“Boy, you’re going to wake up your brother. You know he’s still sleeping! And get down here for breakfast you’re running late. You have three minutes, Mr. Lazy Ass,” my mom yells from the kitchen.

“You’re going to wake him up yourself! Stop yelling!” I holler.

She slams the fridge door as a response. I dab a piece of toilet paper on my oozing, bleeding zit and go to the bedroom to get dressed.

It’s dark. Jim is still sleeping. “Lucky son of a bitch,” I whisper. His high school starts an hour later than the junior high. I tug on a dangling, worn-out, red string of wrapping-paper ribbon to turn on the light in the closet. It doesn’t turn on. I pull again. It clicks but no light. I pull. I pull. I pull again. No light. “Shit times two,” I grumble as I grab what’s probably my plaid button-up shirt. The jeans from yesterday are crumpled on my side of the bed. They’re baggy; they’ve got cool silver stitching; they’ll be fine. I pull them on, cinch a belt around my waist and hustle to the kitchen.

“You better take this with you out the door,” my mom says.

She hands me a just-out-of-the-toaster Pop-Tart. I juggle the burning ember of a breakfast from hand to hand as I grab my backpack and head out the door.

I get to the subway platform freaking 15 seconds late. The subway car doors nearly close on my nose. “Next one had better come fast,” I threaten to no one on the empty platform.

Then I hear it, Bentley’s voice echoes down from the top of the stairs. He’s the only dude in New York who publicly tries to sing Alicia Key’s part of Empire State of Mind. “In New York, concrete jungle where dreams are made. There’s nothing you can’t do. Now you’re in New York. These streets will make you feel brand new. Bright lights will inspire you. Let’s hear it for New York.” But no one giggles when his voice wobbles and cracks like a retard. His crew just beat-boxes along with him. He’s getting closer. He’s getting louder. There’s no place for me to hide.

To keep my nervous knees still, I go sit on the bench. I choose a middle seat hoping to get cushioned by strangers.

“Hey bitch!” he yells.

I pretend like he isn’t talking to me.

“I’m talking to you lame-ass,” he says.

I steal at glance to assess the situation. A few commuters have joined us by the tracks. But Bentley’s not talking to them. They know it. I know it. Everyone is waiting for me to respond.

On the 24th floor of the Kings County federal court house, Julie walked to a wall of windows that looked over Central Brooklyn. Even though the windows were tinted gray, she could tell it was sunny. She believed it was the first stereotypical spring day of the season: warm sun, cool air. She imagined taking that first invigorating, deep breath of fresh air, the type of inhalation that enlivened her lungs after hours of canned, stale air, the type she took after opening the front door of a 747, the type she would take right now if she could.

“Beautiful day, isn’t it?” Destine said.

Julie’s sails deflated and a searing flare burned the skin on the back of her neck. That woman, the talker, was talking directly to her. “It was,” Julie quipped and walked away toward the ladies’ room.

In an acceptably clean stall, Julie sat down with her head in her hands to give herself the semblance of privacy and comfort, and then she decided to text Roger. “OMG, this crazy, overly friendly woman is like stepping up to me.”
Roger was in a meeting at the office, but he still texted back immediately with unequivocal empathy, “Oh no! That sucks.”
“WTF do I do?!” she texted back.

Then she heard the bathroom door open and a woman settle into the stall next to hers.

“Excuse me. Would you be so kind as to pass me a bit of toilet paper? My stall seems to be out.”

Julie froze as though someone had just accidentally opened her stall door. She recognized the voice. But before she could choose an apt response, Destine continued. “Guess we don’t pay enough taxes to keep ample toilet paper in here. Or maybe it’s just a sign of the recession. Who knows?”

Destine’s loquaciousness gave Julie time to realize that while she knew it was Destine, Destine probably didn’t know it was her. So Julie wadded up a handful of paper and reached under the stall wall. A hand grabbed it. “Thank you so, so much,” she said. “It’s always a little awkward when that sort of thing happens, but it does remind us that we’re here for each other. Life isn’t a game of solitaire.”

“No problem,” Julie said concurrently flushing the toilet to cover any recognizable quality of her voice. Then she rushed to the sink to wash her hands. As she hit the lever for the soap, Destine’s toilet flushed. An almost-too-small glop of coral-colored soap dropped into her hand. It would have to be enough. Julie quickly tried to lather it between her dry hands. Then she waved them in front of the black eye of the automatic water faucet. It wouldn’t turn on. Julie noticed the sink was dry. She moved over to the other sink on her right.

