Crosstown

As uncooperative as the crosstown bus can be sometimes, on Saturday mornings before 8:30, you'll always get a seat to yourself.  In fact, you'll probably have your pick among a group of empty ones, perfect for setting down your bags next to you without the guilt or fear that someone will scoff at the sight of your bag having its very own seat.  Imagine that: the bus suddenly your friend, airy and spacious and welcoming.

At that hour, New Yorkers are calm, quiet, drinking their coffee, and generally, alone.  Have.  You.  Ever?  It's almost like a parallel universe.  It's so peaceful that sometimes I wish I could ride it all the way to the river and then maybe sit tight and circle the route back again with the same driver.  West side: tag, you're it. East side: tag, now you're it.

The passengers are a hoot.  There is most always a gentle-looking grandpa or grandma with thinning, snow white hair.  Also, a frazzled dad dragging his 7-year-old to a music lesson.  The stringed instrument is often, quite comically, twice the size of its student.  The bus sails smoothly across the park.  No sudden steering maneuvers send passengers flying across the aisle this morning.  No, sirree, bob.  And then there's always the girl with no cash leftover from the night before, clutching her MetroCard and doing the walk of shame, but without the shame.  Instead, she's replaced it with twinkling, smiling eyes.  The stale whiff of bar entangled in what was freshly blow-dried and styled just the night before; the wrinkled blouse; the high heels that no one would ever wear at 8:30 on a Saturday morning, for goodness sake; the skewed necklace clasp dangling off-center against her chest; but mainly, that dead giveaway expression on her face.  It's never smug, just giddy, in a calm, barely-controlled, girlish kind of way.  She doesn't even care that she has to take the bus home the morning after.  It's clear that the night was Worth It.  Like.  Totally.

It's all very grand, the still, happy, Saturday morning reflections against the murmuring of a whirring city bus.  I myself have a full day of work ahead, with nothing much to report on the evening before, but by the time the bus spits me off on Amsterdam, I've taken in the March sky's blue and listened to my fellow passengers' stories.  I pass the homeless man wrapped up in his storm of blankets.  He's been sleeping on those church steps for the past five winters I've been here.  And he's doing all right, too.