But I meant only to diffuse the situation. I would apologize to her on the way to 51st Street.
What I’d forgotten was that the black boys had dates in the next car up, so naturally they weren’t going to get off the train, not without their girlfriends. And I also didn’t account for another possibility.
YVETTE BENITEZ-BIRCH announces that the train is going express (early August 2000):
You cannot make it too clear for these people. I said, “Fortysecond Street, Grand Central Station. Transfer to the 4, 5, and 7 trains and the shuttle to Times Square. Ladies and gentlemen, listen up. Listen up, people. This train is making express stops only to 125th Street. Express stops only. This train will not be stopping at 51st Street, 68th Street, 77th Street, 96th Street, 103rd Street, 110th Street, or 116th Street. If you want to stop at 51st Street, 68th Street, 77th Street, 96th Street, 103rd Street, 110th Street, or 116th Street, get off this train and get on the local immediately behind.”
You cannot make it too clear for these people.
When we had left 42nd, I went back into the car to straighten things out. The condescending gentleman in the hat was still there, and the two little boys who had called him a liar were still there, but the woman in black was gone. She’d exited the train at 42nd to catch the local. God’s truth be told, I was relieved that the woman was gone. I do not need all this insanity. I got enough grief.
I said, “I am only surprised that you all didn’t get off the train.” I told the boys to leave the TA’s property alone, and I gave the condescending man in the hat a look to say, Mister, you are not forgiven, but you are dismissed. And then I went back in to announce 59th.
JAMES CLEVELAND tells the stupid ending to the story (early August 2000):
It’s a stupid ending to the story, I’m warning you.
For example, if you make a show about camel caravans in the Sahara for thirteen, you better show me two caravans crashing into each other in the desert and fighting. If they don’t want to fight, it’s your job to make them fight. The point being is, don’t tell stories if they only have a stupid ending, and I’m warning you that this story has a stupid ending.
Everyone left the car but me and Chief and the white guy. And the white guy had a look on his face like this all was just about what he had been expecting.
So I said, “Hey, mister.”
And Chief said, “Son, shut up!”
But if the guy in the tie wanted to get us in trouble, he would have done it already. I said, “Hey, mister, they not trumpets.”
And the guy said, “I know.”
So I said, “Then why you said they was?”
And he said, “I was trying to be nice. Stay out of trouble with those pens.” And he wanted to know where we got the cases from and if we did play the trumpet.
So I said, “We in band camp.”
And he said, “I thought maybe so.” And then he said, “I’m a musician too, and we musicians need to stand up for each other. But the trumpet is a noble instrument that deserves your respect. Don’t you neglect it.”
Making me feel guilty, like I was supposed to be practicing trumpet all day. I told you it was a stupid ending. The interesting part was later, after me and Chief ditched Brittany and Juney and Shawna.
MAYNARD GOGARTY provides an epilogue to the story of what happened on the uptown No. 6 train (early August 2000):
I have no epilogue to the story of what happened on the uptown No. 6 train. So may I untangle myself from the res that I am in media of here and tell you about how I sold the rights to my fi lm, or do you demand an epilogue?
Fine, then—an epilogue:
Prevailing wisdom—that oxymoron—prevailing wisdom has it that there is something exceptional about New York, some ineffable spirit to Manhattan Island, an esprit de pays above and beyond that esprit de corps that supposedly typifies New Yorkers. The esprit de pays is the notion that Manhattan cannot be improved upon. It has something to do with how the city manifested itself in 1948 or 1957 or 1994. When, six weeks after moving into student housing at NYU, some aspiring bachelor of arts condemns as “gentrification” a proposal that a reviled East Village pervert parlor that sold only beers and massages be replaced with a bright Duane Reade that sells floss and fl oor polish and flowers? That’s the esprit de pays. When salaried Democrats braggadociously complain about the twenty-six thousand dollars they spend so that their child will not have to participate in the public schools? That’s the esprit de pays. When levelheaded retirees send lachrymose letters to the Times bewailing the fact that the MTA is retiring the horror-show redbird subway cars in favor of sleek, airy trains designed in Osaka? That’s the esprit de pays. I reject this lunacy. Because if you subscribe to the esprit de pays, then of necessity you also subscribe to the belief that the only way to be happy is to leave New York.
One form that the esprit de pays takes is the insistence—by the young and the lusty—that missed opportunities are romantic, that it is romantic that in New York no one meets anyone twice. Bosh! Esprit de pays! It is not romantic that no one meets anyone twice in New York—it is appalling! Because it means that if you believe in being reserved, you must always be alone.
So there is your epilogue, you—optimists. There is the epilogue to the story of the woman with the beauty spots whom I met—once—on a No. 6 train, uptown. Where was I?
I believe I was about to tell you about my visit with David Fowler, my lawyer, my pro bono lawyer, who will be advising me on the contract to sell the rights to my movie.
There has always been an air of default about my friendship with David. We are friends because—after knowing each other for three decades, what else can we be? Our fathers collaborated on this and that, and our mothers were always of a mind, when we were children, as to the merits of a particular teacher or the imbecility of a certain principal. In other words, I was always sent to the Fowlers’ to play—board games.
It was revolting and infuriating. David and his younger sister chewed on all the game pieces. We would play Monopoly, and when I finally controlled an entire run of properties and could begin the development of Pacific Avenue with those little green Monopoly houses that represent the first wave of urban renewal, the eaves of my newly erected units would not be properly aligned because David’s sister had gnawed on the roof lines. We would play Risk, and when David amassed an army of little plastic cubes to pour across the Bering Strait from his stronghold in Alaska, it was an army riddled with teething marks. The things children are expected to endure! Obviously, David always won. He knew all the rules to every game—he loved the rules—and if you ever threatened his victory, he would surprise you with some new rule that prevented you from doing what you wanted to do.
By a certain age—eleven, twelve—I anyway preferred my own company, and the piano, to anything else.
And in high school David became an enthusiast of role-playing games—of games that required you to fi ll out paperwork. The purpose of the paperwork was that, once complete, you were permitted to pretend that you were an elf in an iron bikini or a dwarf with a “plus-two ax.” David immersed himself in this, and when we were fifteen and going to Chatham, he tried to recruit me into his—coven, a coven which, it seemed, consisted of just him. He would sit in his room alone all summer, memorizing the rules but never actually playing the game. He even would draft his own proposed rules—how to battle ghosts, how to build a golem—and he would submit them to the publishers of these rulebooks, hoping that his bill would become a law and soon every elf in America would have to follow the Fowler Amendment when calculating the rate at which rust accumulated on her iron bikini. This—is my lawyer.
DAVID FOWLER does not tell a sockdolager about Gogarty (early August 2000):