cab

fridays i walk home. getting on a bus on friday afternoon is nearly impossible as they tend to be crammed to the top with some of the most appalling middle school children ever to walk the earth. so there's the issue of being able to squeeze just one more body on a city bus, but there's also the idea of being smashed into eight or nine reeking, shrieking children for more than an hour that just won't let me do it. it's not like this other days. just fridays. but today i am in a hurry and am carrying a heavy load of student work. it's not something i could drag four miles without doing damage to myself. so i treat myself to what i expect will be a quick trip home. i go to the car service.

it's a few blocks from school on bay parkway and i step into a cubicle that smells like a bowling alley or like my grandparents' house when i was very small. three men stand around in a space scarcely larger than a coffin, coffee in one hand, cigarette in the other. the smoke is thick enough to form curling wisps of blue. i tell the man behind the bulletproof glass where i want to go. he speaks past me using sounds i don't know and one of the smokers nods.

the man by the door opens it and motions me out. the one who nodded follows me and walks down the street. he doesn't say a word, just walks, sips his coffee, smokes. i follow him. we turn a corner and i can see three car service cars across the street. he stops at the curb and holds out his arm in front of me the way my mom used to in the car when there were only lap belts. i nearly run into his arm. when he's sure the street is clear, he motions me to follow. he opens the door for me. inside, there are white stickers on the back of each front seat head rest. "no smoking by order of nyc dept. of health". my skin and hair smell like they did when people still smoked in bars and pool halls. it is not an altogether awful smell.

he begins the drive the same way i walk home, a street over from the main one. the road less travelled. he asks about cross streets and says a wonderful vampiry thank you when i tell him. are the languages that close? i write a while and when i look up i have no idea where we are. bay ridge, maybe. this is the way of brooklyn, crooked, senseless, cobbled together of too many little villages. nothing connects up or runs straight. nowhere stays anywhere very long.

we go over the abandoned railroad cut and i know if i got out right there and followed it right i'd end up a few blocks from home eventually. there are signs in hebrew in the windows and on school busses. there is a catholic church complete with manger scene but the few people i see walking around are jewish. orthodox. we are hours from sundown and shabbas/shabbat. we turn a corner and zip under the elevated f train. my neighborhood. in the first block i see people from six different cultures. there is a police car with lights flashing on cortelyou, about a block from where that guy got stabbed earlier in the year. cortelyou, at least from coney island avenue to flatbush avenue, is more like a dirt bike track or some sort of off road obstacle course than a city street. we are close to my own street where we will turn left. as the delivery trucks and vans part i see it in front of us. right there in the intersection. the brittle carcass of a five foot christmas tree. it is unadorned, lying on its side. unapologetic and belligerent.