The Colossus of New York

RUSH HOUR

EKING OUT all day and then quitting time and they hit the streets. It’s already dark. Their days are growing short. This time of year makes you feel even grayer than usual. Tacked-up cartoons add a little homey touch. They decide what will have to wait until tomorrow, click off desk lights, become visible over cubicle walls. These days disappointment is modular and interchangeable and snaps together easily. According to diagrams fit three words together: See You Tomorrow. People huddle into elevators and ride down into in-betweenness, into the space between work and home that is a kind of dreaming: it’s where they go to make sense of what just happened so they can go a little farther.

ESCAPE FROM midtown. Make a break for the wall or tunnel under. Elementary geometric forms run amok. Architects lay psyche in steel and concrete. Birth of first-born, bye-bye to mistress, alimony checks — it’s all there encoded in columns, the features of façades, windows that will not open. Walk in the shadow of subconscious, toil in the monuments to bitter decline. The skyline graphs the hubris of generations, visible for miles, and inevitably all who see it extract the wrong morals from the stories. Common buildings end too soon. Recognize royalty by height, on sight, and memorize their crowns over time. Some of these buildings arrived by tugboat, towed in from the South Pacific islands where they were carved from black volcanic rock. These dark glaciers. So much beneath surfaces. In buildings comprised of other buildings’ discarded thirteenth floors, sinister transactions unfold. Office Space Available. Few buildings around here deserve to be people, but judging by the grim procession of faces, some of these folks are halfway to sheetrock. Steel-boned, mortar-blooded. Granite without end.

ORNITHOLOGISTS recognize these corporate peacocks by their pinstripe plumage. What goes through their heads, this species of bird. That pair have the same tailor and when they run into each other feel a great relief. Patchwork and held together by slender threads. Rely on camouflage to keep you safe. So full of suit and briefcase envy that only a really good shoeshine is going to set him right again. Here comes Mr. Bespoke — all they have come to fear lies in his miraculous stitches. When discovered, he will offer no excuse for wearing women’s underpants. They’re simply more comfortable. The sound of her heels chipping away at office floors makes lesser mortals tremble, but these sneakers downright kiss her feet on the commute. One more day until Casual Friday, goody goody gumdrops. In suspenders, in wingtips, as if dressing up in the language of flight might make them lose the ground and become something better. The wind tunnel round this building finally alerts him that his fly has been open for hours. Bit of a nip in the air tonight.

SUCH CURIOUS rituals fill their days. Pawns and rooks move according to their rules. Take or be taken. Kill or be killed. Knuckle sandwich for the next person who steps on her foot. Summa cum laude from the Institute of Firm Handshakes. Turbine, meet Chassis. Hammer, meet Anvil. Next, exchange cards. Do you have a card. I have a card. Take my card. Do you like my card. Cards rub against each other in wallets and beget little cards. The secret origin of pocket lint. Stabbed by the pin he forgot to take out of his new shirt. Karma’s tiny arsenal. They invited her to join them for drinks but she rainchecked because it’s been a long day and some people have moved up a bit on the enemies list. Pencil them in for revenge, how’s Monday 2:30 look for you. Messy and teeming. Making plans, making haste, making partner. Move move move. The old man trips and falls and gets trampled and they’d help him to his feet but they’re late late late.

IF YOU LIVED here you’d be home by now. Still plenty of time to look back over the last few hours and fix-ate on what did not go as planned. Spasms twist, spasms wrench and warn, spasms pass in a few minutes if history has taught us anything about this ulcer. At the newsstand to pick up antacid he accidentally drops his change into the rows of candy. After hiding behind secretaries and voice mail all day little interactions bring anxiety. Chalk up her swagger through crosswalk to the daily compliments about her skill-set. These laurels are awful comfy, she just might rest a bit. At lunch today they sat him at a civilian table, that’s how fast word has spread. Snakes and ladders. Why not remove his desk, bring in a treadmill, hang a carrot from the ceiling and stop all pretense already. So weary— taking credit for other people’s work all day really takes a lot out of you. Failing at everything except his fear of success. Passed over yet again. Archivist of slights. Everyone else’s good fortune is food out of your mouth or a hug you never got from someone who should have loved you better. Halfway through lunch she realized glass ceilings allow glimpses up into another person’s hell. The guys in the mailroom are out to get him, he just knows it. I want your resignation on my desk in the morning.

