"Saved" A very short story.

He is 17: Dominican, earnest; his caffe au lait skin has a slight greenish tinge. He is sitting on a wooden subway bench and is hanging on to the string of a laundry bag. He is watching the trains.

He is sitting next to a tall blonde in a faux leopard coat and a coffee colored beret; she is resolutely reading her book.

He cranes his neck slightly to look at the book's title: it's called "Radical Forgiveness." The cover is orange with a garish green title. She seems utterly absorbed: theatrically so. He looks at her anyway, not looking away.

"I like your book", he offers.

She looks up, momentarily irritated by the expected distraction. But something in his face catches her- a quality of pleading, maybe a need to be seen--and she lowers the book a bit. In front of them both, an Orthodox woman with  gleaming dark fake hair leans over her carriage'd baby and croons in Yiddish. 

"Miss? Miss? Are you Saved?" The boy's face is suddenly terribly concerned. He thrusts a pamphlet at her.

"Am I ...oh. Hmm." She peruses the pamphlet with interested attention for a moment. She looks up. "Are you? It seems important to you."

"Though a man may be born, he is not born until he accepts Jesus and thus is born again" he quotes importantly. Or maybe it isn't a quote. She doesn't know.

"I'm glad you've found a path that makes you happy." She smiles gently and raises her book again. He grimaces with imptience. 

"It is easier for a camel to enter the eye of a needle than a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven". He seems to her reproachful. Or just hurt.

Sighing, she lowers her book again, but this time turns towards him slightly. She looks rich to him, she just realized. The coat was 50 dollars, her cowboy boots are from a thrift store in Bellingham, WA, but her hair is expensive and her accent is clipped, and her purse is obviously good, though slightly battered.

"You are born again, right? How did this happen." She settles back slightly on the hard wooden bench, her youngish face turned towrds the young man's now gleaming enthusiasm. 

"Well, Miss..oh, what's your name? I'm Alberto." He offers a hand with grave sweetness. She shakes it. 

"Peri. Tell me what happened, Alberto. It seems to have changed your life."

Alberto stares off to the right for a moment, remembering. The flat bluish light of the Underground gives his face shadows it might not have. For a moment he looks old as he looks at his past.

"I met, I met these Christians. I'm from Staten Island. and I....where are you from?" he asks, as though suddenly remembering a duty. 

"I'm from here." The woman smiles slightly, her smile looping up to the right in suppressed amusement.

"You don't SOUND it", said a now child again Alberto, politely challenging, his street kid self always checking for a scam.

"I know, but go on. Really. I'm from here. Go on."

He preenes himself unconscioulys, hands rising to smooth his crew cut curls, then returning to lay face down on top of his upper thighs, like a good boy getting ready to recite a lesson.

"There was this cop, I mean there was a police who seed me all the time on account of I was sleeping at the Ferry terminal. He assed me if I wanna go to church."

"So you were homeless? That's an awful feeling." Her face was impassive.

"Yeah, right? I wan'ed to be a medical assistant, but it was hard cuz I didn't got the clothes. You know for the school." Looking away again, towards the shadows to their right. 

"And...?"

He comes back from the reverie. His face gets young again. 

"And I went to church wit them and I got saved. Jesus changed my heart." His face glows with pride. 

The greenish tinge gets slightly more apparent. He says abruptly: "Be strong and of a good courage, fear not, nor be afraid...for the Lord thy God, he it is that doth go with thee; he will not fail thee, nor forsake thee. Weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning."

He turns his face, now shining with schoolboy pride, towards her. "That's from Psalms."

"Wow, that was a nice quote. You must love words."

He's nodding hard. "I love Jesus. You should too, he loves you so much. Just confess your sins and ask his forgiveness. We are all sinners." His young/old face looks scared.

The leopard clad woman starts gathering her packages. Her face is careful with thought. She straightens up.

"Hmm. I don't know. I don't think He gets angry with us if we're trying to be good. I think--maybe?--a sin is just something you do, when you don't really know what you're doing. Maybe He only seems mad. I think He  probably just gets frustrated with us. Maybe a sin is just something that blocks us from our best selves. Maybe he wants us not to, you know, block His light. But here's the Q train."

Alberto says stubbornly, "Ask, and you will receive. Knock and the door shall be opened to you."

