It's our pleasure to serve you

The street is dark, and I hear the rustle of sleeping bags unzipping. A man and a woman emerge from wrinkled layers on the sidewalk. There are old Chinese women in flip-flops shuffling around. I smell diesel, and hot tar. Yes, there is roadwork on the next street with those giant metal slabs overlapped, as if they are giant playing cards tossed by a mammoth hand. Right on Eldridge and then the bright lights of Cup and Saucer  - a downtown cousin to Hopper's nighthawks. The construction workers are hunkered down over plates of potatoes, sausages and eggs. They speak in big voices, their vests orange and old.

I order two scrambled on a roll with ham to mix things up. The waitress at the register is just a little bit cross-eyed. I see my coffee cup filling, that famous blue Greek pattern on it and the words in camel brown "It's our pleasure to serve you." I could be in any cop film from the 70s on a stakeout next. But I am not. I am marching back to the quiet room, the sky already getting brighter, the street sweepers rumbling around. I will shower maybe even shave and put on one of the well ironed shirts N prepared for me, that she slipped into plastic bags to keep me from messing them up. I will call E, and she will wish me luck.

The streets will shuttle under new shoes, churning uptown towards an office. I will get a day badge, try too learn the halls, try to make friends with the guy sitting at the desk next to me. I will wander behind people with a notebook and a good pen under my arm into a conference room and take notes.

Even working for a handful of days here, my blood runs loud in my ears as I press my way through the crowd on the corner of 5th Avenue and 23rd Street.
I am one of them, a smile plastered across my face looking uptown.

Soon enough the bags will get packed, swollen with gifts and toys for my girls. I will take that quiet ride to the airport with the sun shining on the graveyards in Queens.