PEOPLE WHO worked a little later pour over sidewalks, impending competition for seats on transportation. Wave good-night to the security guard. Electronic card keys monitor comings and goings, identifying employees not by dehumanizing numbers but cruel nicknames. Hello, Bucket Face. Surely the clients will gaze upon our lobby and appreciate that we are not messing around. Won’t they. Won’t they. Looks like marble but in fact is not. Atriums and human ebb-and-flow erode these looming cliffs. Developers plot demise, plot repeal of zoning laws vis-à-vis mandatory public space. Throw ’em a bone. Do public monies actually go to support the conception execution and installation of that hideous public art. Metal twisted into vaguely human shapes. In this autumn light hard to differentiate abstraction. Certainly their wilted postures suggest exposure to blowtorch, crippling temperatures, a variety of crucible. The elements have stripped their weatherproof coating and now they are defenseless. So we make do. Rust slowly, friends, and leave little bits of you wherever you go.

IMPROBABLE as it may be, the day still has a few indignities left. The day waters down indignity with frustration to make it last longer. Abomination, thy name is Subway. He cannot enter. They flood through turnstiles, hips banging rods, and will not let him enter. He must get home, but it’s all he can do to get halfway in before another one charges at him. A fish out of school. Everybody knows how it works except for him. All of them from every floor are crammed into this one subway car: the makers of memos, the routers of memos, the indexers filers and shredders of memos, the always-at-their-desks and the never-around. How do they all fit. Squabbling like pigeons over stale crumbs of seats. Everyone thinks they are more deserving, everyone thinks their day has been harder than everyone else’s, and everyone is correct.

INTO THE CATHEDRAL. Of course the Dutch were quite shocked to find Grand Central Station under that big pile of dirt. Alas the Indians and their strict no-refund-without-receipt policy. And, lo, as the earth cooled, Grand Central bubbled up through miles of magma, lodged in the crust of this island, settled here. The first immigrant. Still unassimilated. Ever indigestible. The river of skyscrapers flows around it. Travelers swim to it and cling, savoring solid handhold in roaring whitewater. Churches fill up at regular intervals, on a schedule laid out in the business plan. Like the best storms, rush hour starts out as a slight drizzle, then becomes unholy deluge.

CITY NIGHT swallows stars. Painted constellations on the vault of the Main Concourse must suffice. Substitute universe. The Bears and Cancers and Belts up there do not move, shamed into paralysis by the stars shooting across the terminal floor in homebound trajectory. Rack ’em up. The announcer’s voice is cue stick cracking these assorted colors into ricochet, into side pockets, into Track 17 Track 18 Track 19. Always a few standing dumbfounded, stupefied by spectacle and speed. If they can just make it to the information booth. Groan and crawl on elbows. On departure boards departing trains scramble up after promotion. He perks up when the name of his town comes over the PA. Save up for a house two stops farther down the line. Drain into exits for trains. Live every minute as if you are late for the last train. Mottoes for sale, get your mottoes here. They meet here every day at this time to hold hands and whisper. Every once in a while for a second against all odds everyone is looking at some kind of clock. Did you remember to save enough energy for one last sprint. What is that dreadful sound like hell’s door scraping open and shut: someone in corduroy walks behind them. Destiny approaches in many different ways.

TICKETS, EVERYONE. Hey, Conductor, can you say a little prayer, something pilgrim-oriented. They settle into pews. As luck would have it the kind of person who says, He’s a good person to know, sits next to the kind of person who says, I’ll set something up. What do they hide in their satchels and bags that they guard so carefully. Voodoo dolls lounge atop last week’s earnings reports. Dread the ride home because this might be the day your children discovered the true face of the world and how to explain that to them. What are skinned knees compared to what is in store. What waits for them across thresholds: marriages, mattresses, mortgages of all kinds. The commute is just enough time to get into character and remember lines. That awkward moment this afternoon when she forgot her daughter’s name. You have paid to sit, so pray. As if these daily humiliations and sacrifices mean something, are tallied by the ones who keep the books. Tomorrow we pick up where we left off. Sleep tight. Sleep deep. Sleep the sleep of the successful because somehow you made it through the day without anyone finding out that you are a complete fraud.