Riding a Heatwave Home
After a visit to my ailing father on the occasion of his birthday.
August 2010. The view from the Verrazano Bridge of the Gotham harbor, while riding tall on the Staten Island express bus, is brief but spectacular. To the right, the open water is dotted with flat tankers and freighters, like stepping stones out to the horizon. I imagine myself bounding from boat to boat, like the Hulk, scaring the ship’s crews with each landing, reaching the shores of the Canaries before sunset. To the left, the view of the city reminds me of the Panorama of the City exhibit in Flushing Meadows Park we visited as kids with my father, who was in awe of the big city. Today’s late afternoon sun-bathed glow is how I remember the yellow-orange indoor lighting of the panorama — minus the humidity.
The view ends as we come down off the bridge into Brooklyn. I am relieved to be heading home, if still a bit on edge after a depressing and difficult visit with my aging father, whose ails mount. The air-conditioned bus is thirty degrees cooler than outside. The chatter among the passengers is loud. Italian-American stereotypes coming alive, all on a date with Saturday night. Most of the young women wear their hair tall that they poke at with long squared-off nails with intricate designs at the tips. The few that aren’t preening, stand out like wallflowers at a party. The young men, heavy on the cologne and biceps, wear jelled cropped hair and a single earring. A few older couples are heading to dinner and a show. Unlike my trip into Staten Island, the return bus to Manhattan is packed.
The bus plows through Brooklyn on the Gowanus straightaway, then leans left toward the Battery Tunnel. My normal routine is to get off at the first stop in Manhattan, on Rector Street behind Trinity Church, then to walk uphill on the narrow sidewalk on the south side of the church’s burial grounds. I check in on the inconspicuous plaque commemorating the original site for King’s College — now Columbia University — with Hamilton’s tomb behind it, before jumping on the express subway to the East Side. That’s usually the fastest way home. Today, I am not in a rush. I decide to stay on the cool comfortable bus a little longer, driving past the massive construction site where the Twin Towers stood, now surrounded by chain-linked fencing wrapped in flapping vinyl signage with an artist’s rendition of the future.
Further up Sixth Avenue, I get off at Christopher Street in the Village. I walk east, convincing myself that stopping at Dante’s for a cold beer would be soothing. It is also an appropriately-named establishment to seek relief from the heat while decompressing from the visit to my father’s bedside. The streets are crowded but Dante’s is empty except for an elderly woman having an early dinner, alone, and three attractive waitresses in their white shirts waiting for the evening crowd to arrive. The waitresses seem to quibble over who will serve me, making me feel important. For a second. The young woman who gets the honor has an accent, but not Italian. Sounds Albanian, but I am not sure and I don’t ask.
While enjoying my cold beer, I think about my father’s birthday, his deteriorating condition, and his foundering spirit. I think about that Dylan Thomas poem.
I make up a life for the old woman eating next to me. I think of her in publishing, and editor at a magazine, accomplished and old-school proper. Lonely and a little bit surly. She looks over at me, as I might have stared too long. I drain my Moretti beer and the glass of cold water that came with it. I leave the waitress a good tip and head out for my walk through the Village to Union Square to catch the subway home.
The muggy heat welcomes me back to the street. This summer has become a series of heatwaves. Day after day, the temperatures reach well into the 90’s, made more unbearable by the sopping humidity. After a day or two of relief from a cold front, the cycle begins again.
By the time I get to 14th Street, Saturday night has revved up. Foot traffic is heavy and car traffic is impossible. The sunlight is getting weaker over the Hudson. I head down the subway entrance, a hole that feels like a drain funnel pulling down the day’s heat, like one of Dante’s malebolgia, the evil ditches. The underground station is dangerously hot, so I wait up top. When I hear my train, I descend one more level to the tracks. The narrow platform is densely packed. When the subway doors open, I join a human wave toward the middle of the car, a wave roiling with unpleasant body smells and clammy touches on my skin. There’s cool air coming from inside, but the heat from the platform follows me in. The doors refuse to close as more and more riders press their way into the car. The heat overwhelms the cool air in the car until it is all gone. If subways only had revolving doors.
I end up crunched between a woman and a young man, both with backpacks toward me. The woman, to my left, conscientiously moves the backpack to her side and under her arm. To my right, the young man’s backpack is in my chest, but he is not moving it, even as I push on it weakly. He is unaware or distracted. The young man, with a clean square-neck haircut six inches from my face, is focused on a scratch-off lottery card. He doesn’t fit the profile of the sweaty, nervous lottery-ticket-holder looking for a shortcut to having problems managing a fortune. Over his left shoulder and just to his right, sitting in front of him, I notice a petite girl with large bear-paw tattoos on her bosomy brown chest. The paws are mostly hidden by her bleached white tank-top. I am sure I have never seen something like that.
I look back at the lottery card watching to see if he wins big. He is scratching off random squares, slowly, giving himself time to work out the still possible jackpot: first it was millions, then thousands, now just hundreds.
As we rumble toward Grand Central, between arms and bodies, I notice that the ashes from the scratch-off game are sprinkling down on the bleached-white long shorts of a burly black guy I had not noticed before. He’s sitting next to the girl with the bear paws. His outfit is topped off by a white do-rag under a red Yankee cap with a flat bill properly askew. They are a couple, dressed in matching all-white summer outfits. Simultaneously, right after I notice, both of them notice the ashes on his shorts as well. There’s an exchange of glances, then the do-rag man looks back at his shorts and nonchalantly but carefully brushes the pile of ashes with the back of his fingers off his thigh; the lottery man mumbles a halted apology that only I hear, “Sorry, man.” Fortunately for all of us sardines in the car, the ashes fall harmlessly to the ground, leaving no mark on the white shorts.
As the subway approaches the stop, the couple in white stands to exit, squeezing those of us directly in front of them even tighter. Heading toward the doors, the do-rag man turns slightly toward the lottery man with an ambiguously menacing smile that exposes an elaborate dental grill speckled with diamond chips. He looks like Jaws, the villain from the James Bond movies. As the pair exits, I wonder if the lottery man considers himself lucky even if his scratch-off card was a loser.
We let out a big sigh after Grand Central as more exit than hop on. The crowd thins out even further at 59th Street as recent immigrants exit to catch the train to Queens. The newly open space fills with cooler air as the air conditioner catches up during the long express run to 86th Street where the Upper East Side residents like me will cede the train to the Harlem and Bronx dwellers. That cool air feels fresh. I have decompressed, now feeling worlds away from my father’s bedside in Staten Island. I am ready to ascend and tackle the walk to my apartment, hoping that there is still a little bit of that August orange daylight left, maybe even some of that heat.
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