‘The Pearl Fishers’
Dear Diary:
I am 84 and have been fortunate to spend decades devouring Manhattan’s cultural scene. I have slowed down a bit now because of my age and balance issues, and I keep my social and cultural events confined to daylight hours.
Not long ago, though, I was invited to an evening gathering that I just couldn’t resist. The late hour meant taking a cab home, something I mostly avoid.
As the cab pulled up, I noticed that the driver was very scruffy, and my anxiety increased. But I needed to get home, so I pushed my trepidation aside and got in.
Imagine my surprise when I was greeted by the sound of my favorite opera duet.
“Oh,” I said with great astonishment, “‘The Pearl Fishers.’”
“You know your opera,” the driver replied. He began to sing along with the recording beautifully and continued until we got to my home.
When we arrived at my building, he waited until I was safely inside the front door. It was the best cab ride I had ever had in more than 50 years of living in Manhattan.
— Jan Keith
A. & P. Truck
Dear Diary:
I was waiting for the downtown Second Avenue bus one day in the early 1970s as I did every morning. Time went by, and an A. & P. truck pulled up.
Where are you going? the driver wanted to know.
Fifty-Ninth Street would be fine, I told him.
When I am done, I will take you there, he responded.
So I took the seat next to him. Before I got off, he placed a couple of oranges in my lap.
Walking crosstown, I made it just in time to relieve the night manager at the Plaza.
— Margitta Rose
Instinctive
Dear Diary:
I took the Q to Brighton Beach in June 2022. I was on my way to a cafe I had been to as a child.
There was one problem: I didn’t know the name or the exact address, only that it was somewhere in that neighborhood and had a blue awning.
I had been introduced to the cafe by the woman who cared for my grandmother after Alzheimer’s disease had incapacitated her.
Both women had left my life by then, but as I walked west that day looking for the blue awning, I was accompanied by a new woman. Although I did not know it then, she would become the apple of my eye.
After getting off the train and descending to street level, we began to wander along Brighton Beach Avenue.
In the distance, I saw a speck of bright blue, and we walked toward it. Soon, we were standing in front of a cafe, and I knew it was the place.
— Jake Stevenson
Sit-Ups
Dear Diary:
A man is doing sit-ups on a bench on Central Park West, his legs through the opening at the back and his feet below.
He is there a couple of mornings each month, pumping up and down with metronomic regularity. Today, he is wearing a hat, gloves and a long winter coat.
He often follows this routine for 20 minutes. Just sit-ups. Every now and then, he ekes out a slow one, following it with a volley of strong reps.
Why here, I wonder, or is this just one of his spots? Does he do one-arm push-ups somewhere else?
This time, he’s a half-hour in and averaging 40 a minute, so that’s more than a thousand in the bag. Who’s going to tell him to stop?
And then he does, clearly tired. It takes a few minutes to unfold his legs from beneath the bench. He pulls one out by hand and sits sideways for a while.
Then he stretches both legs out in front of him by hand and starts to massage his thighs. I see a U.S. Army sweatshirt underneath the coat. He stands with some effort, shuffles around the bench and grabs his backpack.
A woman walks by with her shepherd. The dog has a ball. The man must have said something because the woman speaks to the dog and then points at the man.
The dog flips the ball to the man, but he can’t quite catch it, and it rolls past him. The dog picks it up and moves on with his owner. The man begins to hobble down the street.
— Robert Beck
Very Tired
Dear Diary:
I was on the F train and very tired.
I fell asleep and did that leaning-on-the-passenger-next-to-you thing that you see other people do and hope you never do yourself.
I apologized profusely to the unlucky woman whose shoulder my head had grazed.
“It’s OK,” she said.
Not five minutes later, her head was on my shoulder and she was snoring gently.
— Jan Weinstein
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Illustrations by Agnes Lee
