Baby Steps

The CDC has advised us that it's okay to be outside without a mask on, so tonight, on the way home from work, I decide to lower my mask while walking from the subway stop on Flatbush to my home.

I smell the wet air from today's earlier rainstorm, and the scent of clean sidewalks; the trees all seem to be breathing fresh oxygen just for me, and the caress of their exhalations is gentle on my cheeks, like a soft kiss.

Then I spot, coming up the street toward me, a couple of people, one of whom is wearing a mask, and I begin to feel uncomfortable. By the time they reach me, my mask is firmly back in place, and I give them a wide berth as I pass.

Closer

The customer service rep at the bank is busy, so we sit playing on our phones in the sun by the floor-to-ceiling windows on large bolsters the same green as the corporate logo. The lady security guard stares past  us with a practiced expression that leaves some doubt as to whether or not she is eyeing us suspiciously, but after a while we just ignore her.

Another customer comes into the bank and is directed to have a seat, and, instead of finding a spot literally anywhere else in the rather sizable lobby, she comes and sits down on another corporate green bolster mere inches from where I'm sitting. 

"So much for social distancing," Katie says with a wry grin as I sigh and move away from the woman's offending back.

The Horror of Reincarnation

"It's for her Bat Mitzvah," the woman says, indicating her daughter, who regards me with a face devoid of expression save for a wide-eyed suspicion. My friendliest smile seems to only drive her further into the curve of her spine, where she hunches, all unformed and bristling with exposed nerve endings, like a clam without its shell. 

I find myself imagining myself at her age, likewise unformed and too-sensitive, and recoil at the thought. I would literally give anything, I think to myself as I slip her long, pale, foot into a shoe, to never have to be that young again.

Brooklyn Spring

The trees are rioting purple and pink and white flowers, while the ones without flowers shake brilliant new green leaves in the breeze. Beneath the cacophony of color, a man in stained jeans and a dirty mustard yellow puffer jacket crouches amidst a circle of trash bags bulging with his belongings, and he does not raise his eyes or greet me as I pass.

A plane glides across an ocean of blue over the Great Meadow in Prospect Park. I lie on my back and watch it pass while, over the trees bordering the Meadow to the east, a hawk hangs motionless on invisible thermals.

Listen

Older couple of ladies, mother and daughter, both of them speaking at the same time, their words tumbling over each others', demanding shoes, arch support, quality leather, but support, you know? and a platform, but not too much of a platform, how do people even walk in those things? well they're not for me, no, not for us, we walk everywhere.

Finally I bring out a bunch of shoes for them, and the first pair they try on, oh my god, they're perfect, arch support, you can really feel the support, and the velcro, and they're cute, right? absolutely, and we'll definitely be able to walk everywhere in these, it is okay that we have the same shoes, hahahahaha, who cares, if they're the right shoes, right?

"If your wife asks," one of them says, in a rare moment when the other one isn't speaking simultaneously, "we'll tell her that you really listen."

"Oh, I think she knows," I say.

In/Out

As I'm walking into the shop, the black dog with the gray muzzle and the kind eyes noses my hand in a friendly sort of way on its way out of the shop, just in passing. 

"What a great dog," I say to his human, who turns as he reaches the door to give me a smile.

"This special guy is sixteen years and three months old," he says to me proudly.

"Let's go," he says to the dog, who has been patiently staring at the glass door, waiting for the man to open it, and when he does, they do.

It's Different For Girls

My friend at work, a black woman, needs to go home - it's the end of her shift, she opened, and it's been a long week - but this woman she's helping isn't being very nice. She wants a different shoe, a better shoe, this one hurts, that one's too expensive, she hates the look of this one - so when my friend asks me to take over, I do so gladly.

I am, once again, completely non-reactive to her emotional shenanigans, and once she sees she's getting no reaction, she settles down, and we have a fine interaction. It may be in part due to my not playing her game, but I suspect it also has to do with my being a man, and women sometimes treat other women badly because they can get away with it.