Destine opened her stall door and walked up to the dry sink. Julie felt heavy in her ballet flats. It was as though she were stuck to the floor, weighted down by the pressure of the moment. Then her water turned on. She rapidly rubbed her frothy hands together in the stream. Julie felt Destine’s energy. But Destine’s automatic faucet did not. Less than a foot away, Destine was struggling to get the faucet on.

“What is going on here?” Destine said to Julie. Julie interpreted it as rhetorical. “No paper, no water. I do say so myself. Guess I’ll just use yours when you’re done.”

“Ok?” Julie said slowly with a tone that meant “I think you’re weird.”

Destine saw this as an invitation. “I do have two daughters. I know that tone. I know that tone very well. There’s no reason to use that tone with me. I’ve only been friendly to you.”

Julie put on the cold, authoritative and alert face she would use if a passenger had had one too many self-servings of liquor, and then she gave Destine a chance to dissolve the tension. “Excuse me?” she said.

“I’m just saying, I’ve been nothing but kind. This city is filled to the brim, to the brim with people. The common thread between them all?

Each and every one of them wants to feel good, wants to feel accepted. What makes someone feel good? Friendliness. What makes someone feel bad? Impatience. Rudeness. That is what I try to teach my girls. That is what Oprah’s success has taught the world. That is how I live,” Destine said.

Julie’s clean hands dripped into the sink. “Look, I don’t want to start with you. I don’t want to be friends with you. I don’t want to be enemies with you. I don’t want to have anything to do with you, and I don’t want you to force yourself on me. Pretend I’m not here, pretend I’m just a piece of the furniture, pretend I don’t exist, alright?”

Destine stood still startled and confused. Her daughters, her regular challengers, never presented her with a quandary like this.

“Are you telling me you want to die?” Destine asked.

“That’s precious,” Julie said.

No matter how angry they got, how much fire they spit at her, they wanted and needed their mommy. This woman is different. She doesn’t need me, Destine thought.

Julie continued, “Because I don’t want to deal with you, you think I don’t want to be alive? Are you really that narcissistic?”

“No, um. That didn’t come out right,” Destine said. “I just can’t imagine, I just wanted to help, that’s all. You seem unhappy and I just wanted to help. But you don’t want to let me help, you don’t want my help, you don’t want to be happy, that’s fine I guess.”

“Now because I don’t want to talk to you, I don’t want to be happy?” After these words hissed from Julie’s mouth, she realized Destine wasn’t capable of seeing things from her perspective. “Look, I don’t care. It doesn’t matter. I don’t care what you think. All I care is that you leave me alone. Go away from me.”

“Well,” Destine said noncommittally.

“Now!” Julie commanded.

“Ok then,” she said, and left the bathroom.

Julie walked back into her original stall, closed the door and sat back down. She lifted her shirt and wrapped her arms around herself beneath the warmth of her breasts. Surprise, frustration, powerlessness, humiliation, anger, dejection and relief simmered through her and nearly spilled out as tears. She checked her phone. Roger had texted back, “I wish I could help you but I can’t. Try telling a bailiff??”

“Why doesn’t everyone just leave me alone? I just want to be alone,” she murmured. But even she didn’t fully believe it.

“Excuse me,” Destine said to an Asian man wearing a starched light blue button-up shirt and holding a grande Starbucks cup in his hand. “Where’d you get that cup of coffee?”

He paused on his way back to his seat still empty from when he left it 9 minutes ago. He knew it had been 9 minutes because he had to sign-out and sign-in at the front of the jury duty waiting room.

“Starbucks,” he said pointing out the obvious. “But there’s also a coffee vending machine over by the bathrooms.” He took a quick step toward his seat, but she caught him.

“Where’s the Starbucks?”

“You have to leave the building. It’s just down the block toward the subway.”

“Oh, ok. I love Starbucks. All of those flavorful syrups? Yum.” The Asian gentleman was already walking away, so Destine finished her thought to a man sitting on the aisle across from her. “Turns coffee into a treat, don’t you think?”

“Well, I like Dunkin’ Donuts,” offered the guy from across the aisle. He cracked his knuckles as though to loosen up for the conversation. “Then I get a bear claw with the coffee. Breakfast and coffee all in one stop.” He wore thick glasses and worn-in Carhartts above unscuffed, untied Timberland boots.

