Is there Coffee? Broadway at East 22nd Street on a Sunday Morning. Going for coffee. Sunlight on the Empire State Building and a few other large skyscrapers while most of the street and smaller buildings are in shadow. Cars go by, people walk by and things are much quieter than during the week. There is a strange sound, a barking, incessant, repetitive, with the cadence of language, stopping and starting. Cross Broadway and see a man sitting in the doorway of a closed shop. Bald pate, strands of silver hair, ruddy cheeks, dirty tan pants, plastic bags and other bags he leans on, and barks. Everyone walking past notices, hears, but few if any look. The New York Blind Eye. Or Deaf Ear. I get two cups of coffee and a brioche. The short clerk girl is cute and surprisingly friendly, as is everyone in this apple. I exit the shop and the man is barking still. I stop in front of him balancing one coffee cup on the other and hold out the bag containing the brioche. He stops barking, looks at me, green eyes beneath dark eyebrows and he looks healthy and strong as a bull. He reaches an arm out and takes the bag and puts it on the ground next to an empty coffee cup and his other scattered goods and resumes barking, speaking, shouting, barking at whatever or whoever is there next to him or somewhere in the regions of his deranged brain. I walk away and take the lift up seven floors and open the door. She calls out from the bed, “Is there coffee?” and I says, “Coffee? Why, yes, there is coffee….”
Posted on: Wed, 31 Dec 2014 16:07:26 +0000
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