I’m Amanda. I’ve got wide eyes, a smart mouth, and a MetroCard. And I’m not afraid to use them.
When I walked into my building tonight, I spied today’s still rubberbanded New York Times lying on the lobby ledge. I was stealthily walking toward it when I noticed a shadowy figure standing in the stairwell. I shrank back into my doorway, quickly working my keys into the lock.
*My main studio apartment light is out again. The ceilings are higher than Amy Winehouse on her honeymoon. I looked for a lamp at Bed Bath and Beyond and I guess they were all hidden in the beyond.
This blustery blasé morning I found myself over the snow. Walking over it, yes. But also over it - out of love and even like. It started with the icy trail I trekked down, perilously sliding at times. I concentrated on taking short, slow steps and imagined the dark green my skirt would become if it got soaked in a slippery spill.
It was two whiskers past 5 a.m. and I was walking to the subway. Oh, the things women will do to keep their thighs from jiggling! I’ve ridden the subway at weird hours for the single journey to JFK Airport and for a semester of weekend classes towards a graduate degree I never earned. But I hadn’t braved the Central Park North lines in the wee hours to take an exercise class. The media, including Jodie Foster’s latest film, would have you believe that the city’s backyard transforms into its largest crack den overnight.
Provided you get out of your apartment, New York City never feels lonely. Wherever your destination, people will be there when you arrive and hot on your heels as you leave. The only time I’m ever on the subway alone, which happens about twice a week, is when I’m taking the C back to my apartment from where I tutor in Washington Heights. Service on that subway line terminates where I begin my journey home, so unless it’s been a particularly busy day for hospital visitors and employees (the stop is where all of Columbia’s medical facilities lie), there are few riders.
I’ve had a few crappy jobs since I became a legal worker. If you’ve read this blog in any depth, you probably know about latter woes. My nascent employment unfolded behind the counter of a fast food restaurant. The summer after freshman year of college, I moved back home thinking I’d advanced on the fast food chain - I got a job manning the hostess station of a popular diner chain. Both jobs dripped and congealed, but mostly just sucked.
There’s a bitter body quickening within me, and its heartbeat is my own. Today is the day after Thanksgiving, and I feel very lonely. The holidays do this to me. I think it’s because I watch the city further stratify in a gawdy farce of revelry. So many people seem to think that the congestion equals love - or the attempt to show love - and excitement. I can’t stop thinking about how much colder it is, and how many people can’t find a warm place to spend the night. And the masses are worried about getting digital cameras on sale? It’s so very wrong. Bah, humbug!
As I left the apartment this morning for work, I looked outside and exclaimed to no one in particular, “It’s snowing!” I suppose it was technically sleeting, as the precipitation consisted of puffed (r)ice that melted the instant it hit the ground.
The buzzer squeals, and the one person I’d expect to visit is already visiting. “Someone pushed the wrong number,” I tell Cade. We continue doing whatever we were doing.
If you scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours. And if I can’t scratch your back, I’ll scratch someone else’s. If no one’s scratching my back, it’s even more important to scratch someone else’s, because I get what I give.
