“A consortium led by Kumho Investment Bank has taken over the headquarters ”

The disintegrating company’s news Googles into my inbox, like jagged rocks down an avalanche.

I could tell you about AIG.

That I was one of the no-name people, not the elites who screwed up. That I made $20,000 a year. That my office was on the narrow crooked end of Wall Street where on the most glorious sunny day, it was dusk out my manager’s window.

That my own office was three mustard-colored walls and one grey, free-standing partition.

I could tell you that I was terrified of the big buildings, the air of mystery, the sub-CIA cowboy culture. Of the numbers I didn’t understand.

I could tell you that our P.R. policy was Don’t Talk to the Press. That the building foundations shook when USA Today named chief, Hank, the seventh highest-paid CEO in the nation — or was it the world?

I could tell you that not only in the company, but all over Wall Street, everyone knew that A.I.G. meant All Is Greenberg. I could tell you that if Spitzer hadn’t forced Hank out, we wouldn’t be in this mess, that AIG’s been brain-dead ever since.

I could tell you I have a soft-spot for Hank. I could tell you that this company was a family when I had nonethe year people died, went mad, out of business, into rehab and nursing homes.

I could tell you that for years I ignored the half page ads in the Help Wanteds with the tall letters that said WALL STREET. That I only answered AIG’s because it didn’t. That when I learned it was Wall Street and didn’t answer their calls. That they kept calling.

That my boss at AIG was the first man I worked for who didn’t harass me. That he was a blue collar New Jersey newsman. That his staff called him Bambi behind his back.

I could tell you that this was the year the stock market dropped. That a rising tide lifts all boats, but hurricanes stir up gold. I could tell you I made the best friends of my life there. That we drank vodka in the morning but worked through the night.

I could tell you that AIG’s unofficial motto was “We shall pay no claim before its time.” That it didn’t need a diversity program, its workers came from over the world, its interns from housing projects.

I could tell you we were proud of the sub-CIA cowboy culture. That I came to have more respect for financial people than writers. That the Ivy arts grads I roomed with after college couldn’t hack the real world. That they left their jobs and lived off their parents. I could tell you that AIG didn’t care about pedigrees, just work. That people on Wall Street don’t take money from their families, they support them.

I could tell you that on my floor Jews and Arabs were friends. That there was a transsexual, a platinum punk rocker, and a girl with purple hair, (me.) I could tell you all about the married closet queen and his 400-pound secretary.

I could tell you how I learned to use a personal computer there. That on the computer cube wall hung the Leviathan company chart. For internal use only. A complex web of holding companies, limited partnerships, and wholly-owned subsidiaries. Chilean pension funds, Indonesian customs bonds anyone?

Four hundred boxes, cross-linked, to outsmart the auditors.

I could tell you that when Hank made a joke people were afraid to laugh. That his oldest son Jeffrey was overworked, that his second son Evan looked like a movie star. That he fired both sons, or they left of their own volition, and became CEOs elsewhere.

That when Hank entered a party, he scattered crowds like a smoke bomb. That he was five foot six, or looked it. That he was 60 and looked 40. That the one time my work brought me within feet of him, he winked.

I could tell you that I remember what I wore that day and what it cost. That I walked home over the Brooklyn Bridge.

I could tell you that my whole life flowed from that building. That it split me in two and broke up my home. That when I worked there, I moved to a seedy hotel. That AIG was more home than hotel, both prison and refuge.

I could tell you that I couldn’t afford to leave the hotel till I got a better job. That I left AIG after 18 months for a $10,000 raise. That I’d have stayed for $5,000.

I could tell you that I understood why AIG was cheap. That by the time I left I understood numbers. About shareholder value. About managing risk. I could tell you that AIG wasn’t like other Wall Street Casinos.

I could tell you that once a week Hank went through his rolodex to call someone in and rip his face off. That I wasn’t important enough for this to ever happen to me. That the old Chinese waiters were equity millionaires. That the upper echelons lived in a culture of fear. That they worked with Golden Handcuffs. AKA Deferred Compensation. AKA Holding on for the Retirement Bonus.

