Encounters In Grand Central - Part One

I don’t know what came over me the other day, but the moment I saw the little man walking in my direction with his beryl eyes, I was stricken with a desire to scrutinize his every movement. It was late afternoon, a workday, cloudless and bone cold. I crossed Vanderbilt Avenue from Forty-third Street, careful not to slip on the dull, soot-speckled sheet of ice that reminded me of a corroding mirror. The traffic stopped for my traverse, so I picked up my pace to return the courtesy. As I passed through the thin curtain of sunlight that sliced down the centerline of Vanderbilt, I felt the light’s heat peeking through a gap between two tall buildings on the South side of Forty-second Street. I entered shadow again, passing in front of a new dark grey Mercedes-Benz. At it’s wheel was straight shoulder-length hair with a vanguard of bangs, Cleopatra-like, around the pearl-white face of a woman. Large dark glasses shielded her eyes and the tinted windows hid her age. She was wearing red, with lipstick to match.. As I passed in front of her car I instinctively pulled my stomach in and my chin up. She didn’t seem to notice that I was staring at her. Her head did not move a centimeter, and both her bejeweled fair hands in the ten and two positions on the black steering wheel were motionless. The diamond on her right ring finger was almost the size of the old crystal knob on the broken door leading to the cramped bathroom in my Brooklyn apartment. The moment I thought, or fantasized, that she might be following me with her protected eyes, she stepped on the gas pedal, and, after a two second wheel-spin, sped north on Vanderbilt. As I stepped onto the curb on the east side of Vanderbilt, I could see over my left shoulder the New Jersey license plate. I wondered whether she was working or shopping in town.

I entered the car port on the western side of Grand Central Station and walked around a white M.T.A utility truck that yesterday was parked in the same identical location, as if it had been abandoned. I grasped the polished brass vertical handle on one of seven dark oak and multi-windowed doors. The brass burned my gloveless right hand as would be expected on a stingingly clear cold day. I held the door open for a young woman in a yellow ski cap and blue parka with several lift tickets dangling from the bottom zipper. She was precariously holding a baby dressed with so many layers that the baby’s arms were out straight as if they were in casts. She was in an awful rush, looking almost desperate as she ran past me through the door I held open. The baby smiled, as if to thank me, and its little breath was like smoke from a toy train. After four steps and through another set of identical doors, I was inside.

Grand Central Station is my preferred route to the Lexington Avenue subway, which I take twice a day to and from Brooklyn. And this is my preferred entrance which brings you onto the great hall’s western mezzanine. There is a shorter route to my train, but the extra time it takes to pass through the station calms my end-of-the-day nerves better than ten milligrams of valium, a prescription for which my doctor refuses to refill despite my pleas. My pace slowed, and I walked to the top of the staircase that leads to the atrium floor below. I rested my hand on the foot-wide marble banister to the right of the stairtop as I faced it, a position I often take to soak in the drama of the room. My right hand was inches from yellow police tape that was tied to the banister and ran at an angle blocking off most of the southern portion of the mezzanine. There were no chalk lines depicting where a body may have fallen, and no other indication of a crime. I concluded that the police didn’t want people hanging over the edge of the banister or didn’t want homeless people setting up camp at a place with a view.

As I panned this section of the mezzanine on my right, I noticed immediately next to the doors behind me a man sitting on an orange plastic milk crate, his back and head against the granite wall, his eyes closed and mouth open. He wore a light brown corduroy coat with a green cardigan sweater. His feet were flat on the floor in scuffed unlaced black work boots, and his knees and thighs, sheathed by dark brown polyester pants, were spread apart, having fallen to their respective sides. Both his arms dangled straight down to gloved hands whose fingertips were just touching the floor. A wood shoe-shine box, with brushes and cans strewn about, lay at his feet. His face was dark brown, puffy at the cheeks and dusted with grey hair which gave him a soft appearance like a peach. His lower lip was large and moist and exposed pink inner membrane and lower teeth that were black on their sides where each tooth touched the next. His upper teeth were obscured by a thin top lip. It was either lack of business that put him to sleep, or his sleep that caused his lack of business. There was no movement, no breathing that I could tell, in fact no evidence from where I stood that he was sleeping rather than dead. I figured that if he was in the same position tomorrow evening I would know more about his condition.

I heard a woman’s laugh and turned to my left to investigate, leaning my right elbow on the banister at the stairtop. The drinking bar which occupies the northern half of the mezzanine was crammed to the edge with white collar men and women willing to endure what always appears to be a suffocating can of sardines just to have a pre-commute drink. No police tape here. The laugh I heard disappeared like a stone thrown in a rock quarry. Through an opening between that talking heads of upwardly mobile patrons, I discerned a woman sitting at the bar in a grey business suit who had the facial tautness of a just-snuffed guffaw. Her face was rectangular, softened by a rounded chin; cotton-white skin, the kind that marks easily; and large wide lips moistened by clear balm. The tortoise shell glasses, which obscured large dark eyes, and the black-flecked-with-grey straight chin-length hair gave an appearance of intelligence, a middle-age maturity. Her right elbow was on the bar top, her forearm up and her hand sloping down in an arc which ended with her fingertips barely holding the top of a wine glass half filled, I guessed, with Chablis. She alternated between smiling and chuckling as she made circles with her glass and watched the wine twirl. At first I thought her left hand was in her lap. But then it moved with a back and forth stroking-like slowness appearing to caress the thigh of her companion. I backed up a step from the banister to see who the lucky guy was and was irked to discover that he must have been fifteen years younger than me and her. His hair was blond and short, and he had an oval face, not handsome, but jock-like. His face was so clean that it did not appear he ever needed to shave. It was as if he was home from college visiting his mother, except his companion, I thought obvious, was not his mother. I imagined a duffel bag resting at his feet. He was wearing a black leather jacket and a large signet ring on his right finger. I couldn’t get a date when I was his age, and today it would be a miracle for me to meet a middle-aged, intelligent, mature professional woman like the one petting the groin of the college kid. Of course, she might be an idiot and he the rocket scientist, but it didn’t look that way. Most likely he was proficient in other areas where she might have some perverse fantasies.

I turned in frustration to proceed down the staircase, and my motion was helped by a push on my left from a briskly paced woman passing me with great dispatch wearing black boots, long black coat, a black purse to her right, with short burgundy hair and a red hat. As she passed, without a glance over, she said ”sorry” faintly, with more breath than necessary for so short a message. I stopped on the second step down from the stairtop to stare with a sour eye at her burden of accouterments, not to mention the awkward high heels, she glided down the stairs with the speed of a tap dancer, and breezed through Gate 26-27 as if assisted by a strong wind from behind. I had had it with women, for the moment at least.

To Be Continued.

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1. Bitacle Blog Search Archive - Encounters In Grand Central - Part One

   [...] I don’t know what came over me the other day, but the moment I saw the little man walking in my direction with his beryl eyes, I was stricken with a desire to scrutinize his every movement. [...]

   Trackback by bitacle.org — September 21, 2006 @ 11:44 pm

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