Jumping Off the Mystic Tobin Bridge

I close my eyes and see him windmilling his arms as he plummets from the Mystic Tobin Bridge, to prove me wrong, to show me he was good, to atone for sins like seeds in the lopsided apple of his heart, but mostly to escape from me in the back of his cab, a Puerto Rican lawyer in a suit and tie. I hated the 111 bus, sweltering in my suit and tie with the crowd in the aisle, waiting to hit a bump on the Mystic Tobin Bridge so my head would finally burst through the ceiling like a giraffe on a circus train. I hated the 111 bus after eviction day in Chelsea District Court, translating the landlords and judges into Spanish so the tenants knew they had to stuff their clothing into garbage bags and steal away again, away from the 40-watt squint that followed them everywhere, that followed me because I stood beside them in court. I would daydream in the humidity of the bus, a basketball hero, flipping the balled-up pages of the law into the wastebasket at the office as the legal aid lawyers chanted my name. I hated the 111 bus. I had to take a taxicab that day. What the hell you doing here? said the driver of the cab to me in my suit and tie.You gotta be careful in this neighborhood. There’s a lotta Josés around here. The driver’s great-grandfather staggered off a boat so his great-grandson could one day drive me across the Mystic Tobin Bridge, but there was no room in the taxi for chalk and a blackboard. He could hear the sawing of my breath as I leaned into his ear, past the bulletproof barricade somehow missing, and said:I’m a José. I could see the 40-watt squint in his rearview mirror.I’m Puerto Rican, I said. It was exactly 5 pm , and we were stuck in traffic in a taxi on the Mystic Tobin Bridge. The driver stammered his own West Side Story without the ballet, how a Puerto Rican gang stole his cousin’s wallet years ago.You think I’m gonna rob you?