“You have a point there,” Destine said. “I can’t argue about the value of a good donut. You know what I mean? It’s hard to find a bad one.” Her voice reached the ears of at least 150 people. It bounced from seat to another like a bouncy ball from a grocery store toy vending machine.

Destine fancied herself a warm-blooded, friendly person. Each of the few hundred people in the room was from Brooklyn and was sharing this jury duty experience together, and that was enough of a commonality to make all of them her next of kin. This warmth, she believed, was important to living a happy life in a city where you’re surrounded by new people every day. This she had tried to teach her twin daughters. “Look at Oprah,” she would tell them. “The most powerful woman in the world is all about compassion.” On a good day, the girls would roll their eyes. On a bad day, they’d accuse her of wanting to get them kidnapped, raped and killed by all of the crazies in the city. Destine could make friends with strangers, but not with her own two daughters. To people who witnessed these arguments on the train, in stores, on the sidewalk, she’d dismiss her girls’ argument and create a tighter bond between herself and the passersby. “It must just be their age. I was a pain in the butt when I was 12 also. I bet you were too,” she’d say to the nearest warm body.

She shifted in her seat to talk to Donut-man more directly. “Ever been to Peter Pan Bakery in Greenpoint? They have the best donuts. Of course, I’m talking on a scale of good to best. Like I said, no donut is really bad.”

“You speak the truth. No donut is a bad donut. Never been up to Greenpoint, though. I live out east in Canarsie,” he said.

“I live in Flatbush, but I go up to Greenpoint for those donuts. It’s worth the trip—not on the G train though. Nothing’s worth that pain in the butt. I have my boyfriend drive me up there sometimes. So why do you think you’re here?”

“Well, I think it’s just pure luck. My number got called. And now I’m here.”

“Did you go out and register to vote so that you could vote for Obama? That’s what I did. And I think that’s how I got on the county’s radar. This has happened to three other people I know. Register to vote, support Obama, get called to jury duty.”

Donut-man considered being put-off by the question. He was never one to talk politics. But he did like the way she smiled. “Actually I didn’t have a chance to vote. I had to work all day and never made it to the polling place in time. I’ve been postponing jury duty for a couple years now. And they wouldn’t let me postpone anymore. So here I am. Losing money by the minute.”

“You mean your job won’t pay you while you’re here?”

“No they won’t. So this is me paying more taxes. I just hope I don’t get called for a long trial. Then I won’t be able to pay my bills. I’ve got a daughter too to support. And as I’m sure you know, they aren’t cheap. Need the newest things, every month it’s something new.”

Destine wanted to reach out to hold his hand as she said, “Lord, don’t I know it. Little girls are hard to please. No one gives me as hard a time as my two girls.”

But she had yet to meet Julie.

Jennifer, wearing skin-tight jeans, a drooping belt and a baggy American Apparel sweatshirt, marched up to the microphone like a super model, each foot exactly in front of the other, knees exaggeratedly popping up on each step so she resembled a two-legged, upright deer. A few audience members released a short spurt of giggles assuming this was part of a comedy routine. Then she began her story:

“I was a skinny bitch. I could have modeled if I was an inch or two taller—that’s what an agent told me. And I know that sounds awesome ladies, but it really sort of sucks. At least half of the advice in women’s magazines, how to lose weight, how to get toned abs, how to have clear skin, didn’t apply to me. I couldn’t join in casual conversations about weight or diet without getting eyes rolled at me or behind my back. I was an outcast—excluded from most of the topics inherent in female-to-female interaction.”
Jennifer had expected a murmur of sudden enlightenment from the audience, but didn’t get one.

“When I got pregnant I didn’t show until I was 6 months along. I didn’t stop wearing high heels until 7 and a half months. Women would gawk in disbelief at my distended belly balancing above my size-2 legs and 4-inch heels. I felt beautiful and proud. I imagined this is how Heidi Klum feels when she steps out on the red carpet dressed to the nines while being as wide as a house, because she always smiles.

“The first time someone offered me a seat on the subway, I was on my way home from the office on the uptown 2 train. It was insanely full. I had had to let two trains go by before I even could squeeze myself on board. When I did, I noticed an open spot mid-car. I hate it when people don’t move in and just stand there crowding the doors. So I finagled myself to the spot and stood there in front of a row of seated commuters. The man directly in front of me was engrossed in a copy of Esquire. But when the train started, I lost my balance and my bump bumped into the Esquire. ‘Excuse me,’ I said in a whisper hoping those three syllables would be the beginning and end of the uncomfortable exchange. But before I could grab my Blackberry to look busy while underground, the guy said, ‘Would you like to sit down?’

