A man with a cane stops me, “I’m a bodyguard,” he says. “A second-degree blackbelt in karate. I’m for hire. Got it?”

The blind man and his bull dyke guide are back today. He follows her, half a step behind, his hand resting on her shoulder. He moves timidly, tapping his cane in an arc in front of him, his ears attuned to her whispered translations of what it is like to see this room, these obstacles. But when she moves his hand to the back of the chair, the scene changes key. He straightens up and casts a great smile up at the sky. I wish you could see him. He’s wearing slick wraparound glasses and a shiny red jacket. He looks more like a space man than a blind man. He’s got his knuckles on the table, keeping time, he nods along as the woman talks. She’s speaking ardently. You know, with her hands.

He’s skinny and old, shuffling along. He looks like he’s seen better days, but his dark brown face shines. I walk past him and he says, “When I grow up, I’m gonna get one just like you.” He’s laughing at his own joke.

I turn around and wave.

“You hear me? That’s right. Gonna get you in a kitchen.”

Now I’m laughing. “You don’t want me in your kitchen.”

“All you gotta do is boil water. It’s easy. That’s all I ask.”

My neighbor used to be a fireman, and got retired when he fell through a roof. Tonight something is burning nearby, there are screaming trucks and strobing lights around the corner.

He’s out in front of his building, leaning on the fence. “Somebody’s going to work.”

There are people on any block who observe the comings and goings on the street, who keep its pulses. He is one of them, and at first I think he means me, that I’ve been going to an office.

“Every day now,” I say.

“No, I mean over there,” he says, pointing toward the trucks. He rocks back and forth on heels. “I miss it,” he says. “You smell that and the adrenaline gets going.”

Then he closes his eyes. “Smells like victory.”

On this line, you never get that chipper automated voice announcing the stops, and on this particular morning, it’s my favorite conductor. The one who sounds as smooth and easy as a 70s radio DJ, or rather, a teenager impersonating one. His voice isn’t quite deep enough. He speaks as though it were not only his duty to inform you of your location under the grid of the city, but also to ease your hard journey through the tunnels, and by consequence through your life.

Today he says, “Good morning, and welcome to day number four of the work, school, and play week. A big congratulations goes out to the NY Yankees.” And then his voice breaks character and squeaks, as though in parentheses, “Yay!”

We’re rushing into a station, he goes on. He knows exactly how much time he’s got until the doors open. “Don’t forget there’s a tickertape parade tomorrow, everyone come out and cheer. It’s now nine am exactly. Have a good one out there.”

Next to me, a woman gasps. “Shit,” she says. “I’m so late.”

I hear him and his buddy walking behind me first, joking about a hole in someone’s transmission. When they start to pass me, I look over to say hi, we’re passing too close not to.

The one of them stops short. He says, “Hey beautiful.”

I laugh, that’s what I always do. They start walking alongside me.

“How is it I’ve been around here all my life and I’ve never run into your pretty face before?”

“I don’t know, I’ve been living here four years. Maybe you just weren’t looking hard enough.”

The other one laughs. “Good answer,” he says.

“Well, beauty in the eye of the beholder, right? So how long you been beholdin’?”

I laugh again, I have no idea how to answer that.

He swings a hand through the air. “No, I’m just a joker, don’t mind me. Tell the truth I’m a little lonely, that’s all.” He looks at me with soft, honest eyes. He’s handsome in a stocky way. He smiles and I see that his each of his teeth is ringed in gold.

“I can’t really help you with that,” I say, “I’ve got a boyfriend.”

“Yeah, how long you had that problem?” His friend laughs, walking faster past us toward the corner, leaving some room.

“The problem of a boyfriend? Oh, a good while.”

“You know, you can work around that, nobody the worse for it.” He’s pushing me now, the eyes have gone sly.

We’ve gotten to my stoop, I open the iron gate. “I stick to the letter of the law on that one.”

“I used to be a lawyer,” he tells me, “didn’t last long.”

“No? Didn’t like it?”

“I just had attention issues.”

I wave a hand, encompassing the world. “That’s sort of the national diagnosis, isn’t it.”

“No,” he says, the gilded teeth flashing again. “Just too many beautiful women around.”

The afternoon light is bright and clear after days of a low grey sky. I take my camera out and walk my usual beat around the canal. The massive Paulownia trees that used to shade the empty lot at the end of my block have been torn down. I spend a while photographing their remnants, the stumps and branches still embedded in the rusty fence.

A couple approaches me, the man is wearing some kind of goggles. His hair is curly and springs out from under the goggle-strap. He starts talking. He asks which way to the big graveyard, and I point down the avenue, “It’s a long walk, though.”

“That’s ok, it gets rid of the stress.” The woman nods and pulls him by the hand, but he’s not done here, not at all. He reads my hoodie and asks, “What’s ‘wake up‘ is that a political thing?”

“No I just made it. Like, we should all wake up.” Before I’ve even finished he’s racing on, you have to imagine this, it’s unending, and utterly without inflection.

“Oh are you into Buddhism because I’ve been reading this guy who tells it all in stories about four animals and how you’re supposed to see your life like a movie and let it be in the past and that helps with the stress you know what I mean.” She tugs his arm again. “See here I go I’m not walking yet so it’s not helping with the stress and I guess we should go but I’m still talking.”

She’s tugging harder. She smiles at him, without frustration. She puts an arm on his shoulder and turns his body toward the avenue.

He’s wearing a varsity jacket, and when she pivots him around, I see that it’s got the name of my high school on the back. Not my year, I’m sure of it. I’d remember that.

The clerk is a small Muslim woman with a sheer scarf tossed around her neck and covering her head. She likes my red stripes.

“How do you do it? I do my daughter’s with food coloring.” She sweeps her hands across her brow and then down by her shoulders. “Her bangs, and then the ends. Other daughter wants blue, green. I do whatever they want.”

I’m imagining these bright peacocks hidden under veils. “Do they wear scarves?”

“No, not at all. That is their choice. I teach them what I want to teach them, what I believe. They have their own brains. They have to choose, or not choose. I can’t force them.”

She leans forward over the counter, smiles a little. “My son, he wants green hair too.” She slides one finger across the counter, a division. “I say no. There is a line.”

The parking lot has a sign with pictures of employees who’ve worked there for 10,20,and 30 years. I’m trying to imagine what that’s like, when one of them gets out of a Range Rover and winks at me. I nod toward the sign. “Which one are you?

He points to a photo at the top of the sign. “Thirty  years, baby.”

“All that time,” I say.

“I like cars,” he shrugs. “And I get a no-show every other Friday.”

“A no-show. How do I get one those?”

“Stick around, baby. Stick around.”

I can’t quite parse the innuendo but it’s there in the low roll of his voice all the same.

Today everyone’s talking. The contractor wants to talk about my shoes. “They’re good for my back,” I tell him. “Usually I slouch.” I drop a shoulder forward to show him, and he taps it with one finger. “Bad habits,” is all he says.

The butcher likes my scarf. “Emergency purchase, the other day when it got cold all the sudden.” He smiles. “That’s the only way to shop.”

Out on the street, a little boy backs up against his mother’s legs and stares at me. “Your hair is red,” he says. He’s terrified.