When I arrived at JFK on Monday afternoon.
First, a woman announced the location of our baggage carrousel over the P.A. Such full-blown Brooklynese, I had to smile.
Next, the line for American citizens at customs: Every color, every ethnicity. It made me warm and fuzzy inside. That's the closest I get to patriotism.
But then.
"Take Atlantic Avenue," I told the cabbie. "Not the Brooklyn Queens Express." Nine years in New York and you know these things: The degree of traffic at that hour. The steeply rising digits on the meter.
A ride home on Atlantic is 45 minutes. 35 dollars. At most.
We spent the next hour just trying to get onto Atlantic Avenue. A stall of bumpers, traffic cops blocking every access. "A fatal accident," is all the one of 'em could tell us. We drove in sisyphusian loops in neighborhoods I had never before seen. Finally, we ended up on the BQE. Gridlocked, naturally.
Please bear in mind that I had already been traveling for 15 hours.
It was not all hell. The cabbie insisted on turning off the meter. "It's going to cost you too much," he said. "Pay me what's fair." He introduced himself as John. He stretched a hand across the partition. We shook. Really his name was Rafique. "But you call yourself John!" I said. "Rafique is so much better."
We talked about life in New York. Work work work. How much easier it is in Berlin, and he said, in Pakistan. He wanted to know how I met the man I now love. He needed to know: "What did you fall in love with in him?" I tried to explain. "No, but what is your most favorite thing about him?"
Two hours later we were on State Street. I handed Rafique $60. He seemed disappointed. "That's not fair?" I said. "Not really," he said. I gave him $5 more.
My subletter Asami let me in. In the kitchen she alerted me to a leak that she had only just noticed. The walls and cupboards under the sink were drenched through, the old yellow linoleum was peeling, buckled, stained. Four feet away from the sink, where the carpet meets the linoleum, a wet spot crept, big as a small dog. I could smell the mold.
Also, no internet access.
The next day: rain. The subway system promptly fell into chaos.
The day after that, a bomb in Times Square.
Happy to be here?
Not so much.
