‘Spontaneously, We Both Start to Laugh, Giggle Even’

At the Movies

Dear Diary:

My friend Lyndie and I went to see “Hamnet” on the Upper West Side. After finding our seats, I went to get popcorn.

When I returned with a large container, Lyndie said she wouldn’t be having any.

Wow, I said, all this for me?

Suddenly, the woman sitting next to me reached over and held out a small plastic cup she had pulled from her purse. She looked at me with a sweet expression, and I understood that she wanted me to share.

I dug the cup into the container and handed her a scoop of popcorn. A few minutes later, I did it again.

— Michael Zorek

Love on the No. 3

Dear Diary:

I am the older woman with flaming red hair and a perfect powder manicure sitting in a corner seat on a southbound No. 3 train.

She is the pretty young woman leaning against the door, all but enveloped by her young man, who is possibly kissing her on the neck and cheek and possibly dozing. Either way, he is on her in a spectacularly public way.

Over his shoulder, I meet her eyes. She drops the lids for a moment, perhaps a tad embarrassed to be seen being so indulgent.

I grin in understanding. Spontaneously, we both start to laugh, giggle even. I can’t stop. Are women universally aware of the absurdity of love? Of men?

He keeps curling into her, and I see her whispered suggestion of some self-control. He persists. They have been in this playful public place before.

My stop is coming up. Still grinning, I begin collecting myself, making the familiar moves that signal that I am about to get off: sitting up straight, grasping the pole beside me.

As we pull into 14th Street, I walk toward them. His back to me, I put a hand on his shoulder to steady myself, presuming an intimacy he hasn’t been part of.

As I step onto the platform, the young woman and I share bright grins.

— Kathleen Campion

Cash and Carry

Dear Diary:

In February 1997 I traveled to New York from Germany to spend a week with my friend Sophia, who lived in Forest Hills.

As I prepared to head out for first day of exploring the city on my own, Sophia gave me lots of advice about being careful. Most importantly, she said, I should not carry my money all in one place.

“Distribute it all over your body,” she said.

So that’s what I did before going off on my adventure.

Stepping out of Penn Station and onto 34th Street, I looked up at the glass and steel towers, and the Empire State Building peeking out over them.

I felt someone tap me on the shoulder from behind.

Oh, god, I thought. I am being mugged in broad daylight.

I turned around and saw a tall man who was trying hard not to smile too openly. He looked toward my boots.

“Your money’s sticking out,” he said.

— Claudia Shapiro

Back in Town

Dear Diary:

I was back in New York after a couple of bad years. I walked along the Bowery in the pouring rain from my hotel on Ludlow Street into Chinatown to meet a painter friend for dinner at Deluxe Green Bo, where it’s cash only and there are vegetarian options.

What usually looked tired on Bayard Street gleamed under strings of light that cast their reflections in the water pooling on the concrete and rising to meet the steel cap of the curb. New York in the thick of a nor’easter.

My friend and I met at the door. There was a line, but no wait. We are only two; we are easy.

Hot tea. Soup to chase the remaining chill from the weather and the walk and the long-delayed flight that preceded it. Dumplings, mandatory.

Over dinner, we gossip. What galleries are going out of business? Which of the ones left are worth doing business with? Who isn’t paying their artists? Who got divorced and why?

The check is paid. Plans are made for the leftovers. Then it’s back out into the evening. The temperature has dropped, but the cold is pleasantly bracing after an hour in the restaurant’s humid warmth.

We part at a convenient corner on Broadway. The way back to the hotel already feels familiar. It is the feeling of New York picking up where it last left off.

— Bianca Bova