They say New York City is “waking up.” 

*

I’m eating ramen outside. I watch as a woman tries to leave the restaurant without paying. The waiter rushes after her and she gets belligerent. I will fuck you up! My family will fuck you up!  When the waiter tries to call the police, she smacks the phone out of his hand, picks up a little glass candle from one of the tables and chucks it at the ground. The glass shatters and she bolts. 

*

Waking up suggests rest; dormancy. 

*

I’m on my way to catch a train. Sometimes I notice people on the subway (I remember this). Today I notice an older woman talking with another passenger about backpacks. Though the topic is mundane, the older woman seems apprehensive for some reason. When I exit to transfer to the express, I overhear the woman asking the other passenger for directions.

At the next express stop, someone enters the car shouting: Will this train go to Penn Station? It’s the woman again. Normally someone would just nod, but masks make it hard to communicate affirmations nonverbally. I’m nervous watching her hesitate, but she finally understands and shuffles to a seat. 

At Herald Square—my stop and hers—she cranes her neck and squints at the window. I exit the car. Will anyone tell her? She is hesitating. I am nervous. I get too involved in these kinds of things. I linger on the platform. The woman stands up. The doors will close soon. I take a step forward—and the woman thrusts out her hand. Stand clear of the closing doors. I kick my foot between the doors, which always seems safer to me than using my hands (I remember this). She scrambles onto the platform and looks at me appreciatively. 

Are you going to Penn Station? I say, even though I already know.

Yes, she says.

I am too, I say.

I’ll follow you, she says. 

She tells me she is going to Jersey to visit a friend she hasn’t seen in a year and a half. I am doing the same thing, but going further away. 

I’m so glad you stopped, she says. She’s out of breath, but is trying to hide it. I take the stairs one at a time. She tells me she spent most of the quarantine abroad. 

Sort of a sad story, though. When I came back, I had to identify the body of my friend’s sister. Her friend couldn’t travel to the morgue. 

So I see the body, she says. And the man tells me, “Oh, there was also a cat. We took it to the SPCA.” And I said, “Don’t they kill them?” He said, “It will be alive for 10 days.” So I went right down there and adopted him. He’s still at my house now. 

I’m walking too fast for her. She says I can go ahead. But I know I’m early, so I try to slow down. We talk about the bonds between humans and cats until we reach 32nd and Seventh. 

You’re straight ahead, I say. Down the stairs. 

We’re here? she says. 

I have to go around the corner, I say.

Well… She lifts both hands in a shrug, then clasps them together, a gesture of resignation or gratitude. It was so nice to meet you. 

You too, I say. Have a great trip.

We do not exchange names. I look over my shoulder once, just to make sure she understood.

*

The thing is, I can’t wake up. Because I haven’t been asleep. I was awake, awake for every day of this. Maybe that’s why I have a tight ball of something, lodged in my chest, that is not yet unwound. 

At what point am I kidding myself?, I think, as I rattle along in this ancient metal box, on this ancient metal bridge, in this ancient metal and concrete city.

The bridge is my new paranoia, which is a shame, since it used to be my favorite part of riding to Manhattan. I have terrible visions. There will be a subtle cracking noise that few people will hear (most of them are wearing headphones). But I will hear it. And then the bigger sound, the impossible-to-ignore sound, followed by one more final catastrophic sound, the sound of destruction. The bridge gives up and there we are—hanging over the river—until eventually we fall. 

First I will abandon everything I’m carrying. I will not sit by and wait to be rescued. For this reason it’s better if I am alone when my paranoia comes true. It might be easier to save one self than two. 

Could I escape through the small cracked window?, I think, as I try to control my breathing. No, no I could never fit. And perhaps it would be better to leave the window closed, so that the water, bursting in from any broken seam, is held off for a few more precious minutes. Is one of these larger windows an emergency exit? I glance around. I can’t tell.

Or maybe it is better to sit and wait. Will trying to save myself only hasten the end? I can’t stop imagining the water. The train car slowly sinking into the river (how can this machine be quickly extracted, especially after it’s been weighed down by flooding?), people screaming, digging their fingers into the space between the doors; desperate attempts to force them open—

I try to feel my toes inside my shoes, feel my palm against the silver pole. 