The woman puts on gold glasses. She leans over and picks up her bags. "I will. Did you get a place to live? Are you okay?" She loops the purse strap around her shoulder. Now she is standing.

He is suddenly standing. "Yes! It is a blessing of the Lord! I live across from Port Authority! For free!"

A passing train played light and dark across his eyes. 

"That's great. I'm really glad. I have to..." 

"Yes. The policeman pays my rent. So it's free." He frowns slightly at the tracks in front of the now oncoming train. The leopard lady looks up from her bag arrangement suddenly. Looks at him. His eyes are suddenly an opaque brown, the color of a wet dark stone.

She put a hand on his upper arm, a gesture of comfort. A moment and shadows pass.

"Alberto, my train's coming." she said gently. He looks up again, and she is smiling, this without the upward hitch of bemusement. 

She says: "hey, give me one of those." She gestures towards the pamphlet with her chin, her hands now filled with bags. 

"Oh, yeah! You can read it. If you have any questions-"-here importance swells his chest and makes his voice go baritone--"you just call me. See? Here's where my number is. Alberto. That's me. I can.."

She has wiggled a hand free to grab the garish paper. "Gotta go. Good luck. Really." she looks at him steadily for  moment. She looks away, stepping onto the train.

"Miss, you gotta be saved!" He is now concernedly waving a pamphlet at her, his arm reaching up to be seen above the heads of the passengers pushing into the train. "Miss!"

The doors closes. Shehas  reflexively looked down to check that her purse was safe. When she looks up, again, he is a small figure on the a platform that is vanishing into the past.

She looks down at the seated middle aged German tourist seated before her. He is lean, and fit looking, with that resolute "I'm not lost!" expression people get in unfamiliar subways. He sees her and gets up to give her his seat. She smiles. Tries not to drop her possessions as she's sitting, arranging the bags so they didn't look too out of control to strangers.

The subway goes into a tunnel. She looks at her reflection the darkened window across from her. It smoothes out the lines from her youngish face, and she smiles.

pl  1/16/11 nyc

"Synchonicity To The Rescue"

This first appeared in this blog, last year. Am reprinting it now in honor of Yvonne with whom I am lunching tomorrow and whose birthday is today.

love,

p

THURSDAY, OCTOBER 21, 2010

Synchronicity To The Rescue!

As I was walking to a class tonight, I wasn't in the best mood ever. Some kind soul had sent me a photo of my ex at a gala, with his date: so I was walking by the Reservoir, praying to Whomever to keep me connected to the Good, to genuinely wish them both love and happiness.-I'm not saying it worked every time, but it worked enough. So much that I asked for a sign, of any kind, that things happen -if not for a reason--then not completely randomly. Actually, I asked for a chance to be of use somehow.

On Park and 82nd St, I heard and imperious-if slightly cracked- voice say: "Young Woman! You! The Pretty One! Come here and help me across the street!"

I turned around, and there was a tiny, elderly woman, about the size and build of a capuchin monkey. She had a sort of modified shopping cart that she was using as a walker, and was very well dressed. But she was having trouble seeing over the top of her improvised walker, let alone WALKING. So I said "Of course, madam", took her arm--"not THAT way!" she growled; obviously this was a well rehearsed drill for her---and led her across the street. She issued instructions and commands the entire time. She was a little like Captain Blight in a robin's egg blue twin set. (Cashmere.)

