St. Mark's Place
For three blocks in the heart of the East Village, 8th Street is called St. Mark’s Place. Where I live above Avenue A, I can look down and see where it ends on the east side of Tompkins Square Park. It turns back into plain old 8th St. on the other side of the park. I only ever walk in one direction on St. Mark’s. West. Away from the impending morning, and later, towards the setting sun.
I fall out of my building’s aging terrazzo-floored vestibule, thermal coffee mug reluctantly purchased at Starbucks, briefcase that my great uncle gave me for Christmas, or was it graduation? Hard right at Narducci’s on the corner. The green, white and red door in my periphery and the smell of warm pepperoni too early in the day tell my legs to turn even before my mind does. Step by step, I know what I will see for the next three blocks like a useless psychic who can only see one second into the future. A Pakistani fellow, who may or may not be the Maitre’d at one of the restaurants on 6th St. sweeping his stoop with a broom that is worn down almost to the threads that bind the straw. Across the street, the Eileen Fisher boutique with loosely clothed mannequins, comfortable in their muted earth-tones and raw silk ankle-length skirts. Every seven paces, trees are planted in the sidewalk, the base of the small trunk covered in mulch and topsoil, and that small square of dirt is surrounded by wrought-iron borders. I pass slower pedestrians on the street side of the arborial impediments, and weave back onto the sidewalk once clear of the foot traffic. Lazza Café is at the corner of 1st Avenue. Like every morning, I ponder what the Eggs Benedict they are famous for taste like and make a note in my mind that I should stop in sometime. Five years in the city and I can still convince myself that just maybe this will happen. I cross 1st Ave. against the light, stepping past the tourists in baseball hats and jean shorts who patiently await the green figure. Stride past The Gap and know that in minutes I will be on the Lexington Avenue Express headed north/northeast to the Mobil building, where there is now not a single shred of actual Mobil Corporation. Only Pfizer pharmaceutical and its 42 floors of offices and my small closet of a space where I design the perfectly compliant drug packages that house the blood pressure, cholesterol, and erection medicines that Pfizer sells.
As I move past the A-1 Fast Grocery awning, “A Dozen Roses, ALWAYS $7.99!!” I notice something different. A woman. People are always there, around me as I walk to the train. It’s Manhattan. Characters. Types. The Homeless Guy, The Artist, The Power Suit, The Drunk, The Punk. You want these? St. Mark’s has them like a Field Guide for NYC. But today I see a woman so absurdly beautiful that I stop. Altogether cease movement, right in front of the copy store that never has any customers. And not like “implausibly super-model hot” absurd. (In fact add that stereotype to the list of people St. Mark’s has in spades.) No, absurd because her features are so huge, out of scale and incongruent to themselves that I probably shouldn’t find her attractive at all, much less be contemplating the idea that she might be the most beautiful woman I have ever seen. Her eyes are larger than children on greeting cards. Between her almost swollen cheeks is a nose that defies ethnicity, sharp and large, a bump in the bridge, nostrils narrow but obvious. Perhaps it is the supple black leather blazer that seems to have been cut within a millimeter of every corner and curve on her torso. Perhaps it is the subtle angle of her hips as she searches through her purse for the searing red lipstick that she is now applying to her astounding, tumescent lips. Perhaps I better move faster since she is walking away from me. I follow the Demoiselle down the sidewalk, oblivious to everything but her gait. We careen past the piercing and tattoo shop at 2nd Avenue. Past the austere 19th Century beauty of the Cooper Union and onto the cement sidewalk island that is home to the giant sculpture of a cube set on its vertex, a sort of colossus guarding the entrance to the train. It is here that St. Mark’s Place ends, evaporates into a notion and the paved asphalt around us once again assumes its numerical appellation. I continue to follow her billowing mass of chestnut hair, her slim black pants, her gunmetal silver heels into the green glass portico covering the entry staircase that leads to the 4 5 6 lines of the Subway. Through the yellow turnstiles, and I begin sweating. What would I possibly say to her, what words could I form that wouldn’t be preposterous? “You are so gloriously out of proportion that I think I may be in love with you?” As the train chatters into the station, she turns around glancing towards the white and black sign reading Uptown. Was she on the wrong track? Was she going to leave to find the correct route? Did she have a boyfriend, a girlfriend she was waiting for? Could she not read? Did she vote for Hilary? Or worse, Giuliani? Does she go to church? Does she hate the Yankees? Was she contemplating doing any one of the thousands of things that would ruin everything? Everything that she is to me right now? The picture, the wonderfully imperfect picture. The two blocks that I followed her that doesn’t exist now. So as she lifts her leg, calf muscle flexed above her feet and fluorescent orange toenail polish, to board the 6 train, my train, I inhale. Exhaust fumes fill my nose and I step back. Away from the platform. Search for and find a bench. Watch the stainless steel train doors close in front of her as I dab the sweat from my sideburns. Listen to the hydraulic hiss of the cars beginning to move up the track. And I wait with my coffee and briefcase for the next train.
No comments:
Post a Comment