‘No. Thanks I’m fine,’ I said in a chipper tone to show just how fine I really was.

‘Are you sure? It’s no big deal,’ he pressed on.

‘I can stand on my own two feet. I’m not some charity case,’ I spouted.

‘Damn. I was just trying to be nice,’ he said.

An elderly woman next to him leaned over. ‘You did the right thing,’ she told him.

And then I topped off my performance with. ‘Sorry. I should have said, ‘No, thanks. I’m fine.’ Oh wait, I did.’”

Here Jennifer anticipated someone in the crowd would give a big woohoo, but the audience was quiet.

“At that I could tell he was assessing whether to join me in a public fight or to crawl back into the safety of the unruffled mass of patient commuters. He chose patience and picked his magazine back up. I felt like I’d won.

“But from then on out, I was offered a seat every single time I boarded a train. It was like that one interaction opened the floodgates of New Yorker’s gentility. But I didn’t need one or want one. I could hold my own weight—which you know isn’t much.”

No laughter. No peep. Jessica kept going.

“So whenever I waited for a train, I made sure never to sit down. I would stand there with the rest of the ambulatory commuters even if an empty bench was just a few feet away. Then when I boarded, I would stay right in the doorway as far away as possible from the seats. But it never paid off. Every single time, some seemingly generous soul would tap me on the arm to offer up their seat. At first I kept up the tough girl act with comments like, ‘Do I look like I can’t hold myself up? Are you telling me I’m fat?’ But eventually this got boring, and I just started saying no like three or four times in row. It would go like this:

Them: ‘Do you want to sit down?’
Me: ‘No thanks. I’m fine.’
Them: ‘It’s ok. I’m getting off soon.’
Me: ‘No really, it’s ok. I’d prefer to stand.’
Them: ‘Are you sure?’
Me: ‘You’re too kind. But no thank you.’
Them: ‘Ok. Fine.’

“But then one day, I woke up with cankles. You know, fat ankles that appear to be part of the calf. Luckily it was a rainy day so I could cover them up with my Marc Jacobs rain boots. But even my big boots weren’t wide enough for my whale feet. Each rain boot fit tight like foot condoms. My feet hurt like crazy and gave me an unsightly waddle.”

Jennifer had expected a few girls to groan empathetically. But no one did.

Ralph’s butternut-squash head hangs down. The yellow kitchen light reflects off his oily bald crown. He looks at the deep blue stain on the thigh of his jeans. Last spring, the pen he kept in his hip pocket sprung a leak. It was the one he used to fill out invoices for his handyman jobs. “Ralph the Right Man for the Job” was printed on the pen’s side. He had bought 500 of them. He hopes no one else’s “Ralph” pen leaked. He hopes Rose will feel better soon. But Ralph is old enough to know that hoping does no good. He has to accept what he can’t change and change what he knows he can improve. Rose’s outlook he can probably improve.

They were married at age 19 in 1966 at a VFW in South Brooklyn. He knew her so well she was like a puzzle piece he could always shape himself around. He knew how to support her no matter what she said, no matter what was on her mind. They had evolved together over a lifetime.

“And there’s nothing of me anywhere else,” she says fingering a neon yellow square of yarn she’d knitted together and used like a trivet. He looks up at her. She is missing something; she had been for a long time. But now the deficiency had gone on too long. He knew what she needed—a meaningful job.

When he accepted the offer for early retirement last year, he drummed up a handyman business lickity split. He liked to help people and finally could do so without the beast to feed. His longtime albatross: the cable company. The cable company just wanted to make money. Ralph just wanted to make people happy. The pursuits overlapped when he was able to fix people’s cable connections without having to charge them more for the service. This didn’t happen nearly often enough for his liking. Then came the Internet. Cable customers wanted to ask him all about their modems, their connection speed, their WiFi, and to Ralph it was all gibberish. The cable company said training Ralph and the other older gentleman wasn’t a good investment. The cable company was done with Ralph, and Ralph was done with the cable company. As his pension kicked in, his next endeavor was clear. He made himself into the ultimate Mr. Fix-It—a hero in Carhartts. He made people happy by making their sliding doors slide, drains drain, creaky door that woke the visiting grandchildren quiet as a yawn. His work lived on in all of the problems he solved with his calluses. He was improving people’s lives. But Rose? He couldn’t say that Rose found the same satisfaction in work.