I could tell you that when Spitzer kicked Greenberg out, he parted the golden pot from the people who’d earned it. Or were promised it. That none of this was on paper, all on trust.

I could tell you that most likely the company chart, with its 400 cross-linked boxes, made this perfectly legal.

Is life ever fair?

I could tell you more. I could tell you all policemen are pigs, all soldiers murderers, all men are rapists and all Wall Street workers evil.

Or I could tell you that Hank Greenberg gave me a job when no one else would. That the company saved my life. Or I could tell you I left my soul back there, locked up in a grey metal desk drawer.

“So you know what I was thinking?” Andreas asks.

“What?”

“I was thinking if maybe we might want to think about getting married.”

“Really?” I couldn’t believe it. My heart soared. “That is really funny because I was thinking the same thing, and have been just sitting with this idea for the past two days to get used to it.”

“That’s good.” He paused. “So… we’re going to do this? It’ll make it easier for us to live and work in both countries.”

“Yes. I guess we are. We can’t go on like this can we? I mean we have to either do something decisive, something radical, or continue this long distance suffering we call a relationship.” I paused. “We either get married or break up.”

Andreas laughed. “This long distance thing is a pain in the ass. Let’s do the truly radical thing.”

That is how Andreas and I decided to get married.

I told my parents. My mom was apprehensive.

“Are you going back to Berlin? He should come to New York—you can get married and work here.”

“Mom, we’ll see. We still have to figure this out.”

My dad was mostly silent on the matter; my mom appeared to be doing the talking for both of them. She had that look on her face, that grim I-am-really-upset-about-this-but-will-not-admit-to-you-just-how-much look. Dad may not have said much, but I still felt he was with me. I had space with him, to decide, to think it through.

Spring, April 1992, New York

We’re in our friends’ art studio on the Upper West Side—our crash pad while Andreas is visiting.

“I told everyone in Berlin I would marry you on this visit.”

“You what?”

“Look, we could just go down to city hall and then it would be done.”

“Nice that you told everyone in Berlin. When were you planning on telling me?

Andreas, I don’t want to be married and living apart without a plan. That just makes our current situation worse!”

“So you won’t marry me now?”

“No!”

“How about tomorrow?”

“Not tomorrow, and not this trip. We need to think this through. It’s supposed to simplify—not complicate our lives.”

He grinned. “You and your planning. Planning is overrated.”

Summer August 1992, Berlin

Andreas and I visit Frank and Katharina in their flat.

“So… you married yet?” the cigarette smoke from Frank’s cigarette rises up like a question mark.

“Oh come on! We can’t get married now! I’m only here for a couple of weeks, and then I go back to New York.”

“Andreas has been telling the whole crowd that he is going to marry you,” says Frank, while Andreas flashes an impish grin.

“Did you tell everyone and forget to tell me again?” I roll my eyes.

“I’m just very excited, Jessica, that’s all,” he assures me. It’s not as if you don’t know we are going to get married.” He is enjoying this immensely.

“True. I just didn’t know you intended it to happen next week!”

I am finding it noteworthy that Andreas and our twenty-something Berliner friends—who pride themselves on not conforming to such quaint bourgeois traditional social customs such as marriage—are all panting with anticipation for Andreas and me to get married. Until now, in this crowd, you’d marry to get someone out of East Germany, or to get a residence permit to live in NY. If you have a child? No need to get married.

Suddenly, the whole anti-bourgeois crowd has turned into a bunch of conspiring sentimental cheerleaders: Andreas is going to marry Jessica, they decided.

Most of the guys in the crowd came to Berlin to avoid the German national draft—a common practice. As a college student before the fall of the Wall, you went to Berlin, and you got subsidized to stay to keep the city a vibrant, capitalist oasis in the communist East German desert. Plus you avoided serving in the military or in any civilian government service required in West Germany. It was an excellent deal—until the fall of the Wall.

Fall, Oct 1992, on the phone.

I get a call. He’s beside himself. He’s drunk in order to dull his… I don’t know…fear? This is not a word that is ever used to describe Andreas. Generous—yes.

Arrogant—yes. Persistent—yes. Bright—yes. Fearful—no. The only thing I can think of that I knew could cause Andreas real anxiety was his fear of heights. This fear on the phone is new. I’m alarmed.

