A couple of years ago Rachelle and I went to New York City for the weekend. It was only the second time I’d been to the city, and I was feeling a pretty typical combination of excitement and intimidation.
We were staying at the Roosevelt Hotel at the corner of 45th and Madison, and although this is right in the middle of the swirling heart of Manhattan, it still proved next to impossible to get a cab. And so, along with everybody else from the hotel also looking for a cab, we would all clump together under the awning in the entranceway waiting for the doorman to get us all taxis.
I always felt kind of frustrated and humiliated by this. It just added to my insecurity about being a rube in the big city, making me feel like I was part of some micromanaged bus tour from a prairie church group.
On the second day I broke from the pack and ventured off to hail us a cab while Rachelle waited in the queue back at the hotel, in case I had no luck.
Manhattan is immense and throbbing. Each block– each half-block really– feels entirely unique to the previous one. The towering skyscrapers each fall away, replaced by different ones, and the constant flow of people and traffic serves as a current, giving you the sensation of movement and velocity even if you’re just standing still.
It’s exciting and a little bit disorienting, and when I was just a half block away from Rachelle, I felt like I was maybe a million miles away.
It was raining lightly and it was insanely competitive getting a cab, but I persevered, and like a native New Yorker (I thought), I ignored all pretenses to civility and order, and snagged a cab in short order.
However, due to a variety of one-way streets and traffic complications, the cab couldn’t drive the half block to pick Rachelle up at the hotel. And so I stood there on the sidewalk, holding the door of the cab open while I screamed Rachelle’s name, hoping to get her attention. I could see her, but she couldn’t see me, and my voice, thin and raspy, was instantly lost in the sounds of the city. And of course, as I was yelling and yelling, other people, like jackals, began to descend on my cab. I kept yelling Rachelle’s name, but it was no use. The cab driver was restless, and there were at least three other people trying to take-over the ride.
As this sad spectacle was unfolding a man with a ruddy face and a protuberant belly was walking by.
“What’s her name?” he asked.
Demoralized, I sighed, “Rachelle.”
He turned and faced down the street, and putting his hands up to his mouth shouted, “ RACHELLE!!!!!”
It was like he had fired a cannonball into the city.
Rachelle turned and looked up the street, saw me, and started to trot happily toward the cab. The man who had shouted her name, marched away, swallowed up into the city in less than five seconds.
A New York moment.