She had stepped a little too far into traffic for my comfort, so I stopped, in order to holde her back a bit, as Buicks (ARE there still Buicks?) went whizzing past our noses, too close for comfort. She yanked at my arm.
"Young woman", she said, "I may be old, but I am not, as many young people think, a complete idiot. I would NOT walk into traffic. Not being gaga."
"Of course," I said. "It was a reflective instinctual thing."
She smiled, as though she was pleased with her ability to choose escorts. "Good vocabulary", she said, and smiled at me, just a tiny bit. Then she went back to issuing orders.
Feeling more sympathy for Fletcher Christian than I ever had previously, I tried to divert her with questions. Also, I was interested. She was a salty, upper class pirate, and I liked her.
"I have parents who are older, and they're still smarter than I am, so it's not likely that I'd assume you're bats. Or dopey. Is this slang dated?"I grinned at her.
She smiled contentedly, after making sure my arm was properly adjusted and secure for her clinging comfort. "I was the head nurse at (Rutgers?) Hospital. I was there when they did the first kidney transplant. Now THAT was a thing." She stopped and closed her eyes to remember, I pulled her out of the way of a speeding noncognizant limo. She didn't notice. She was thinking of the splendor of that moment.
"Were you a nephrology nurse? Did you know my uncle, Dr. Bricker? The famous nephrologist?"
She opened her eyes fast-and wide, as she realized we were in traffic--and skedaddled a bit as she asked,"Dr. NEAL Bricker? HE's your UNCLE?"
I smiled with pleasure. "Yup. And he's your age, and he and his amazing wife are TWICE as smart as I am, so no more prejudices about young 'uns, please."
We chatted some more. She had gone back to school and become a psychologist; written a book about breast cancer -"I wanted to call it "Renaissance", but the goddamn publisher said [here she adopted a mocking tone in sing song} "No one will KNOW what that MEANS, Yvonne!" She snorted in indignation, something I have not seen in person very often. "So they called it "You've Got A Friend." Another snort.
"You will pardon me saying so on such short acquaintance, " I said, "but that title somehow doesn't seem very...YOU."
She turned her pretty blue eyes towards me sideways, as if acknowledging reluctantly that I might be capable of cogent reasoning."No. It isn't."
We kept walking.
She said, "Okay, here's the UPS Store. We're going in here for a minute. You're coming with."
At this point, having smelled a whiff of distillery and juniper on her breath, I wasn't going to leave her by herself. I resigned myself to being late for class. "Okay," I sighed.
The men in the UPS store were more than kind to her- they were downright saintly gentleman.
While she was watching them Xerox stuff for her, she took to reminiscing. "My husband was a trombone player and a violinist, you know."
I said, startled, "Simultaneously?"
She looked at me sideways again for a moment, and then allowed herself to laugh.
:No, one at a time..." she said.
"Pity. He could been in vaudeville." I was funnin' her.
"Actually, he played for the house band at The Chase (?) Hotel, Played with Nat King Cole...Sophie Tucker..."
"NAT KING COLE?? He's my RINGTONE!" I cried, pulling out my phone and making it ring. Instantly it played King singing "Stardust."
"Sophie Tucker...now THERE was an unexpected broad." she said. "But you won't know who she is.
"Smile when you challenge me o showbiz trivia, Yvonne," said I. I then quoted some of Sophie' act to her.
She hooted with delight. "Yes! That's her! But you know, the damnedest thing..."
"What?" I asked, because she was drifting a bit.
She snapped to. "The damnedest thing is that, if you talked to her offstage, she had a very polished Back Bay accent. [She did a credible imitation of a lock-jawed Eastern pedigree girl.]
To me, Sophie was known for her thick New Yawk accent and vulgarity (funny vulgarity)--to hear that she was a tea drinking grande dame was causing me some trouble.  So I said, "I'm going to sit down next to you, and process the cognitive dissonance. Oh...may I see your ring?"

She was wearing a Claddagh ring. I have one-it was the last ring my ex gave me--and I have been looking for it for days. It is two small hands holding one heart, and means "I will be faithful to you always, my one true love."

"I have a ring just like that" I said, turning her hand to examine the ring.
"Oh? You know what it means, then?" she asked. She was looking at me with sudden kindness in her face.
"Yes. Yes I do. It's a lovely sentiment."
I stood up. "Oh they're done. Shall we?"
Another series of complicated maneuvers got Yvonne, her rolling cart, me and and umbrella  decanted onto the street intact. "I'm going to get a cab," she said.
"I'll help," i said. Another 20 minutes of maneuvering later, I put her into a taxi, gently. She said "Thank you , dear. You are kind. Remind me to tell you my favorite Neal story sometime." She started to close the door.
Then she opened it a bit and said "Hey! Young lady!"
I turned back for a moment. "Yes, Yvonne?"
She eyed me sharply. "What happened to your ring?"
I stood in a puddle, and thought about a photo I'd seen that day, that had changed my life a little.
"Well, young lady?"
I held up my two hands, ringless and manicured. "It's gone," I said. "It's gone." I smiled. "And I think I've just stopped looking for it. There are other rings. But yours is lovely. Goodnight."
She pulled the door to, and the cab sped away. She was going to the fire dept to complain about something, and had brought a "photo of my Daddy in his fireman's uniform in St Louis." she had confided. "That'll make em sit up and take notice. No one listens when you're old, young lady. So I bring props."