“The army is coming after me, “ he says, a matter-of-factly.

“What?”

“It’s making me crazy. I’ve already hired a lawyer to write letters for me but it doesn’t look good. They kept track of me, and now they want me.” His voice has the slightly singsong quality—the telltale sign of his inebriation.

Andreas, unlike all of our West German slacker friends in Berlin, thumbed his nose at the German government by writing a Fuck You letter from the safety of Berlin’s borders. The recommended way to avoid governmental retaliation was to move to Berlin and not announce that you are dropping your responsibilities as a West German citizen.

Why he wrote to the army to declare his gleeful departure is a mystery. Actually, wait, that’s not quite true: unlike all of the others in our circle, he was the only one who grew up as a ward of the German state. The little drama unfolding was not your garden-variety teenage rebellion against an uptight parent.

Since the fall of the Berlin Wall, my one-time-Socialist-Stone-Throwing-on-May-

Day-Youth-Leader boyfriend has been anxiously anticipating the German government’s response to his taunting missive. And the emotional disruption this was causing him was palpable on the trans-Atlantic call. I’d never experienced him this vulnerable.

“I am going to leave Germany. I am going to come to you. We can get married in

New York, and I will come live with you.”

“Are you sure? Maybe the lawyer can help you?”

“The lawyer is not helping me. He told me that the government has given me three options: if I am under 32, I can still serve in the army; I can go to jail, or I can pay a penalty of thousands of deutschmarks. These are not choices! I’m leaving Germany. I’ve had it.”

Winter, December 1992, New York

Andreas flew to New York on December 15th, 1992. I’d moved into our new one-bedroom apartment the week before. We were planning to get married at City Hall, and go out to brunch with my parents who were quite relieved we’d decided to stay in New York. But then Frank called us and said we had to have an actual wedding because he had convinced all of our Berliner friends to come to New York to watch us get married. So we rented a room in an Italian restaurant on Gramercy Park. We got married on December 27th, and in fact, 27 people (a quarter of whom were our Berliner friends) showed up to celebrate.

That next morning, Andreas gazed out the window from the fourteenth floor of our suite in the Gramercy Park hotel where we held our after-party and spent our first night as husband and wife. He wore only underpants. He stood there silently for several minutes surveying the view. Then, he turned around, beaming. Triumphant.

“My fear of heights… it’s gone.”

Notice I only gave you his first name. Other than relatives and a few close friends, hardly anyone knows Frankie’s last name. I know it, but only because he swore me to secrecy. So before I tell you, I have to swear you to secrecy. It’s Sassone. Frankie Sassone. You can’t tell anyone.

Know why he’s so tight-lipped about it? Because people shorten it to Frankie Sass.

“By itself, there’s nothing wrong with Frankie Sass,” he says. “But you get wise guys. They get tongue-tied on purpose, and Frankie Sass comes out ‘Frankie’s Ass.’ Like I’m supposed to think that’s funny. You know, cute.” Frankie’s an unusual guy: a proud man with low self-esteem.

Keep his birth name to yourself, but don’t worry about spilling his professional name. Any hungry man, woman or school kid walking through Midtown Manhattan already knows it. It’s Swanky Frankie.

Every morning, in the role of Frankie Sassone, he leaves his mother’s Brooklyn apartment, subways to Eleventh Avenue and West 48th Street and strolls into the Astor Garage where he stores his hot dog cart. By 11—looking like Planters’ Mr. Peanut minus his monocle—he’s transformed into Swanky Frankie, a living trademark steering his cart across town toward upscale Fifth Avenue.

Notice I said steering. A lot of people think he’s pushing his cart. Your modern-day cart runs about eight-and-a-half feet long. Fully loaded, it requires a small motor to move it. Sure, Frankie’s a big guy with muscle, but nobody, least of all the elegant Swanky Frankie, would be seen actually pushing a hot dog cart.

Tucked into his regular street corner, he raises his fringed umbrella, clips on his Swanky Frankie sign, tosses a dozen high-quality franks on the grill, and lays out the mustard, ketchup, chili and onions.

