Getting To Use That High School French

A New York City summer reeks with heat, and the wet air lays across Brooklyn like a stranger rubbing up against you on the subway.

A middle-aged black woman sits on some flattened boxes under a tree, her legs splayed out in front of her like a child’s, and she is waving to a little girl who watches her in confusion before running to catch up with her mother as she crosses the street.

I walk up to the woman, who is still waving to the air where the child had been, and ask, “Are you thirsty?”

The woman responds in a language I don’t immediately recognize, but eventually I figure it out, and when it seems like she’s done, I try again, asking, “Ummm, l’eau?”

YIATA

A rental truck parked in the middle of a residential street: clearly just another asshole double-parked, so I go around on my scooter. 

Except they’re NOT double-parked - they’re just stopped at the light, which changes as I’m going around them, meaning I am directly in front of them when they start to go, which is hella dangerous for me.

At the next light they’re too close to the parked cars for me to squeeze through, so go around again (what was I thinking?), going past the driver’s side.

“You motherfucking idiot,” he helpfully suggests as I ride past, and I really can’t blame him.

Long Ago Seems So Close

“What other bands from that era started in the Eighties?” my physical therapist asks. We’ve been talking about Nineties bands.

“Well, The Flaming Lips started in the mid- to late-Eighties I believe,” I say

“Wow, I mean, I know my dad was listening to them around then, but I didn’t know they went that far back,” he replies in mild disbelief as I turn into dust and blow away.

Interspecies Communication

While Katie returns the freight elevator to its proper floor, I sit down on the curb outside and wait.

It’s late afternoon, an hour or so before dusk, still some light left, a low, buttery light tinted with gray from the overcast. I watch the breeze play with the few living things in this industrial dead end: a weed or tree growing in the rain gutter on the top of a brick wall waves a few delicate leaves, a pigeon wandering the asphalt a few yards away shakes his feathers in the cool.

The pigeon notices me, noticing him, and struts over to check me out, so I politely say, “How’s it going?” but he doesn’t reply. 

Mourning

I watch the swimmers at the Olympics, and I remember what the pool smelled like, chlorine and sweat. I remember slipping through the water, pulling my body clean and swift through the water, my skin tight and my body loose.

I remember winning, the tiny sliver of embarrassment when they took losing hard, the raging exultation of crushing my opponent, my personal best. 

Tonight, I remember getting a piece cut out of me and I miss it, I miss that person, and I mourn him, a little, even though he had to die sometime - I just didn’t expect to still be alive afterward.

Delicious Prayers

The framed front page of the New York Times from September 12, 2001, complete with screaming headlines and photos of burning buildings, that formerly loomed over this table in the restaurant is gone, replaced with an innocuous ad for beer. 

Katie and I devour tacos on homemade tortillas, with fragrant red-tinted rice, and pinto beans swimming in savory, thick broth heaped on paper plates. We eat peacefully, without saying much until finally, plate empty, stomach and heart full, I speak up.

“I don’t know how to say this without sounding stupid,” I say, “but eating a well cooked meal is like someone praying through you."

Theology Hospital

“So what hospital are you getting your knee looked at?” my physical therapist asks.

“It used to be called Methodist, now I guess it’s Presbyterian, in Brooklyn,” I reply.

“It would be weird to have them both own it at the same time,” he says.

“Yeah, Calvinists versus the Wesleyans,” I say apropos of nothing.