The Colossus of New York Read Free Page A

after row they wait to shuffle into the aisle. On her asleep foot she stumbles. He wants to say thanks to the driver but the driver fills out the clipboard and won’t look up. In front of the luggage bin they take what is theirs, move bags from hand to hand to discover what is best for the next leg of the trek. Sag on one side. Some take deep breaths. The door opens easily, they are not the first through, and they enter the Port Authority.

MORNING

    IN THE MORNING the streets are owned by bread and garbage trucks. Sanitation engineers swashbuckle to sidewalks after scraps, obscure treasure, hoist up chewed-up bread and crusts the bread trucks left days before. Deliver and pick up. Twelve-ton gluttons chew the curb and burp up to windows in mechanical gusts. Where’s a rooster when you need one. Instead hydraulics crow. Tabloid haystacks squat. Emptied trash cans skid to anchor corners. Shopkeepers retract metal grates that repel burglars from merchandise unworthy of theft. All this metal grinding, this is the machine of morning reaching out through cogs and gears to claim and wake us. Check the clock to see how much more sleep. Still time. Down there they deliver and pick up. We each have routes we keep to keep this place going.
    GODS, HERE’S A TIP. To gain converts, recruit atheists, change your name to Snooze Button. A readily accessible divinity, a reach away, a prayer quick to fingertips if not lips. Like the truest gods it gives them what they already had and wins them through alarm. Exquisite torture of the Snooze Button. Wring a pillow to squeeze out minutes, the stuffing it contains. These life rafts from linen closets. Five more minutes might return you to that dream, the one where you were away and happy. It was good and real and cut off before you got to the best part. Almost there and then beep beep beep. Like the best gods it knows how to parcel out paradise.
    UP AND AT ’EM . Pad around and revive. Turn on appliances, lights and coffee machines, radios and television sets. Listen to newscasters: while you were safe in here the world may have lost its way. Let these smoothing voices pat down until you are made. Check the window to discover yourself in a morgue, a white sheet covering your unfortunate acquaintance. So it snowed last night. Take your eyes off this city and it will play tricks. While you are sleeping it pranks to build your character. Where’s that trusty sweater. It will keep you warm. Maybe no one will notice it’s full of holes.
    FACE THE DAY well armed with helpful info from morning shows. A tiny incident might shape up into an interesting scandal, cross your fingers. Birthdays of people possessing esoteric secrets vis-à-vis longevity. We could all use a handy computer graphic and earnest newscaster and ominous tagline for this new phase of our lives, yet no technicians scramble to produce it. Check the weather: there’s a little cartoon sun over a region you don’t inhabit. This is the most important meal of the day: accepting into your gut what lies outside your doorstep. Out of coffee. Out of milk. Out of luck. Late again. Call in sick, or don’t. One glimpse into the bathroom mirror proves last night’s self-improvement plan to be this morning’s abandoned scheme. So nice to wake to your spouse’s hip but then remember last night’s disagreement and decide you are still angry. Forgetting that when you skip your shower you are paranoid all day.
    WEAR YOUR TOTEM item and everything will be okay. If only you’d done laundry, you wouldn’t be in this position. Regret, scavenge, assemble. The blessing of a secret stash of matching socks. The name of his cologne is Hamper, Recommended by Four Out of Five Whiffs. She is betrayed. Not once but repeatedly. This morning everything conspires against. Let down by a broken alarm clock, rebuked by work untouched last night, and now this snow. A well-planned assault against equilibrium that will end at midnight, when the spell is broken.