On the greatest person in the world

Wednesday night: I am in the most expensive grocery store in Brooklyn, where I often am, because it is about a hundred yards from my front door, just under the BQE. Each time I shop here, at the most expensive grocery store in Brooklyn, I think: This has got to be the most expensive grocery store in Brooklyn! but of course I go back, because it is so near. Tonight, I consider some of the most expensive packaged foods and then I decide, no, I will cook dinner, so I go to the fish counter.

I would like a salmon steak, please, I say to the man behind the counter at the most expensive grocery store in Brooklyn.

Just one? he says.

Yes please, I say.

Which one? he says.

The best one, I say.

The man behind the counter at the most expensive grocery store in Brooklyn places a pink and glistening salmon steak on the scale, wraps it in paper.

I want you to eat that, says the man behind the counter, And think about the butcher who gave it to you!

Doesn’t that make you a fishmonger? I say.

(Fishmonger is a word I have always enjoyed, but have too little occasion to use.)

Fishmonger, butcher, he says, I do all kinds!

What animal is this? I say, pointing to the immense slab of death that is on the counter (I am one of those precious jerks who doesn’t eat meat that seems too human).

That’s a pork shoulder, says the fishmonger-butcher, You should have seen me dismantle that pig this morning!

Ah, I say.

I got all kinds of skills, he says.

*

Thursday night: we are at MOMA, at a special gala evening for young people, which seems to mean quite fancy people in their 30s, some in very striking outfits. Many of the men have backcombed their hair in the style of American Psycho; some of the women have had facelifts, real true ones. It is the kind of New York life that you imagine when you are a small girl in upstate New York, and it is the kind of New York life that is quite unlike my real one; this is a visit.

This is what Matisse would have wanted, I say, and by ‘this’ I mean the bottom floor of MOMA being full of fancy people, pulsing lights and club music. I’m only half joking: from what little I know of Matisse, I believe he was not opposed to decadence.

We go to see his cut-outs, which are childish in a way, but also lovely in their bombast: at this stage of his career Matisse must have known that he could do anything, so why shouldn’t he make a work from piece of paper spread with paint by his assistants, adhering them to a canvas so tremendous that it could only live on a wall in a gallery of international importance?

He was an all-time genius! I say, looking at a large piece that might have been rendered by a kindergartner, Think of how you would succeed, how anyone would, if you had this level of pure self-belief. These collages say: ‘Look at this! I am the greatest person in the world!’

In the brightly-lit gallery, people stroll, watching the cut-outs but also watching each other, maybe hoping to find love, or at least a benefactor for a twenty-years-hence facelift. No one talks to me, or to any of us. I wonder if it’s because my handbag is obviously inexpensive, or in fact if it’s because no one approaches anyone, anymore, if a person can’t be clicked or swiped. In a year in New York I’ve only once been chatted up by a handsome stranger, a poetry-reading structural engineer who I met on the subway; my hope for a meet-cute narrative was dashed when he cancelled our first date at the last minute, claiming a forgotten appointment with his dermatologist.

You’d better have a terrible rash, I texted him.

(In fact we did keep in touch for a few more days until he sent me a text remarking that he thought he would be a very good poetry critic; a fake dermatologist was one thing, but this hubris was the last straw.)

One by one the bars on each floor of the gallery shut, chasing us back down to the lobby. In an interminable coat check line, a woman I noticed in the gallery of cut-outs because she was planted in a high-traffic area, looking only at men, has secured a new friend. He’s wearing a cornflower-blue linen blazer. She’s wearing nude tights. She looks enthusiastic. He looks shifty. I’m impressed with their temerity. They must have talked to each other.

*

Home at 11:30, conscious that my dinner has been two glasses of wine and three potato chips, I scroll through my phone, considering: should I order some takeout? At this time of night, all the options seem disgusting. With low expectations, I open my fridge, to see if I own an egg, or a yoghurt. And then I spot the Tupperware on the bottom shelf: half a salmon steak and some steamed kale, left behind by last-night me. My heart soars with delight: in this moment, I am purely happy.

Look at this! I think, I am the greatest person in the world!

I feel a little sorry that there is no one else here to agree.