Rose cleaned homes—the same homes over and over again. When she’d leave a home smelling of bleach and ammonia, the walls unscuffed, the wood floors shiny, the windows translucent and streak-free, the stubborn spot of petrified burnt onion off the stovetop, she felt accomplished. Task done. Goals met. But then she’d go to that same house a week or two later, and it would be a mess. Her hard work from before non-existent. And it was this Sisyphean battle that kept the money coming in. If families didn’t ruin her work, they wouldn’t need her anymore. Ralph knew it disappointed her.

Ralph knows Rose needs to hear him say something. She needs to hear that he has heard her. He pushes his brain hard to come up with something helpful to say. But he comes up empty. “It’s like how you can’t remember something when you’re trying to remember it,” Ralph says.

“What?” Rose isn’t sure if she should be excited, relieved or frustrated by what he just said. A twinge of hope picks her head off her hand. She looks at him expectantly.

“Oh, shoot. Just thinking out loud, I guess.”

“Oh.” Rose’s eyes go back down.

Walker has several square feet of excess skin that she needs removed, but she can’t afford the surgery. At the Starbucks where we met near her old office—a now shuttered real estate firm in Midtown—she sipped on a grande drip coffee of the day.

“Two years ago at this time, I could barely finish a short 8-ouncer,” she said with a hint of nostalgia and disappointment.

Two and a half years ago, Walker underwent gastric bypass surgery. She had been morbidly obese at 347 pounds and just 5-foot, 3-inches tall. She had trouble breathing and moving quickly. It had gotten so bad she stopped traveling on the subway during rush hour because she needed enough room to sit. “People don’t look at obesity as a disability. So they wouldn’t offer me a seat, even though I was medically disabled,” she said. Walker would go to work at 6 am, leave around 3, and go to bed before prime-time shows were over at 9:30. Her general practitioner suggested the surgery.

“I had already tried every diet. The South Beach Diet, Atkins, The Cookie Diet, I tried it all and didn’t lose an ounce. I tried walking one subway stop further away in the mornings, get myself a little exercise, but it took just too long. I have battled with my weight since puberty, and it really felt like it was out of my control.”

She took out some pictures from her wallet. The edges of the photos were pulpy, the plastic sheaths ripped. It looked as though she’d been carrying them around for a very long time.

“Here I am when I was 9, skinny as a twig.”

In the picture she wore a sunshine yellow T-shirt, a pink tutu and white tights. She was standing on one foot as though ready to do a pirouette. In the lower left hand corner was a close-up, blurry pair of clapping hands.

“And here I am when was 13.” She put the photo on the table.

It looked like a wholly different little girl. In this shot, she was sitting on a piano bench smiling. But her cheeks protruded so far it made her forehead appear too short. Her breasts looked as though they had grown straight into a D cup. A roll of fat spilled out between her T-shirt and her pants.

Surgery was her last resort, but an essential move if she wanted to live a full life, her doctor said. Statistics show it’s an increasingly popular decision. The Imaginary Medical Association of New York reported that ten years ago only 1,300 gastric bypass surgeries were performed in the state. In 2009, this figure was up to 35,000.

When her doctor suggested the surgery, Walker bristled in agreement.

“Riley, slow down!” I grip the seatbelt’s shoulder strap. It locks tight. My mom told me they don’t pull dead bodies out of seatbelts. I hold on. “You don’t have to drive like a crazy person!”

“Do not critique my driving, Harmony. You should be kissing my ass for saving you from the lame-o’s on the bus. I’m doing this for you. Do you want to be late to first period? You should have been ready on time.”

“Oh come on,” I argue back. “I don’t have to act a certain way just cause you drive me to school. I don’t have to be indebted to you forever. It’s not that big of a deal. You have to go to work anyways. School’s on your way.”

“Yeah, well I look like a loser showing up there every morning. I should have something better to do. I graduated. I should be moving on.”

“Then why are you going out with a girl who’s not even an upperclassman yet? Huh? Maybe we should break-up for your image.”

“You always throw that break-up shit at me.”

“Yeah, well, slow down. It’s a red light.” He revs his engine twice before slowing down. School is about a block away. I brush my fingers through my Manic Panic Purple Haze hair and check my face in the visor mirror.

