walking home

45 minutes on the train then up out of the ground and a block to the bakery. this is the sort of bakery where you get bread, rolls, savory things. the woman behind the counter laughs in spanish with a woman who has stopped by to visit. in the window are three onion rolls and a handful of sesame seed ones. i get all the onion and one sesame seed just in case. this is about enjoying what you find.

across the street and down two or three blocks is a deli. the horseradish i want isn't anywhere but i see two tall bricks of swiss cheese in the glass case. i ask the man behind the counter for a pound. he shoves the brick against the blade of the machine and comes back with one slice. he holds it up for me to see, flat face full of big and little holes, then knife-edge thin as paper. i nod. he goes back to work. as he slices it occurs to me i have no idea how much swiss cheese there is in a pound but when he weighs a mountain and goes back to the brick for more i realize there is a great deal. he wraps the cheese in two parcels, first in waxed paper, then in butcher paper, then slides both to the guy at the register. the guy at the register asks if i need a bag and i say no, holding up the reusable bag i drag everywhere these days. "you trying to save the earth?" he asks. i nod. when i walk out with my two packets of cheese tucked into my bag i feel like i should be wearing a special hat.

a few blocks further is the market where the chocolate bacon lives. i pick up an avocado and a bag of chips that promises me three cheeses. tuscan. but i am here for the bacon chocolate because i owe someone. three blocks from home i stop at another bakery. this is the sort of bakery where you get cookies and cakes and hot chocolate that helps you redefine the words hot chocolate. the boy behind the counter reminds me of a baby rabbit in a book from my childhood, all shiny-eyed and eager. he puts two fat brownies called blackout into a box and i walk out into the end of the day, long shadows and the first noticeable change in light.

on the corner of my block is a pharmacy that has been a pharmacy for a very long while. the building has been sitting there since some time near the civil war and the pharmacy's old fashioned shelves and cabinets seem to have been there just as long. apothecary is the word in my head as i open the door. there are only a few kinds of toothpaste in the whole place and just two actual aisles, but the pharmacist here is helpful in a way most are not. he asks questions, offers suggestions. and the skinny guy behind the counter greets me the way southern preachers have in my childhood- open face, strong voice, easy laugh that forces him to lean back a bit as it escapes him. there are postcards of chickens on the wall behind him and i notice them while he writes my prescription number on a notepad, then draws a line next to it. i sign on the notepad, an admission that i know the small pink pills in the bottle he shoves across the counter are dangerous and controlled and of a special class. i ask him about the chickens and he laughs again, a laugh so full i think he must secretly be one of those old lady blues singers and not a skinny brooklyn boy. he tries to explain it but is not very clear. it doesn't matter. i walk the half block to home with the yellow light hitting the brownstones and the limestones, looking like someone spillled whiskey and honey and lemon all over the part of the world where i am.