A Perfect Mess

For David Freedman I read somewhere that if pedestrians didn’t break traffic laws to cross Times Square whenever and by whatever means possible, the whole city would stop, it would stop. Cars would back up to Rhode Island, an epic gridlock not even a cat could thread through. It’s not law but the sprawl of our separate wills that keeps us all flowing. Today I loved the unprecedented gall of the piano movers, shoving a roped-up baby grand up Ninth Avenue before a thunderstorm. They were a grim and hefty pair, cynical as any day laborers. They knew what was coming, the instrument white lacquered, the sky bulging black as a bad water balloon and in one pinprick instant it burst. A downpour like a fire hose. For a few heartbeats, the whole city stalled, paused, a heart thump, then it all went staccato. And it was my pleasure to witness a not insignificant miracle: in one instant every black umbrella in Hell’s Kitchen opened on cue, everyone still moving. It was a scene from an unwritten opera, the sails of some vast armada. And four old ladies interrupted their own slow progress to accompany the piano movers. each holding what might have once been lace parasols over the grunting men. I passed next the crowd of pastel ballerinas huddled under the corner awning, in line for an open call — stork-limbed, ankles zigzagged with ribbon, a few passing a lit cigarette around. The city feeds on beauty, starves for it, breeds it. Coming home after midnight, to my deserted block with its famously high subway-rat count, I heard a tenor exhale pure longing down the brick canyons, the steaming moon opened its mouth to drink from on high ...