Arrival Pt. V

(The Night of "Tex")

One day, sometime well after dark in my second month of New York life, I found myself ambling slowly down First Avenue.  It was probably near Midnight.  I had been unable to put together enough change to buy a Subway token and found myself stranded if not homeless for the night.  The problem was that home was in another borough and quite a walk at that.  I had lost time and energy figuring out what to do, and this was the result.

Earlier that afternoon, after banking hours which ended at 3 o’clock, I had gone to a Citibank ATM where I had about $24 in checking.  I was shocked to find a revised balance of $18.50, making it impossible to withdraw the minimum twenty dollars.  A monthly checking charge had swooped in and created this unpleasant reality.  The change in my pocket probably amounted to 75¢, but a Subway token was 90¢.  I was not a turnstile jumper, so stealing into the Subway was out. Begging? No.

I thought of my father’s friends, the Kischs.  They lived on East 70th Street, and I imagined that their extra bedroom, recently vacated by their daughter, might be available for me.  I called Mr. Kisch at a payphone (using a calling card to save change).  To my surprise, he refused to consider my proposal.  “Absolutely not,” he responded drily.  It’s possible that he simply misunderstood the situation, but I had a fatalistic streak in me, already ashamed for the situation, and didn’t contest it.

What I can’t understand now is why I didn’t simply walk the thirty blocks or so and borrow a few dollars. It’s hard to remember just why, other than pride was welling up in me.  Perhaps I was up for a survivalist challenge.  I don’t know.  Just the same I wasn’t sure I could make the walk all the way to Eastern Parkway or even that it was dangerous (during a crack epidemic that was sweeping the city), and perhaps I thought I could kill the night in a hotel lobby, but that was soon disabused of me.

I sat in the lobby of the Drake hotel, just off Park Avenue, for what probably amounted to no more than ten minutes.  I was not exactly dressed for a business meeting and must have been quite conspicuous because a suited security man came over and asked if I was staying in the hotel.  No, I was not.  With that, he firmly asked me to leave the premises.

Out in the street, a bit ruffled – I mean didn’t they know I was a promising talent landed upon their fair city? – I moved toward the South, toward Brooklyn.  I recall sitting on a curb on the perimeter of a park and finding that of little respite I kept moving.  Just how I managed to spend the hours I did is, perhaps happily, a bit of a blur.  It amounted to the fact that I had no desire simply to bed down on a bench.  I had to keep moving.  There was no possibility of even getting a coffee.

First Avenue is on the far eastern side of Manhattan Island.  It happens to contain many hospitals – some famous.  One in particular is about ten blocks south of the United Nations, and that is Bellevue Hospital.  There is an infamous ring to the name, associated as it has been with what we might term mental challenges – a madhouse.  It figures in the movie Miracle on 34th Street as Kris Kringle is being kidnapped to the hospital by the duplicitous Mr. Sawyer of Macy’s.  Its name strikes fear in Kringle and gives the audience a sharp sense of darkness descending on the picture.  Some nearly 40 years later, I was approaching its perimeter.  A wide sidewalk was lined on one side by a huge wrought iron fence, and in the midst of it was an impressive gate with a long walk beyond leading to the hospital complex.  It seemed to me that even the ancient trees further darkened the scene.  Just as I sauntered past the gate, I saw a seated man calling to me.