When You Almost Get Stabbed III

“This is a stick up.”

Will we run fast enough. The cars won’t run us over, he can’t follow us onto the street.

“This is a stick up. Take it all out.”

His voice seemed to be getting louder, shriller. More insistent.

Two girls came walking in from the other side. One was blonde, the other had brown hair? Fuzzy memory. Just focused on the man. He drifted away from us, towards the other girls. I didn’t breathe, still. Not yet. My ears were red. The night was dark. My head was hurting. I had my angriest face on. I felt angry.

“Do you want cocaine? Weed?” They ignored him and kept walking. Past him.

We kept walking. Very few cars were on the streets. Now that he was not focused on us, we could cross the street.

Should I tell Venkat to run.

Too late. He fell back in with us. “This is a motherfucking stick-up.”

We can take him. If he has a gun, we could get severely hurt.

Another man. Older, ragged clothes. Stumbling, swaying from side to side.

“Cocaine? Weed? Do you want viagra?” 

The man ignored him. And stumbled on.

The night seemed to be getting darker, dimmer by the minute. Should it not be light soon? I could hear the soft slow patter of feet on the pavement, I could feel my legs like lead, one after the other. The taste of shining metal on my tongue, almost a prelude. Eyes focused squarely ahead. Straining at the corner to see if he was beside us again.

Is he walking behind us? Is he going to come back?

A few more steps, and he did not. The light from the streetlights started to get brighter, sounds started rushing in, broken water from a damn. It was still three thirty am. There were still very few cars on the streets. There were still very few people on the sidewalk. There was a man walking in front of us, homeless, stumbling, drunk. The air tasted of New York, cigarettes, unspoken dreams, millions of people feeling invisible.

I was still on alert, as my caveman senses returned, sound broadening to encompass the cars, the one or two horns still honking, softly on the streets, smell, that ever encompassing smell of New York, uniquely the Big Apple. Taste, greasy pizza in the air, every few blocks, alcohol, sweat, dancing that intricate dance they danced every weekend, all night. Feet heavy, slow, too careful, too measured. Ears perked back, trying to catch sound of the Stick-Up man.

A few more steps. The streetlights, and the lights from the few stores still open, and the ones closed but displayed needlessly lit signs, those became brighter.

It started slow. It was involuntary, but i had to release it, let the door open, let it push out. It started soft, enough that he couldn’t hear it, or was too wired to. But then it became loud enough that even Venkat turned. As way of explanation, I tried to explain. It was just the absurdity and the normalcy, both coexisting like yin and yang, in this one interaction. It sounds like such a New York thing, an all in one introduction to New York, and yet I've been in this city for seven years. Get offered drugs, get offered to give someone all your money, get offered to have a knife stuck in or a bullet shot through you. New york, new york. Let’s hear it for New York. I started to laugh.