METROPOLITAN DIARY
‘I Saw Another Woman on the Platform Do an Obvious Double Take’
Seeing a familiar face while waiting for the No. 6, a snack on the go and more reader tales of New York City in this week’s Metropolitan Diary.
Familiar Face
Dear Diary:
I stepped off the express train at the Union Square Station one day some time ago and crossed over to the local side of the platform.
As I looked toward the tunnel hoping to see the lights of an approaching No. 6, I saw a woman step onto the platform. She had short, light-blond hair and she was wearing tights, boots and a long sweater.
She looked vaguely familiar, but lots of people begin to look familiar if, like me, you take the same train to work every day.
I saw another woman on the platform do an obvious double take and stare at the familiar-looking woman. That made me wonder who she was.
When a 6 pulled in, I sat down on a two-seat bench next to the door. The woman I was wondering about stepped on behind me. I slid over to make room for her to sit beside me, which she did.
I was listening to music with my headphones on, and I opened my book and began to read. When I looked up, there were three people hanging off the pole in front of me taking pictures with their phones.
With my eyebrows raised in a questioning expression, I looked at the woman sitting next to me. She shrugged and grimaced and then her face returned to expressionless. I shrugged and returned to my book.
The woman got off at the stop before mine. When the train pulled into my stop, I got off and went up the stairs thinking about what I should listen to as I walked. A Pink song was playing at the time.
That’s it, I realized. Pink. That’s who I had been riding the train with.
— Leslie Freed
Snack Stop
Dear Diary:
I was on Riverside Drive near the 79th Street Boat Basin on a beautiful fall morning when I noticed a jogger coming south on the sidewalk in front of the apartment buildings lining the east side of the street. Across from where I was standing there was a building fronted by a little plaza bounded by a low wall.
The jogger turned in at the plaza and went immediately to the south end of the wall.
He took a handful of something I couldn’t recognize at a distance from his pocket and put it on top of the wall.
Reaching down, he pulled a brick from the wall and then used it to crack what I realized were the nuts he had placed on the top of the wall.
After cracking the nuts, he picked out the meats, ate them, returned the brick to its spot, brushed off the wall, dusted his hands and resumed his jog.
— David Smith
In a Bad Mood
Dear Diary:
I had a job in a building on Sixth Avenue and 51st Street. I didn’t like the job. Most evenings after leaving work, I would walk up Sixth Avenue until I reached Central Park, and then I would either catch the subway or continue walking home from there. It was my routine.
One Friday evening, I was in a particularly bad mood after leaving work. I had also miscalculated what the weather would be like. It was chilly, and I needed to put my coat on.
I started to try to put it on while I was on the phone and holding my purse and a second bag. It wasn’t going well.
Suddenly, I felt my coat slipping over my arms. I turned and saw a woman standing behind me.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean to intrude, but it looked like you were struggling.”
“I was struggling,” I said. “Thank you.”
— Meredith Murphy
Her Stepladder
Dear Diary:
I was at a discount store on Spring Street when I spotted an item that I needed: a five-foot-tall stepladder.
I bought the ladder and a big bag full of other household items. I was going to take a cab home to the Upper East Side, but it was 4 p.m. and there were no cabs around. I took the subway instead and, thankfully, got a seat on a crowded car.
After getting off at 86th Street, I had to walk home five blocks lugging my purchases. At one point, I heard a woman yell at me from across Lexington Avenue.
“Hey,” she shouted. “I just love your ladder!”
— Amy Miller
At the Baths
Dear Diary:
A child of the East Village, I moved to Indiana for graduate school at age 23.
Over winter break, I stuffed my face at Yonah Schimmel, Downtown Bakery, Katz’s, Mee Noodle Shop. You can’t get food like that in Indiana, I had discovered.
After having a cup of borscht and a schvitz with a friend at the Russian & Turkish Baths on East 10th Street, the man at the counter began to negotiate with us.
Right now, he said, he was going to have to charge us $50. We would get a better deal, he explained, if we paid for six or 10 visits.
I replied that I no longer lived in the city and wasn’t sure I would have the time to use the visits if I paid for them.
He slapped a sign near the counter.
“You have this long?” he asked.
“Expires Never,” the sign said.
— David Meretzky
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/29/nyregion/metropolitan-diary.html
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