I think (not for the first time) that we should be allowed to carry cyanide pills (is cyanide a painless death?). Something that would allow us a little peace if we find ourselves trapped in the next unthinkable disaster. Suicide has not always been a sin. In some histories it has been quite honorable. A method for release seems like the smallest consolation for what we know will end up being called “negligence,” “leniency,” “a loophole,” or “incompetence”—repaid in the form of millions of something they didn’t really need anyway. (Though I do consider how much peace that daily baggage, that accessible exit, would actually bring.)

I stare down at the river until we pass over it. I feel better when we are suspended above ground again. For some reason I think we might have a better chance to live if we crash onto buildings, cars, sidewalks, streets.

No luck for the people on the ground, of course.

October 2nd was the return—a reunion I’d imagined since the day I left. This cafe. Let me show you:

56th Street and 7th Avenue. Early: eight-fifteen. Gray, maybe. Or the sun lighting up the bottom of the clouds, which fill the sky in an almost geometric pattern. Or rain. Carnegie Hall and the entrance to the park. Next to one hotel and across the street from another. (I only know the name of the hotel across the street. I used to doodle the stylized “W” in my notebook, looking through the window.) It’s such a tourist trap. But really, that was part of why I loved it. Sitting there for hours you might hear several different languages, observe families and tour groups, a flow of people, a general bustle. Having breakfast. Planning their day in the city. Sometimes I described them in my notebook, sitting at the same small table in the back near the bathroom. I ordered a jasmine tea and drank it for two hours. Things on my mind, or sometimes nothing. Energized or sometimes blank. 

Between February 2018 and February 2020, I could be found here most Saturdays. And then, of course… 

October 2nd was the return. My usual table in the back was gone. The bathroom was closed. There were noticeably fewer guests. I didn’t recognize the employees. Did they want to discourage people from staying too long? I got my tea and opened my notebook. Awkward, visible, obvious. I copied down passages from a book. I bought a second tea later, feeling guilty. Still wrote in my notebook: I am so happy. 

*

On October 9th, I thought I’d walked too far—how did I miss it?—but no. The sign was gone. Dark inside; traces of dismantlement in the shadows. 

Fragments of potential evidence appeared in my memory, but really I’d had no indication that this would happen. How could I have returned on the last Saturday? 

Somehow shaken, I wandered west. Big gusts of cool fall air. I guess anything is possible. Because I must admit to myself that on October 2nd, I’d been looking out of the corner of my eye for something else. 

I guess anything is possible. This is, at least, the frame of mind I’ll use while searching for a new place to belong—while letting go of things I loved—while moving on. 

We leave the restaurant, greeting the first cold night of the season. I pull my fall jacket closer and brace myself against the wind—one part biting but two parts exhilarating. Rounding the corner, we see an ambulance and several police cars, lights flashing, near the entrance of the northbound station.

“Hope it’s aboveground,” I say baldly of this unknown emergency. I don’t want to end the night with train delays.

We ride southbound. A stop or two later I overhear the mechanical voice at the platform reciting something about northbound service changes. I search for MTA alerts on my phone, and there it is: someone was struck by a train at the station we passed. 

Recently, I read a clickbait article (forgive me) about how to survive falling onto the tracks. If you lie down correctly, the article told me, there should be just enough space for the train to pass over your body. I always stay toward the middle of the platform—knowing, knowing, that pushing is less common than both accidents and suicide. 

At our stop to switch trains, the alert has changed: now there’s no service in either direction. The news hasn’t circulated; it still says the train is coming in eight minutes. The platform becomes more crowded. Someone is howling indiscernibly, at a distance. Their voice echoes around the station. 

We bail early for the Uber. Thirty blocks, fourteen dollars. The first cold night doesn’t seem cold until you’ve been standing in it for a few minutes, waiting to slide into a black Toyota RAV4. The driver has his phone mounted vertically, about eye level. I’m glad he takes the straight shot home, despite all the lights along the way.

I watch him swipe away from the map and into Facebook at a red light. I watch him react <3 to a photo of a baby. My heart reacts too. I always think about the way every stranger I see will lay their head down, somewhere, and go to sleep. All these people. And then, suddenly, a life ended or altered while I ate dinner down the street.