th and 55th. “56th” she says, as if
this will explain YOUR mistake.
While waiting in the ATM lobby of 56th and Third,
you notice all of the people who sit on the floor to use the outlets to
recharge their phones, and the steady stream of a new person coming in every
minute or so to use the branch facilities only to jerk on the door handle and
read the sign about being closed due to the emergency. All that is offered is
money and power: the latter being, if only for this moment, of equal worth…and
free.
Your only quick study of shopping at Whole Foods on 57th
is that, among the perishables,, you get one of the last three romaine lettuce
heads. And that they have no more dinner candles. It comes as no surprise but
only induces that buy of a small superlumens hand flash at the Duane Reade.
Along with extra batteries.
The singular delight of getting on the M-15 and beating the
mad scramble is to find seats still open. Catching an older fellow’s eye,
neither can resist silently congratulating the other for such a coup. On the
ride down—much quicker now, which you also realize applies to anything further
from the river—you make phone calls and try to avoid the envious stars of the
SRO crowd, none of whom appear pregnant, wounded, infirm or otherwise unable to
handle their burdens which are no more than yours. Exiting at 14th
you become more and more aware of the solos and couples all heading in the
opposite direction. As you pass by the Stuyvesant residential police you can
hear them ordering up additional security details to watch over the vacated
buildings.
At home you realize it is time to abandon all hope that the
fridge will do anything but keep stuff warm and transfer every item within,
along with today’s purchases, out to a large metal-lined tea-box you’ve
maneuvered out to the fire escape. The daytime temperature is listed in the
paper as 56 degrees, but the night will be 39—no different than the deli case
at the grocer’s. Enough to keep the water cool, the veggies crisp and the dairy
from spoiling too fast. As you stow the precious commodities out in the air, 30
feet above the street, you look to see if anyone else has thought of this
simple solution. No other fire escape appears to be used as a cooler. And still
the rolling stock of caddy-people head west.
“The Hunger Games” has begun to become something of a
disappointment. The text o the second book, “Catching Fire”, spends so much of
its time recapitulating the events, emotional relationships and attendant
histories, peak experiences, descriptions of outfits, meals, etc., of the first
book that the actual range of activities is limited to a very few scenes of
brief passion, snap judgments, split decisions and sudden revelations that have
been so thoroughly telegraphed in advance you’d think it coded for transmission
by Western Union. You can’t be sure whether the author used a template, a
cookie cutter or a Chinese menu (one from column A, one from column b, one from
column C, etc.) as her structure, unless this is some new form of app that
creates genre novels for the historically uninformed.
Your first nightfall without her is when it hits you: there
are dramatically less windows candlelit than even yesterday. The East Village
is becoming depopulated as Stuyvesant. Then there is the choice to be made
whether to light one candle or just
prepare dinner by flashlight. Not for the first time in days have you thought
about your lifestyle” Amish, by all intents and appearances. You think of the
strange attraction of the illuminated Vermeer-like scenes of the farmhouse in
“Witness”; how even someone as cosmopolitan as John Book could feel drawn to
the simple acts of uncomplicated labor—carpentry to milking. You feel it even
more as you notice how quiet and immediate the conversation over meals has
become. Very little opinion offered about the upcoming elections, or abstract
thoughts about anything, except doing chores, tasks, maintenance of facilities.
This is what they called “plain”—not with any form of pride but acknowledgment
of accomplishment. This is what it means to reduce media down to a few hours of
mp3’s drain on the iPods and even less of mp4’s on the iPads.
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