“You look beautiful, baby. Except wait.” The light turns green. But he doesn’t go. He holds up traffic at the stoplight to wipe a barely-there mascara smudge off my lower eyelid. The car behind us honks; he flips it off and squeals his tires as he flies into the school lot.

In the lot, he grabs me by the back of the neck and pulls me in for a passionate goodbye kiss. The parent behind us is dropping off a freshman. I’m watching her through the side mirror as Riley smudges my lipstick with his face. The mother gives her dorky son a peck on the cheek. I wonder if she sees us. Riley lets me go. I grab my half-empty book bag, wipe off the red smudges, and hop out.

“Hey, Harm. Do you have to be here all day?”

“I don’t know. It’s only school. It’s optional right?” I smirk.

“Well, I was gonna make a run into the city for some kind bud, but I have to meet the guy before you’ll be out of class. Can I pick you up sixth period? Roddie and Danny are gonna come with.”

“Alright, meet me at the end of the street so I don’t get busted.”

“Cool baby, see you later.” I slam the door and feel people watching me as I walk inside. I’m special. I’ve got a man.

***

Riley drives the FDR as though he owns it. He wildly plunges around cars; speeding up then slowing down inches from their bumpers. It’s as if he’s got nothing to lose. Luckily most people have the sense to get out of his way pretty quickly. But if they don’t, he’ll stick to them like freakin’ crazy glue until they give in. I roll down the window to get some air on my face. A semi thunders past and almost clips off my nose. Riley grabs me back and says in his most robotic voice, “Please keep your hands and arms inside the vehicle at all times.” I thank him for the original insight.

Danny, the one who usually makes the dumb jokes, laughs heartily in the back. He is always so loud. It’s like he woke up one day and decided that he was the funniest man alive. He probably thinks it’s a pleasure listening to him, like he’s doing us a favor. It’s like he’ll say something that he thinks is funny and wait for the laughs. I never give in. It’s so dumb. But Riley does. He laughs whenever Danny cues him. It reminds me of the line my mom used to say about the neighbor’s twins. “Two peas in a pod,” she said. Right now, Danny’s in the phase of saying the pledge of allegiance to anything that he likes, like a keg of beer. “I pledge allegiance to this keg,” etc. It bores me. I think it bores Roddie too, but he always seems bored. He’s like Danny’s alter-ego. Roddie is silent unless he has something of value to share—quality not quantity. Right now he’s gazing out the window at the East River. He’s so smart.

I rest my head on my arms and close my eyes over the open window. This morning was such a drama. No matter how fast Riley drives, I never seem to make it to class before first-period attendance. Today I got there about three seconds after Ms. Lurie put her pencil down, the one she uses to point at each person who says, “Here.” Mrs. Lurie hates me and so even though I showed up to class, she never marked me present. Then on my way out, after the bell, I tripped on some freshman’s monstrous backpack. Mrs. Lurie, of course, blamed me for not watching where I was going.

Since I moved to New York City in the mid-1970s, I’ve dreamed that all of Manhattan—an island of such amazing history and illustrious man-made beauty—would become as beautiful close up as it looks from afar. To me, the skyline at night looks like the crown jewels of England. The Empire State Building standing up like the apex of the Imperial State Crown. The glistening lights from the lower buildings shine against the dark like the rest of the diamond-encrusted coronal. I’ll briefly digress to tell you a story. I am one of the lucky Americans. I descended directly from the Pilgrims. It’s actually not that unusual for white, Anglo-Saxons. But those of us, who have traced our lineage and are aware of our good fortune, look at the Brits with a sentimental eye. During my tour of duty in World War II, I took a respite on the motherland. But, alas, I wasn’t able to see the jewels—they had been moved to Windsor Palace for safekeeping. Years later with my wife, 12-year-old daughter and 14-year-old son, I journeyed back to the great United Kingdom and finally admired the crown jewels’ beauty. I’ll never forget, my daughter said, “Daddy, can you get me one of those for Thanksgiving?” (We trade presents on Thanksgiving instead of Christmas because that’s a bigger holiday for us—it’s our heritage after all.) I responded, “I wish I could my little princess.” Today she teaches English to immigrants (the legal kind) in the Bronx. She’s still my princess. Now you understand the gravity of what I mean when I tell you how beautiful I find the New York City skyline. It is the crown jewel of these United States of America.