“I’m thinking of cutting out the onions,” he says. “It’s not that people don’t want onions; it’s my mother. I don’t like to see her chopping them up in our apartment. She sheds enough tears over my not being married. What? I’m gonna watch her cry over onions, too?” When it comes to family, Frankie has this sensitive side.

He’s also very sensitive about the image he presents. Working behind his grill, he relies on his stylish appearance to make himself look different from the other shirt-sleeved vendors strung along the avenue. “The look brings the customers in,” he says. “But it’s the franks that bring them back.”

He buys his franks from a Brooklyn butcher, an aging German who claims he’s the only guy in New York with an old-world recipe. Frankie has this knack for converting the old German’s franks into crisp, delicious hot dogs. You could be facing bankruptcy, but when he smiles and hands you one while he’s tricked up in his top hat, white tie and tails, he makes you think you’re dining at the Waldorf.

While waiting for the Brooklyn butcher to go to his eternal reward, I’m trying to convert Frankie to my premium franks. Notice I said premium. They’re made according to the highest Department of Agriculture standards. Sure they contain binders—cereal, for example. What frank doesn’t? Nitrates and sodium too, but today, everybody is so health-food conscious, we keep that stuff to a minimum.

Because Frankie is my biggest potential customer, I spend more time around his cart than I do around my regular customers. This morning, an hour or so before the lunch trade lines up, we’re sharing our usual street-food gossip when I see his eyes narrow under the brim of his top hat. He does not like what I’m telling him. A few blocks south, a competitor has set up a new hot dog cart. Nothing threatening in that; competitors come and go. But Frankie’s face darkens when I tell him this new rival has a fancy cart and is selling under a glamorous name, “The Umbrella Room.”

“What’s he wearing?’

I duck his question. “The sign says GRILLED GOURMET HOT DOGS.”

“What’s he wearing?”

Frankie’s repeated question carries a tension that tells me I’d be smart to keep cool. I slip under his umbrella so we’re both in the shade.

“A maitre d’ outfit. Kind of formal—like a tuxedo”

“Hey, I invented that image,” he says. “If he’s gonna do a Swanky Frankie knock-off, tell him he may get knocked off. Tell him to find some other gimmick.”

I’m wondering how I can say this to a customer—someone I depend on to meet my sales quota—when something dawns on me. My customer isn’t a him. It’s a her—a thirty-something gal who seems like a decent lady. She tells me she enjoys being her own boss. It allows her to leave a little later in the morning and get home a little earlier in the afternoon. She claims it means more time with her kids. But before I can explain to Frankie that his new competitor is a woman—and nice looking, too—he steamrolls me.

“Look,” he says. “My cousin Paulie works downtown at the Board of Health. Paulie knows all the inspectors. They find something wrong with your cart, they lay a big fine on you. Close you down, even. Know what I’m saying?”

A few days later, I drop by Frankie’s cart. Before I can tell him how upset I am, I spot his new sign: OUR HOT DOGS SERVED ONLY ON ROLLS MADE FROM THE UPPER CRUST. He doesn’t say it, but I know this is his answer to his new high-tone competitor.

I come right to the point. “Frankie, what’s going on? The Umbrella Room lady says the health department came by and fined her for failing to provide a customer with a receipt.”

“Umbrella Room lady? What do you mean, lady?” Frankie says. “You never told me she’s a lady.”

“You never gave me the chance,” I say. “You cut me off before…” But I don’t want to start an argument. So I smooth-talk him.

“Frankie, there are 3,000 food carts in this town and not one of them hands a customer a receipt. Sure, it’s a city law, but an inspector has to be really looking for trouble to pick up the Umbrella Room lady on a technicality like that. Now take your cousin Paulie, he wouldn’t be involved in this, would he?”

Before Frankie can answer, a little guy shoulders through the circle of customers and dips under Frankie’ s umbrella. He identifies himself as a health department inspector and starts machine-gunning questions.

“Where’s your license?” he asks, holding up a plastic ID the size of a credit card. Like a teacher talking to a first grader, he says, “You punch a hole here, thread a leather thong through it and hang it around your neck.” His message is clear: You got to have your license dangling before the people at all times.