I walked a few blocks, already late to class, and already not caring. I ahd read in the Times this morning about 100 year olds and what had helped them stay alive, with joie de vivre, so long.
One woman said "Just put it behind you. Th past is the past. There's always better stuff in front of you. Never look back. Just don't." The other centenarians agreed. "Don't look back. Have fun. Don't dwell on the bad stuff. Look ahead."

I smiled, thinking about the article, and the cranky and vivacious lifeforce I had just bottled into a cab. Who showed me her ring, my same ring, and knew my uncle, who lives 3000 miles away, by first name. Who demanded my help and received it: exactly what I am trying to learn how to do in my own life, in so many ways.
Who might or might not have been "my sign", but who made me happy, as helping someone always does. As self forgetting in a good way, does. As I went off towards Sutton Place to my class, I thought "just keep looking forward...something better's coming", and thoght about the way the centanarians had repeated that, and thought about how it is what I'm going to be doing, from this step and that step on. Depite F. Scott Fitzegerald's seductively nihilistic sentnce" "And so we beat on, boats against the current, drawn back ceaselessly into the past,,"...I resolved, with each step, not to be swayed by his lyrical, liquid romntics, And to be a better boat. And go forward.

I walked on through the darkening air. And I sang "Stardust"- not softly, not loudly, but just loud enough for my own soul to hear it. Just that loud. "Sometimes I wonder, why I spend the lonely night/dreaming of a song/a melody/haunts my reverie/and I am once again with you..."
And I thought, "let's save the sadness for the singing and the songs, yes? Put drama on the stage where it belongs." Something in me lifted and flew free. I walked, and sang, and said "goodnight" to the sleepy windows I was passing, and felt my heart, at last, settle cozily back into the nest it had fled from, in June.

Goodnight, city. Goodnight, Yvonne. And Yvonne?
Thank you.

love peri

The Random Trilogy: Part 3

More random notes on moment to moment encounters, NYC  2011

1) 14th St Subway:

Me: 6 foot blonde balancing unwieldy packages: three just-purchased enormous duffel bags. a copy of "Fortean Times", and a Marc Jacobs suede couture purse with python insets, a recent gift that would look a lot more impressive if I hadn't tripped over the cat and drenched it in soymilk. -The purse, that is. The cat was fine, dammit.-Anyway. 

A youngish man is holding the official begging paper coffee cup and chanting "I need fifty cents. I need 50 cents." So I stop, wrestle with my bags, and give him a couple of dollars. 

His transformation from "downtrodden" to "raffish" is immediate and startling. And very funny. He grins at me and says cockily, "Hey, where you been! I ben thinkin about you all week!"

I grin back. Say "And yet you never call."

He says: "I been busy, girl! You ain't the only one, you know! I got demands on my time!" He looks me up and down. Then says "I know you know what I'm talkin about."

"I might", I say demurely, and pick up my bags, and go.

In the background, I can hear him-remorphed into "downtrodden" but for business purposes only, I now know--droning "I need fifty cents. I need fifty cents." As I turn the corner, I look back at him. He waves, and yells "You call me now! Be waitin!" 

I grin and, like the Cheshire cat, vanish simultaneously.

Life is always great.

2) Manicure, Village NYC

Lilyana is doing my nails. We are on intimate buddy terms, because she's my waxing/mani-pedi/All-Around-Girl-Maintenance sorceress, and she's Ukrainian (I'm half Uke), and, as usual, we're talking about cooking secrets, her kids and my love life.

"So.." she says, picking up my nailcolor choice (deep russet) and eying it critically,then nodding approval and setting it down, "So I tried the chicken feet in the soup, and oh my God what flavor!"

I said "I know right?"  -We have been discussing how to optimize Great Chicken Soup recipes, in a friendly competetive way, for weeks now. I recommended buying chicken feet in Chinatown--the stores are easy to recognize, they're the ones with the chickens in wheelchairs picketing outside--and using them in the first boil. THEN REMOVING THEM. They're terrifying.