But up close, the city looks like a dump. It has long looked like a dump. Through the promises of each mayor, I have kept hoping the dirt would wash off all the building windows, the drug dealers would leave the parks, the strip clubs would leave Times Square, the dark splotches of decade-old gum would be pried from the sidewalks, the graffiti would be washed away, the pushy men who forcefully clean car windshields at a stoplights and then demand payment would be jailed, the beggars would be fed (or moved south to a warmer, more appropriate location like Florida), the homeless people would be housed (or moved to Florida with the beggars), and (I add this in honor of recent news of a great descent) every working girl would be the expensive, discrete kind like that of Eliott Spitzer, not the everyday gold-digging hookers with whom Tiger Woods associated. While you and your brethren, particularly Mr. Giuliani, did remove the drug dealers from the parks, the “working girls” from Times Square, and the windshield washers from the stoplights, there is still a lot to be done. The sidewalks must be cleaned. The subways are filthy. Graffiti is still a prominent element of the landscape. Homeless people and beggars still abound. I dream of a clean and well-to-do Manhattan—doormen in the foyer of every residential building. How do I expect these changes to be financed? Sales tax. Of course that’s not feasible now. In spite of the influx of Blue-Chip retailers (for which I most heartily commend you for attracting to this city), there are still too many of the lower middle class—and even lower—living on our island who don’t spend enough to supply the city with sufficient levels of tax. But you, my good sir, are on the right track.

That Union Square once the protest grounds of laborers—what an ugly association—now has a Best Buy as well as a Barnes & Noble, Whole Foods, DSW, Forever 21, Babies “R” Us, Staples and Petco, I couldn’t thank you more. I can now buy all that I can carry. Ah-this brings me to an important suggestion. I’m no city planner or architect. But what if you made the center of the square, the part that’s still a park, into a parking lot! Then shoppers could buy even more than they could carry! As far as I’m concerned that would be a great boost to my quality of living, and imagine the sales tax you’d bring in. Quite a windfall!

I tilt my head back and relax as the cab takes me and my boyfriend down Houston Street to a dinner party at the home of old friends. I look up at the sheet metal sky. Night is just getting started. I’m so lucky, I muse. Some kid in Tokyo with East Village dreams yearns to live just once in my neighborhood. At ground level, the squiggles of graffiti on the sides of muted grey and tan buildings look like small, dark red, green and black explosions and feel beautiful. This is the rapid place and time I call home.

But as much as I love New York, New York refuses to be loved. Whenever I’m all warm, fuzzy and ready to give the city a carefree, trusting bear hug, it repels me with some crazy, only-in-New-York type of crap to deal with—like our cab, suddenly speeding up and swerving from lane to lane as though we’re being chased. And I think we are.

Jesus. I wake from my Southern back-porch moment only to see a thick, rugby-faced guy in a dark blue Subaru shaking his fist at our cab driver. Blonde hair is smeared down his forehead. He spits a New Jersey blessing out his window. Our driver speeds up. The blonde guy swerves to get behind us. He’s really close. We turn onto Allen Street. The Subaru turns following us. Our driver slams on the breaks. The Subaru slams to a stop. The maniac barely misses rear-ending us.

Now we’re stopped bumper to bumper like a blood clot in the middle of Allen Street. Other drivers are pulling around us continuing on their way. I try to catch their attention with my eyes. “Help us,” I want the other drivers to hear. “Help. We have no idea what is going on.” My boyfriend, God bless him with his honorable French genes, is genetically obligated to accept any duel. He is quietly but not calmly watching the situation play out. I feel him taking short, quick breaths.

Then our driver gets out. He leaves the door hanging open like an awkwardly unfinished thought. He’s wearing wide white pants, shirt, a long, beige vest and white skull-cap. All of it accentuates his long black beard. We watch him calmly walk up to the Subaru’s driver-side window. The blonde maniac is rabidly cursing. Our driver pauses and then plainly, simply shakes his fist. Then he turns and walks back to his cab the same way most people carry files around an office, like it’s a casual, common chore. Cars, new to the scene, honk as they drive by.

The blonde maniac gets out of his car. Our driver closes himself and us in the cab. The blonde moves stiffly, deliberately, like a hulk, and spits a loogie on the yellow trunk. The taillights glow red against his enraged face.

And then I do it. I flip him off. Me, the California girl brought up on anti-war protests and hugs. I flip off the burly, angry hulk with only a thin sheet of glass between us.