Frankie looks embarrassed. He pats down his shirtfront. When he doesn’t find his license, he pulls out his wallet and flips through it like a wild man. Several customers, looking impatient, break away. Filled with suspicion, I duck out with them. Frankie’s been selling dogs for years. Why is this license business coming up now?

The next week—during some friendly talks with the Umbrella Room lady—I put the story together. Turns out, Frankie isn’t the only one who has connections in the health department. The Umbrella Room lady also has a few downtown relatives. This explains everything. The inspector didn’t just happen to stop by Frankie’s cart to check on his license. Someone put him up to it.

When I figure enough days have passed for Frankie to cool down from his no-license embarrassment, I swing by his cart for a pre-lunch talk. Right away, he rips the inspector who singled him out for a fine. “Everybody downtown knows I have a license,” he says. “That SOB caught me on a technicality.”

“So Frankie,” I ask, “are you seeing a linkup here?” He looks at me like I’m speaking Chinese.

“Well,” I say to him real slow and soft, “did you notice that right after The Umbrella Room lady gets fined on a technicality—no receipt—you get fined on a technicality: no license?”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“I’m talking about rabbit hunting, Frankie. It looks like a safe, easy sport. But when the rabbit has a rifle, it’s not safe and easy anymore; it’s dangerous. Face it, the Umbrella Room lady has as much firepower downtown as you have.”

Frankie puts on his old narrow-eyed look below the brim of his top hat. He whispers so low, I can hardly hear him. “You shoulda told me it was a lady sooner.”

Later that day, I decide this hostility can’t continue. Someone has to declare a truce. If these two ruin each other, they’ll take me down, too. I fall short of my sales quota a few times and boom, there goes my retirement—which is not that far off—and with it my little cabin up in the Catskills. I got too much invested in this business to mess up now.

So I resolve to step in and get the warring parties together. First, I find out she parks her cart at the Knickerbocker garage, just a block south of the Astor garage. Next, I use all my persuasive powers to convince both of them to meet me halfway between the garages.

When the meeting day rolls around, I’m a little surprised to see them show up at the designated spot. Frankie looks startled when he hears the Umbrella Room lady has a real name: Carol. Not a hint of a smile passes between them.

We set off across 48th Street, their carts weaving through traffic. The street noise—blasting car horns and whistling traffic cops—makes for a very stressful trip. I feel silly walking between two foreign dignitary look-alikes, but that doesn’t stop me.

“You can’t get anywhere fighting,” I yell, urging peace. They respond with straight-ahead stares.

By the time we reach Fifth Avenue, all I have to show for my bellowing is more deadpan looks. At the end of the day, I’m filled with so much tension I hardly have the strength to go home and flop into bed. Next morning, I wake up convinced I need a vacation. Driving to the Catskills, I rack my brain: How can I put an end to this dog fight?

It takes a few days of fishing, but an idea finally hits me.

So first day back on the avenue, I lay my idea on Carol: Why not a merger? Big corporations do it every day. She looks skeptical, but when I mention the chance to hike her income, she perks up. “Well, I got kids. Money counts. But I don’t think he likes me.”

“We can overcome that. See, Frankie has this sensitive side about his family.”

“He’s got kids, too?” she asks, wrapping a hot dog in a napkin and packaging it with a cold soda for a customer.

“No kids, it’s his mom. The way to Frankie is through his mother.” I keep talking until I figure I’ve got her on my side. Then, I tell her exactly what to do.

After waiting a whole week, I drop by Frankie’s cart. I arrive well before lunch—a line of hungry customers can be a distraction. Before I can ask him what’s new, he greets me with a big smile. “Look,” he says, holding up a plastic bag filled with chopped onions.

“Where’d you get that?” I ask, wide-eyed, like I’m surprised.

“Carol. She came by while you were away. It was real awkward at first. But we got to talking family. You know—her kids, my mom. Since last week, she brings me a fresh bag every day.”

My plan is working, and I jump on it. “Looks like the surprise attacks from the health department are gone forever.”

“Yeah, I showed the onions to my mom. She says, ‘She chops so fine, Frankie, she gonna cook you some nice dinners.’”

