Her System
Dear Diary:
I live in an old, ramshackle building in Brooklyn Heights, and, like many New Yorkers, I’m quietly curious about my neighbors.
There’s the man upstairs who is learning to play the bass, practicing the same four chords over and over late into the night. There’s the young guy who stands outside with one of those toys — the ball on a string you try to catch in a little cup. What is that called?
But the neighbor I notice the most is an older woman I will call June. She is small and elegant and mostly keeps to herself. But every so often, I’ll find her standing in the doorway, smoking a cigarette, and we’ll talk.
June has lived in the building for nearly 30 years. She uses a walker, and even with it, her steps are slow and careful. You get the sense that coming downstairs for a cigarette is no small task.
So she’s devised a system: In her mailbox downstairs, she keeps everything she needs — packs of Camel Lights, a small lighter and two stiff coupons that she wedges into the door frame to keep the front doors from locking.
That way, she doesn’t have to carry anything, not even her keys.
“Too much trouble otherwise,” she explained to me once.
It’s a clever solution, although it means that anyone coming or going while June is smoking has to mind the system: sliding the coupons out, opening the door and replacing them after.
But everyone knows the routine. It’s her ritual, but in some quiet way, it belongs to all of us.
— Cornelia Channing
Drummer Girl
Dear Diary:
There she was, the drummer girl
Beating down a heater on Bleecker Street
Glaring into oblivion
With a look of indifference
I felt shy — I felt fearless
I approached — I confessed
Saw your show last night
You guys were legit
Drummer Girl took a drag
Exhaled and said
The ensemble pitched in
But those were my songs
That was my show
Did you see that crowd?
I owned them
I dropped them in their tracks
Before I could answer
She flicked the cig upward
Into a sky of low-hanging stars
And before that cig hit the asphalt
She was gone, leaving me to wonder
Why I liked her as much as I did
— Danny Klecko
Lemon Ice Royalty
Dear Diary:
After spending the afternoon at the Queens Museum, I was in the mood for an Italian ice. My companion suggested we walk to the Lemon Ice King of Corona.
After we got our ices, we asked a stranger to take a picture of us. Her husband started directing, to make sure he got the sign in the photo.
We thanked them for their diligence.
“Would you believe we’re not tourists?” I said.
“I’m from Flushing, and this is my first time here!” the woman said.
“Mine too!” I said.
She screamed with joy, exactly the way my mother, who was from Far Rockaway, used to do at happy coincidences.
Just as I was finishing the last of my dripping lemon ice a few blocks away, the same couple walked by us on the way to pick up their car at the Park Side Restaurant.
The woman said her daughter had told her we should have gotten a photo together. So we did, on both of our phones, with her pistachio ice in full view.
We exchanged first names. Hers was Jen.
“We’re the ice queens of Corona!” she said.
— Alicia Zuckerman
Summer Soup
Dear Diary:
On the last day of a heat wave in June, I was killing time between appointments at the Whole Foods near Bryant Park.
I savored the air conditioning and gulped cold water as I gazed down at the park below.
Suddenly, a woman sitting next to me gasped, and I turned to look in her direction.
“Oh,” she said, explaining the reason for her exclamation. “I just spilled soup, but none made it onto my blouse!”
I said it was her lucky day.
“I’m impressed you’re eating soup in this weather,” I added.
“It’s part of my new philosophy,” she said. “That the weather is not so bad. Say, ‘How’s the weather?’”
“Could be better,” I said, thinking she wanted my take.
“No, no, ask me how the weather is,” she clarified.
“OK,” I said, gamely playing along. “How’s the weather?”
“Not that bad!” she replied before returning to sipping her soup and putting her new philosophy into action.
— Nechama Stein
Best Life
Dear Diary:
I was at a matinee of “Wine in the Wilderness,” when I overheard a woman offering her friend a review of Jonathan Groff’s performance in the musical “Just in Time.”
“Jonathan Groff is living his best life,” she said. “He sings, he dances, he takes off his clothes.”
“Should I see it?” the friend asked.
“If you like that sort of thing,” the woman said.
— Helen Ellis
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