I catch eyes with the driver through the rearview mirror. He saw me do it. I sink down in my seat. I’m a little bit embarrassed, a little bit shocked at myself and more than a little bit scared of what is going to happen next. I look up at my boyfriend for camaraderie and compassion. He protectively grabs my hand.

Our driver’s fight had just turned into mine. Having lived here for some time, often in the far stretches of Brooklyn and Queens that you need a cab to reach late at night, I have a special place in my heart for cab drivers. I’ve gotten to know them, have taken them out to dinner, learned about their homes in Ghana, Turkey, Pakistan, San Francisco as they took me down the BQE. I spoke my broken French when they spoke French; I practiced the few bits of Turkish I knew. I often tipped well as my own good-luck charm and to help ensure their sanity. I imagined myself the self-appointed patron saint of cab drivers in a city that makes them go postal.

The driver doesn’t wait for the hulk’s reaction. He steps on the gas. But within a few measly feet a red light stops us. And without fail, the Subaru pulls up to our side. I notice for the first time there’s a woman in the back seat. The hulk is screaming at us again.

Our driver ignores him. But I watch him closely, incredulously and do think I notice him lightly flinching, doing the behind the scenes work that goes into ignoring someone.

Enough! This is my fight.

The remnants of the Californian in me rise up to call forth spiritual unity and neutralize potential violence. And with the unhinged vigor of a New Yorker, I stick my head out the window and yell, “Peace! Peace! Yoga! You need to do yoga! Breathe!”

Greg, just arriving home late from work, lit up. Something was wrong. Fireworks of adrenaline and testosterone exploded underneath his skin. He grimaced. His toes curled in his shoes. His fingers shook as they struggled to fit the key in the front door just right so it would turn—“Fucking thing, turn!” he yelled. And the door opened up. His feet were numb. He barreled up to the third floor two steps at a time. His quads burned. His lips pursed.

The climb gave him just enough time to think. When he got to the door he would rush in to the apartment. He would be prepared for anything. Prepared for, prepared for, prepared for what? He didn’t know what. Why would his stuff be on the curb? Was she breaking up with him? But some of the stuff wasn’t just his. It was theirs. Was she moving? Is a robber in there? But wouldn’t a robber immediately put the stuff in a car or in a bag or away somewhere?

Once on the landing in front of the door, he turned the knob and threw himself in the room with such force it was as though he had just broken the door down with his shoulder. He stood in the main room and refueled with a deep inhale as he surveyed the situation—the room, which accounted for most of the apartment, seemed half empty.

The couch, coffee table and TV, Wii, Xbox 360, and Blu-Ray player were still there. The TV was on. They hadn’t been robbed. The tchotchkes and New Yorker magazines from the coffee table were gone. About half of the books on the bookshelf were missing. But this simply made it look like an orderly bookshelf. The closet, tall, narrow and the only one in the apartment, in which they kept their work clothes, coats, personal finance files and sheets, was open. Like the bookshelf, it was orderly, clean and half-empty. The throw over the couch was gone. All of their DVDs were gone. Greg noticed Marshmallow, their Shih-Tzu, yelping at his feet just like normal. “Julie?”

In between barks he heard their shower curtain pull open. He put his keys down on the end table, where their sunglasses used to be, and took the three steps to the bathroom.

“Hon?” The door was partly open. His adrenaline ebbed and flowed unsure of what he might find. He peaked around it slowly.

And then he saw her. Julie, his wife to-be, was sitting on the edge of the tub holding a half-used bottle of 2-in-1 shampoo plus conditioner. Hair was falling out of her ponytail and around her face. The soft skin around her eyes was swollen. She roughly wiped her nose on a bath towel.

“Is it worth keeping this? I used to bring this with me to the gym. But I don’t go there so much anymore now that it’s nice outside. So I don’t really use it. But I don’t want to waste it. I think I’m emotionally attached to it. I don’t know what to do.” And then she erupted into tears ready to share the burden she had been facing all by herself. “Thank god you’re here.”

She was safe. Marshmallow was unconcerned. A shampoo bottle?

“Woah. Woah, woah, woah, woah. What the fuck is going on here?” The scene outside on the curb seemed so extreme, so dire, so acute. A shampoo bottle?

“Greg, I’m nipping it in the bud.” she said cryptically.

Unsure what she meant or how she would interpret anything he said, Greg decided to get more data. “Nipping what in the bud?”

“I’m nipping it in the bud, Greg. Nipping it in the bud.” She answered.