I push my advantage. “Looks like you and Carol are getting along pretty well. What do you think of combining your talents? A merger, like. Sell your hot dogs under the same name.”

“Nah, What’s she gonna see in a guy like me?”

I ignore Frankie’s familiar self-esteem whining. “It’s easy. Carol hangs a Swanky Frankie sign above the Umbrella Room sign on her cart. You hang her Umbrella Room sign below the Swanky Frankie sign on your cart. This gives you two carts at different spots along the avenue—each one with the same name. I can see it in lights,” I tell him, “Swanky Frankie’s Umbrella Room.” Then I add the punch line, “Naturally, you’re each wearing the same Swanky Frankie get-up.”

Waiting for his answer, I lean over and notice something different on his grill. I can’t believe what I’m seeing. He’s cooking a completely unrecognizable kind of frank. “What happened to the old German’s franks?” I say, in a state of shock.

“Didn’t I tell you? He died while you were up in the Catskills.”

This is one hell of a bombshell. Sure, it’s what I’m waiting to hear. But now, after working so long, I can’t believe Frankie’s buying product other than mine.

“Frankie, how come you never called me?” I say. “My franks are my bread and butter.”

I can see by his silence he’s embarrassed. So I put on the old full-court press. “You’re about to become the first chain of hot dog carts on Fifth Avenue, Frankie. That means you got to serve the same franks at both locations. Take McDonald’s. They don’t serve one kind of burger uptown and another kind downtown. Be consistent. That’s the secret. Carol serves my franks and you should serve my franks, too.”

From here, it’s easy. I pull out my cell phone and announce, “I’m punching in an order for two gross of our best premium franks.”

“Two gross?”

“One for you and one for Carol. Same company, right? By the way, anything going on between you two?”

“Anything going on? What are you talking about?”

“You know. Like romantic?”

“Aw, c’mon. You’re just like my mother. Now that she doesn’t have to chop onions anymore, she thinks Carol is Martha Stewart and the Virgin Mary all in one. What’s Carol gonna see in me, anyway? I’m no Broadway star; it’s a business.”

“Just wondering, that’s all. Sometimes one kind of merger leads to another.”

Then I place the cell phone in front of him and say, “Punch here. That’ll confirm your order.”

–
Bob Natiello is a New York native, born and raised in Brooklyn. After a career as a Madison Avenue advertising and marketing executive, he retired to Sedona, Ariz., where he now writes award-winning fiction and non-fiction.

Fiction Contest Runner-Up: Lactose Intolerance

Fiction Contest Runner-Up: Dancing Days

Right here, between the old Asian guy and the girl with the pigtails who clearly isn’t happy that the dude sitting next to her on the R train is getting a lap dance from some redheaded slut, right here, under the banners for Budweiser and Bahamas, right here, as the announcer advises passengers to not give money to beggars on the train, to not hold train doors as this causes delays, to report a suspicious package and have a nice day, it’s right here, my friend, that you know you are falling in love, falling hard.

You’ll go crazy for her, that’s for sure, straight bananas for this shit, and you’ll want more, because she’ll give you more. She’ll give you everything you want, as long as you’ve got some dollars to drop into this top hat I’m holding out for you (how about it, sir? Care for the deluxe treatment? Just a few dollars more.)

Then, all of sudden, you’re guilt kicks in and now you can’t stop thinking of that lovely brunette who’s just now waking up on your futon bed in your studio efficiency apartment in Astoria, turning over and slapping that snooze button on the alarm clock one more time. You know, that MFA student/Part-time Barista/GIRLFRIEND, the one who freed you from a lifetime of trolling bars like every other loser who wasted their childhood developing an extensive knowledge of every 1980s sitcom theme song instead of uh, I don’t know, talking to people, the one who writes the most heartbreaking poems in the world and who once drunkenly told you a few weeks ago over a basket of fries and a sweaty pitcher of beer that she thinks she loves you. Yeah, that girlfriend — although, I wouldn’t think of her right now, not while dear sweet red-headed Nico here is buffing the business end of your khakis with her ass, bumping and grinding to the music playing from my boom box, giving you the best damn subway ride of your life.

