It was Sunday, October 22, 1988. My last day in New York City.<\/p>\n
I had a late-afternoon flight out of the city. I slept in a bit, waking up around 10ish. I packed my stuff, ran down to a liquor store to get a six-pack of my long-lost second-cousin’s favorite beer, which I left with a thank-you card in the ‘fridge, and locked up around 11ish.<\/p>\n
And then…I moseyed. Meandered. Took my sweet time. I walked up Broadway a ways, past Union Square, just savoring the flavor of the place a little more.<\/p>\n
But finally I couldn’t put it off any more. I walked down into the subway, and went to Grand Central, and there onto the “7”\u00a0to LaGuardia. The subway became an “el” after it crossed the river, and I watched Brooklyn and Queens roll past below me, Manhattan receding in the distance. I switched to a bus somewhere in Queens – a very West-Indian neighborhood, if memory serves, and it might very well not – and wistfully watched as the neighborhood slowly switched from a tumbledown scrum to row after row of tidy brick houses – and, finally, the approaches to the airport.<\/p>\n
One of those jobs has to pan out. It just has to<\/em>, I thought. It HAS to. Nobody’s luck is that bad.<\/em><\/p>\n I caught my flight home without any major events. We climbed out of the city as the sun started slipping below the horizon. I craned my neck and watched the city fade into the distance behind me.<\/p>\n The flight home was uneventful. I flirted with a cute redhead who was in the seat next to me. She was connecting to Atlanta, I think; we talked for a solid hour; she about her travels (she was in sales), I about the job hunt. She seemed fascinated – but not enough to miss her connecting flight.<\/p>\n And I left it all behind when the plane landed. It was about 9:30 when we landed. I hurried down to the exit, and took a bus to downtown Saint Paul. That left me a mile to get home; I slung my suit and duffel bags, and started walking. It was a damp, chilly night, and as I walked across Lafayette over Swede Hollow, I felt…vulnerable. Alone. Compared to 4AM the night before, walking down a still-teeming Broadway, I felt like I was the only person on the street, but for the occasional shadow around the occasional corner.<\/p>\n Finally, I shambled up my street to the house. I walked up the stairs and around the back of the house. Passing the living room window, I saw Teresa, standing by the couch, naked, pulling on her underwear, yelling something or other in an angry shriek. I turned my head and went to the back door. “Hey, everybody”, I said with gusto as I rattled the key as loudly as I could in the lock. “Home from New York, baby!”. I opened the door, slowly, and loudly plopped my stuff on the kitchen floor.<\/p>\n “Hi, Mitch”, Teresa said, poking her head around the corner, having donned a burgundy turtleneck and jeans.<\/p>\n “It wasn’t nothing”, I heard Wyatt yelling from upstairs.<\/p>\n “F**K YOU, AS***LE!”, she yelled back at him, walking toward the front door. “NEVER AGAIN, YOU BASTARD!”<\/p>\n “See you, Teresa”, I called.<\/p>\n “Bye, Mitch”, she yelled back.\u00a0 “BYE, AS***LE!”<\/p>\n “Bye, you crazy bitch”, Wyatt yelled down the stairs as Teresa slammed the door.<\/p>\n I carried my stuff to my garrett at the front of the house. Wyatt slumped down the stairs. “How’s New York?”, he asked, sounding slurred.<\/p>\n “Love it, man”. Christ. He was bombed. “What’s up?”<\/p>\n Wyatt rolled his eyes. “Oh, Ruby called, and she answered the phone and got all weird”<\/p>\n “Crazy, man”.<\/p>\n “No sh*t”.<\/p>\n He opened the door, and walked outside as I slid my door shut, hooked it, and lay down on my bed.<\/p>\n Oh, dear Lord, I hope one of those things comes through for me.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" It was Sunday, October 22, 1988. My last day in New York City. I had a late-afternoon flight out of the city. I slept in a bit, waking up around 10ish. I packed my stuff, ran down to a liquor store to get a six-pack of my long-lost second-cousin’s favorite beer, which I left with […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1847","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-twenty-years-ago-today"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1847","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1847"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1847\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1847"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1847"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1847"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}