gpc

At Gantry Plaza I accidentally walk into a wedding photo shoot — an Indian bride and a white groom, standing between the piers. Oops. As I rush by them and their entourage, I see a second couple (Filipino) waiting in the wings with their wedding photographer.

I find a seat under one of the willow trees in the park, south of where the boardwalk starts. I’m not really sure what I’m doing here. Killing a little time. Thinking some things through.

There’s a chance I could get someone to meet me out here. Worth a shot…

An hour passes. I watch the ferry heading south. Parents with strollers circle the footpaths. 

After another hour, I get up to walk home. It’s not the most pleasant walk — Forty-Ninth to Vernon to Borden to Eleventh, then cross the bridge over to Ash, and down Commercial Street to Franklin. 

Halfway up the Eleventh Street stairwell to the bridge, I look out toward the water. It’s not a view that I recognize. 

This is home? Does it feel like home?

In the afternoon, Dr. Grabowski calls about the MRI.

“Look, you need to go easy on the leg, okay?” he instructs. “Instead of the stairs, you take the elevator. And don’t overdo it with the walking. Go easy.”

As he listens, the Chinaman thinks about the last time he walked over the bridge from Long Island City. It was a month ago, on his way back from the Upper East Side; a Thursday. He got off the 7 train at Vernon-Jackson, headed up 50th Avenue (“Yev-uh-nyew — is that how she says it?” he thought) and onto Jackson, and then up the ramp that curves around Manetta’s. He glanced to his right, at the L.I.E. tolls, and then at a biker racing down the bridge toward 11th Street.

Some pedestrian punk is gonna clothesline you one day and it’ll be ugly…

At the midpoint — where the leaves of the drawbridge come together — he looked across the water at the last block of Manhattan Avenue and the building where he used to work. To his left, at about ten o’clock, was a quaint view of the sewage plant.

Home.

He took the stairs down to the corner of Ash and McGuinness, and a few minutes later found himself sitting at Acapulco, waiting to begin the ritual of dipping hot french fries into cold salsa verde. With a frosted mug for the beer — a Pacifico…

“張? Are you still there?” Dr. Grabowski asks.

“Yeah, I’m here,” the Chinaman answers. “I’m just thinking…this would be a little easier if I weren’t still on the antibiotics. I could at least have a beer while I’m waiting for all these elevators.”

“Yeah, well — look, just a couple more days, okay? To be safe.”

“Sure, sure,” says the Chinaman. “Let’s be safe about it.”