So, instead, you look around, trying to focus on something, anything else, studying up on those 1-800-Dial-A-Divorce phone numbers, sizing up the easy visual instructions of how to escape a roaring fire on the train…but, those thoughts about your girlfriend come back, and you just can’t shake them. It’s got roots in you, brother, dug in deep like white people in Harlem.

And just then, the song ends. I mean, hey, Prince can only play his guitar for so long, y’know? So, she hops off your lap (Thanks for the ride, she whispers in your ear, get it?) and goes back to doing some savory pole moves for the benefit of the new passengers, leaving the front of your pants looking like you just shoplifted the Empire State Building. You turn to me for me help, but, I’m already done with you. I’m moving down the car and starting up another lap-dance speech for a fresh crop of would-be buyers:

That’s right, I tell the crowd, For the price of a bullshit cup of coffee, you can have lovely Nico here gyrate up against your good parts. What do you say, any takers?

And, damn, if I ain’t a little surprised to look back and see you digging in your pockets for another fiver. I can tell already, as you fish it out, that this one was meant to pay for your lunch today, wasn’t it? I mean, you’re the one that’s on his way to that job interview, the first one in two months – but, hey! You deserve a little appreciation!

So now you’re calling me over, looking me in the eye, and I know what it means when you do that. You’re seeing me with my top hat and my jeans and sneakers and boom box, and you see me with that lovely Ms. Nico, and you’re thinking something about how this is one of those life-affirming New York moments or some shit, like I’m playing the role of the Latino scratching to make a living on this cruel streets, just trying to outrun the shadow of some pathetic father figure slowly dying up in the Bronx, some old timer still fiending for a needle to plug up his Braille-looking arms, eyes with a million cataracts but still seeing all that ass he used to bang back in the day, dreaming of a little sabrosura, like it’s 1975 again and his name’s Hector Motherfucking Lavoe.

Yeah, you look at me, and you’re playing out that little after-school special in your head, and then bang, you feel this connection, this kinship from one working man to another, so you raise up your hand with that five dollar bill, and as it drops into my top hat, you smile and say to me in some stupid-ass fake accent that yes, sir, you’ll have another.

But, then, the train doors open, and you realize that this is your stop. Now, you’ve gotta get off, but you haven’t gotten off, you dig? You’d skip your stop, but then you’ll be late for that interview and you’d be goddamned if you lose that because of a little lack of restraint. I mean, what would your parents back home in Illinois say? What would that sweet thing back on the futon say? She sure as hell won’t let you read any more of her poems, that’s for sure, let alone have you sniffing around anywhere near her panties.

So you look over at Nico, one last time, as she spins on that pole for a brand new audience, a new car full of commuters, her body glowing with sweat, a subway angel, you think, a beauty of the underworld, a mass transit nymph, la bellisima, all those platitudes, whatever-whatever, and then you’re standing on the platform, outside, and the subway doors are closing, and the sound is hard and final like someone closing the palace gates on a lowly beggar in the dead of winter.

Ka-chunk.

And she’s dancing still, through the window of that closed door, and now she owns you, she owns your eyes as you watch her in that subway car, as the train leaves the station, and you stand on the platform, surrounded by people who don’t give a shit that the love of your life is leaving you forever just as quickly as she arrived, carried off by cruel fate, moving at the speed of train. Yeah, she owns you, my friend, owns your eyes, your nose, every inch of your skin, every thought in your head. She owns you, and you may as well just jump down and soul-kiss that third rail, because she’s gone, disappeared down the long tunnel.

Gone, baby, gone.

And, maybe you’ll ace that job interview, and make a hell of a starting salary, making beaucoup money, as my Abuelo used to say. Maybe you’ll get some stocks, some health insurance, get that toe-hold in this big scary city. Yeah, maybe you’ll get all that, and when you get home, you’ll have Wonderful Miss MFA waiting to give you a big kiss and, probably, if she’s not too tired from standing on her feet all day, a little of that special loving, too. Yet, despite all that, despite today possibly being the first day of the rest of your life or something, you’ll still write it down as a loss, because let’s face it, pal, you should have stayed on that train.

Too bad. Oh, and, by the way… thanks for the five bucks.

Sucker.