Mott Street at the edge of Columbus Park — a low iron fence separating the wet sidewalk from a concrete square, one wooden folding stool already placed at the center of an otherwise empty expanse, plane trees at the perimeter holding residual drizzle in their canopies — she has stopped at the fence line and is watching the old man who brought the stool — he is seated twenty feet away, facing nothing, waiting
The rice rolls came out of the steamer in a white plastic tray and the woman set them down without looking at me.
I'd been on Mott Street before six. The drizzle had stopped and started and stopped again and the pavement held it in grey sheets. Produce crates stacked sideways against a wall, the dark waxy green of things just unloaded. The smell was wet cardboard and something vegetable underneath, cilantro or something like it, not yet cut, still whole.
I wore the linen skirt because it was already hot at six and I didn't want anything touching my legs more than necessary.
The congee counter was three stools and a ledge. I took the end one. The broth arrived and I didn't ask what was in it and I didn't need to. Ginger, the faint mineral of the porridge itself, a thread of sesame somewhere in the oil. The woman behind the counter moved between two stations in a rhythm I could follow but not interrupt. Nobody slowed for me. That was the whole point.
White ceramic bowl of plain congee, pale opalescent broth with a slick of sesame oil pooled at the surface, thin ginger threads visible
When it started to drizzle again I pulled on the overshirt, not because I was cold, but because it felt like the right amount of covering for standing outside watching Columbus Park slowly fill up. An old man with a folding stool arrived before anyone else. He set it down in his spot and looked at nothing for a while, waiting for the park to catch up with his presence.
Doyers Street at the bend — a curved two-block lane that dogleg-turns so sharply the far end disappears, tenement facades stained with decades of weather, a single fire-escape staircase descending to eye level above a doorway, the gutter carrying a thin line of moving water audible in the quiet — she has reached the bend and stopped — the street ahead vanishes around the curve, she is listening to the water in the gutter before deciding to continue
Doyers Street, quiet enough that I could hear the water moving in the gutter.
I thought about a bar I'd sat in once where nobody knew what I was doing there, and couldn't decide if that kind of anonymity was rest or just the shape of it.
The bent curve of Doyers Street at its elbow — the narrow bend where the street turns, Chinese-language shop signs and hand-painted facade lettering lining both sides, pavement holding the last of the drizzle in flat grey sheets
I put on the overshirt and the chain before I started thinking about the flight. Not because I had to be anywhere yet. Because it felt like the right way to close a morning that had nothing wrong with it.
The stool was still in the park when I left.
a produce section of Mott Street before six — cardboard crates stacked sideways against a corrugated metal shutter, dark waxy heads of bok choy and whole bundles of cilantro still rubber-banded, the pavement holding the drizzle in grey sheets, a single bare bulb above a recessed doorway to the left throwing amber onto the wet stone — she has paused in front of the stacked crates, one hand raised to but not touching a cilantro bundle — she is smelling it, eyes half-closed, not yet moving on
What she wore
day7-scene1
I wore the linen skirt because it was already hot at six and I didn't want anything touching my legs more than necessary.
day7-scene2
When it started to drizzle again I pulled on the overshirt — not because I was cold, but because it felt like the right amount of covering for standing outside watching Columbus Park slowly fill up.
day7-scene3
I put on the jacket and the chain before I started thinking about the flight — not because I had to be anywhere yet, but because it felt like the right way to close a morning that had nothing wrong with it.