It's Only Temporary: The Good News and the Bad News of Being Alive Read Free Page B

was already late, as Nancy was still working in the play and had finished her 8 P.M. performance. We then rode the subway to South Ferry, the closest station to the Staten Island Ferry dock. It was a cold autumn night, a Friday, already close to midnight. Instead of finding late-night revelers or spent partiers making their way home, the subway below Fourteenth Street held what seemed like a crowd of commuters. Business suits and corporate skirts dominated. Briefcases and portfolios boarded at stop after stop. But there was something slightly off-kilter about those nine-to-five folks. When we reached the last stop there was a rush-hour like scramble as everyone hurried off the train toward the boat terminal. Looking up at the schedule board, Nancy and I realized we were within seconds of missing one of the last late-night ferries. We hurried through turnstiles, rushed up an enormous gangplank, and boarded the back of the boat.
    The ferry was crowded, but we didn’t discover that right away. We hovered on the back deck, watching the lights of Manhattan recede. It wasn’t even a deck, really – more a cold, slippery, metal platform at the base of a circular stairway leading to the chained-off upper regions of the boat. It was just Nancy and myself and a few other brave stragglers outdoors that night. We leaned against wooden railings and gazed at the eruption of man-made structures shrinking behind us. For a few frigid minutes, with the smell of diesel fuel and the spray of polluted harbor water tickling our senses, Nancy and I experienced the romantic splendor of the Staten Island Ferry. Finally, chased indoors by the chill, we walked a narrow, warped, red-floored corridor into the main hold of the ship.
     
    The sudden warmth was startling. It wouldn’t have been unpleasant without the dampness that accompanied it. It was like entering a locker room after the team’s shower. The large hold’s center was filled with rows of chairs and benches, and more benches lined the perimeter of the room. All the seats were filled with people. These were the same people we’d ridden with on the subway, only joined by a lot more like them. Men and women in Burberry scarves and trench coats. People accompanied by attaché cases.
    The uniforms we don unconsciously come suddenly into harsh relief when surrounded by those who wear a different one from us. Walking in midtown Manhattan, I rarely pay attention to what others are wearing, and I rarely feel anyone taking notice of me. But there on the ferry it was clear that Nancy and I were interlopers, dressed differently, and most likely living differently, than those around us. And in one of those shifts of perception that makes you wonder how you’d missed what you’re now seeing, I realized Nancy and I were separated from our fellow passengers in one other respect: we were sober.
    There must have been three hundred people inside the boat, all of them something less cheerful than drunk. They were two or three hours
past
being drunk. Meaning they were still drunk, but they were now away from their friends, they were now queasy, and they were now at sea.
    Young women were passed out, their mouths gaping, splayed legs stretching drooping pantyhose to their limits. They were wearing sneakers and had dress shoes poking out of their neglected backpacks. The skirts of several were skewed, zippers facing forward or sideways, as if they’d been groped over the course of the evening and had fled quickly, with no time to straighten up. Several of the men, foggy-eyed if awake at all, were dwarfed by mounds of plastic-wrapped dry-cleaning they’d picked up in preparation for the next work week, the crispness of the fresh clothes accentuating the disarray of everything around them. Staggering men slipped on spilled beer as they made their way back from the concession stand. Documents fell onto the wet floor from the laps of unconscious executives. The smell of hot dogs mixed with stale beer and bad