Late Returns
Dear Diary:
It was a little past 5 p.m. on a Friday, and I had packages to return. Piled high in my arms like a shoddy pyramid as I crossed Allen Street were an unsatisfactory potato peeler, a far-too-big coat and an artificial miniature cactus. There was a faint drizzle in the air.
My heart sank when I saw the line at the UPS store. A young woman at the counter was the cause. She had forgotten her bag on the subway and for some reason had come to UPS for help.
I was shifting my weight from foot to foot impatiently when a woman stumbled in dragging a suitcase.
“Can you help me post these cards, please?” she asked loudly, holding up a dozen postcards.
“Yeah, but we charge $6.50 per card,” the man behind the counter said. “Go to the post office. It’s only 56 cents.”
“Where is the nearest post office?” the woman said. “I am not from here.”
“It’s on East Broadway, but they close at 5,” I said from the back of the line.
“Oh no,” she sighed. “I spent the last two hours writing these, and my flight is in four hours.”
The room went quiet, except for the whirring of a photocopier.
The young woman who had lost her bag spoke up.
“I know you don’t know me,” she said. “But if you give me your postcards, I can post them for you tomorrow.”
“Wow,” the other woman said. “Really? You are an angel!”
Suddenly, everyone in the line seemed to stand up a little taller.
“I can message you when they’re shipped,” the younger woman said.
“WhatsApp?” the woman with the cards asked.
“No, I can install it though,” the younger woman said.
She added: “Next time you visit, we’ll have to get you some postcards from Brooklyn.”
“Deal,” the other woman said before walking out with her suitcase.
— Aayzed Tanweer
Working Cat
Dear Diary:
I was in Hell’s Kitchen when I noticed a tomcat sitting between two open sidewalk cellar doors outside a deli.
He was perched on the top step of the stairs to the basement, his head peeking above street level. The contrast of his white coat against the black doors caught my eye.
Perhaps he was on duty, monitoring for intruders. Or maybe he was on his break, enjoying a moment outside.
I can’t resist petting every cat I see. So I reached for him. Despite his professional aloofness, he obliged me.
It was almost as if it was part of his job.
— Ana Boavida Caflisch
Good Lunch
Dear Diary:
I was visiting my uncle for the first time in 15 years. I took the Q to Brooklyn, and we went to lunch at a diner on Kings Highway.
He ordered a hamburger. I had a turkey club. We discussed our relatives and the complications of getting older. He had stopped riding his bicycle only six months before, at 79.
There was a small commotion at the back of the restaurant. A steady drip of water was leaking from the ceiling. Two customers changed tables. The drip soon became a stream.
We watched for a few minutes as we ate and speculated as to the cause. Then the sprinkler came to full life. The kitchen staff tried vainly to capture the flow with a five-gallon bucket.
We rose from our table and left the room. Before long, the floor was covered with two inches of water.
My uncle asked the manager whether he could retrieve the rest of his lunch, but we were told to stay out of the flooded room.
He dashed in anyway to save his half-eaten burger.
— Patrick Prior
Collared
Dear Diary:
My cousin, an art historian, was coming to visit me in New York. We planned to walk through the collections of art from the Americas, Africa and Oceania at the Met.
After parking my car, I was walking along 82nd Street toward the museum when I noticed something in the street. On closer inspection, I saw that it was an intact horse collar. My instinct was to remove it from the roadway, so I picked it up.
For whatever reason, I was still carrying it as I got to the museum. Not knowing what else to do, I brought it inside.
I approached the coat check attendant and told him I wanted to check my coat and also my horse collar.
Without asking questions, he gave me two claim tickets: one for the coat and another for the collar. When my cousin and I left, I reclaimed them both.
The horse collar now hangs on a farmhouse wall in New Hampshire.
— Anton Angelich
Can’t Explain
Dear Diary:
I was walking down Ninth Avenue in the 40s. The foot traffic got bottled up a bit, which allowed me to hear part of a conversation a young woman was having on her phone:
“He’s getting his master’s in poetry,” she said. “How can I explain that to my father?”
— Mary Ann Conk
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Illustrations by Agnes Lee
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