counting backwards

The night after the tree went up, an empty X1 pulled up to my stop. I got on and took the first seat opposite the driver.

He said, “I’m an hour late.”

We crawled south down Broadway. It was the most miserable commute I’ve experienced so far. As people got on the bus, he said, “I’m an hour late.” For the most part, everyone just chuckled.

When cars cut him off, he leaned on his horn. Amid the clusterfuck near NYU, he opened his window to shout at a driver in the lane next to him.

He said, “Are you trying to get over? Are you gonna get over? Are you getting over? I’m an hour late.”

For the most part, no one minded. I heard no gripes from other passengers about the traffic or the wait. No one seemed to care, or maybe they’d been so conditioned to this sort of thing that they no longer noticed. We’d finally made it to the Financial District still plenty of stops away from the tunnel. A man got on the bus, now at capacity. Before he swiped his Metrocard, he looked at the bus driver and said, plainly, “I’ve been waiting over an hour.”

“I don’t know what to tell you,” the bus driver answered. “I’m right on time.”

Or, Once you’ve promised to kill someone, you’ve gone and painted yourself into a corner

I had this dream the other night that I was visiting relatives in California—none of whom I’d met before. They were all very excited to meet me, because I’m from New York City (well Staten Island, but I didn’t want to break their hearts). One of my imaginary dream relatives was not so happy. He wore a Philadelphia Eagles jersey and a Yankees hat. He glared at me with a smug expression. I went up to him and said that I hated him and that I was going to crash the bus we were taking just so he would die.

Afterward, I wondered if everyone would lose respect for me if I didn’t crash the bus and kill everyone like I had promised.

That day at work, my coworker asked me if I wanted lunch. It had been a long but very fulfilling week at the job for me. I enjoy being busy. I said sure. She suggested cheese steaks. I never turn down cheese steaks.

As it turned out, the place we ordered from was the official cheese steaks of the New York Yankees. See, cheese steaks, Philadelphia…Yankees hat…

The cheese steak was delicious but it gave me rampant indigestion. Since that dream turned out to be so prophetic, I decided to skip the express bus home and take the ferry. It was a beautiful evening, unseasonably warm. I drank a Heineken Light and stood outside and watched the city shrink away. For the first time in a while, I felt like the master of my own fate.