She filed my nail then squinted at it. "Round, yes? But oh my God, I can never again! My daughter, she came home from school early! She said "what are you making and she saw..."

"Uh-oh", I said. This was not going to end nicely.

"Yes! She saw the feet! And they were going like THIS"-she made a "praying hands" gesture, deftly incorporating the nail file-"and I was like, oh my God this looks like somehing scary!-and she screamed! Just like this!" Lilyana let out an explanatory screamlet, much to the surprise of the other customers, and continued.."and she ran into her room! She closed the door "BOOM" ljust like that."

"Yeah" i said, "but she's what, 16? When ISN'T she slamming a door?"

"So, the soup taste good, but I'm the only one who eat it." She frowned at a recalcitrant cuticle. "You should sleep with Vaseline and plastic wrap and gloves."

I must have looked startled, because she said impatiently, "For HANDS. You know. So what good is how delicious the soup is if nobody eat it?"

I said "That sounds like a life lesson, not just a cooking tip. Very wise."

She finished trimphantly, "So now I just put onion inside chicken boil THAT way! With cloves! Three." She inspected my hand happily. She had won this week's cooking contest with me. "Nice color! I like. Also? parsley."

Lost again. I said "What?"

"Parsley! You know! In chicken. Use whole chicken and nobody notices feet! Put parsley in your bottom!"

"Okay" I said weakly.

"Also remember Vaseline." She put my hands down and said "All done." briskly.

"Right. Vaseline and parsley. Onion. Got it. Yikes."'

"Good", she said. "Now stay in dryer. Why you always have to go, I don't know. Your nails get..." she searched for the word, then brightened as she found it..."Ding-ed! You know .." she gestured with her own small perfectly manicured hands..""ding".."ding"..then..nails look bed again. So what's the point??This time you stay longer this time. Stop dinging. Sit."

I sat. 

And she was right.

No hurry? No "ding"ing.

Another valuable life lesson.

Don't "ding" yourself.  (The world does it to you often enough, without you contributing.) Very very wise. -No, really!
Don't ding.

*********************************

A friend was teling me that I seem much more, um, "rooted in my chakras" these days. I teach yoga, so I knew what she meant, but couldn't help the smartass "What?" response.

"Yeah", she said, wisely ignoring me. "That two years you were living in that duplex.."

I sighed. "The one for which i now wish I had been more openly grateful and ecstatic about? THAT duplex? Nature's most perfect apartment? Sigh."

"Yeah. Anyway. But you weren't yourself. You were being too..you know too crown chakra, too much. Like all the time."

I must have looked inquizitive. She went on "You were doing so many readings for that guy's career and for everyone. It kept you in the crown chakra. You're supposed to VISIT other dimensions to get spiritual information. Not move INTO one...I mean, you got all disconnected from your other chakras. You're not SUPPOSED to live in one chakra. You're supposed to spread it around a bit."

"Hmm. But that one was rent controlled. It was a nice dimension, too. Lots of unicorns. " I offered.

"Nope. You paid. Not in MONEY. But you paid a LOT. You got too chaotic. I never saw you like that before. OR now."

I remained silent, remembering the fireplace, the huge kitchen, my vintage copper Jello molds hanging on the walls...

"Snap out of it. it wasn't THAT great You'll have better. But when you were on President Street five years-you know when you were married to the painter guy--you were totally on top of stuff. That place was always neat and pretty organized. The chaotic thing isn't you. Not really."

"Not anymore," I agreed thinking of how I'd spent the day cleaning. "If something's really out of place I get antsy."

She pointed at me. "YES! ExACTly!  Now! You're all better! But that last year, you were like...like..." then a lightbulb went on.."like one of the Collyer Brothers."

"Not THAT bad," I protested. The Collyers were two brothers, rich compulsive hoarders, who never, ever threw ANYTHING out, and eventually died in an indoor "old newspaper pile"avalanche in their 1920's Fifth Ave mansion. Which event was a nine days wonder in NYC.    

It's true that when does spiritual exercises/work/practics, it's vital to go there..but remember to COME BACK occasionally, if only to do the damn dishes. Our spiritual practices are supposed o ENHANCE our real lives. Not replace them.

And so: have to leave now to be early for next appointment.- Really. 

Toldja I was fixed.

love

peri lyons