Schizohedron's Delivery Service

THIS PAST SATURDAY, I WAS heading out to the gym, just ahead of a threatening mass of thunderheads bearing down on the area. I'd parked my car close to the front door of the apartment complex in anticipation of the coming deluge, but it hadn't struck just yet.

As I walked out of the complex, I was flagged by an elderly tenant, who asked me, "Where are you going?" In response, I pointed to my car, not 20 feet away. I continued walking to the vehicle, not knowing that this fleet-footed woman was following me. When I popped open the door, she asked — from right behind me, which nearly made me jump over the car from surprise — if I could drive her to church.

The church to which she referred lies within sight from my front door, about a five-minute walk. (Maybe a little longer for her, an octogenarian, but one with few mobility issues, it seems, if she could sneak up on me like that.) I guess she was nervous about getting caught in the imminent rain. To which I initially thought, Your cure is an umbrella. But what sort of Nazi would I be if I just left her there?

I clarified that we were talking about the same church — this becomes important — then began clearing out my front passenger seat. She began working the back door latch. I shooed her away to clear the considerably more cluttered back seat. Amid a storm of "Thank you"s and "God bless you"s, I drove out of my parking lot and began negotiating my way over to the church, where a decision would have to be made over where to drop her off.

My plan had been to deposit her on the curb from my passenger side and let her make it into the church from there, but seeing as she'd beelined for my back seat (why do only old ladies want to get into my back seat? Who am I, Max Bialystock?). From that point, I'd be dropping her into oncoming traffic. So instead of just letting her out onto the streetside curb, where she stood a good chance of becoming one of those stuffed animals you find on the front of garbage trucks, I asked which set of steps she preferred to climb.

Now by this time, I'd already picked up on the fact that she wasn't quite all there. I'd had this exchange with her:

Me: It's a shame we're losing the resident manager to National Guard duty. He's the only one we've had in nine years who got anything done.

Her: Are you the manager?

So I wanted to get her clear intent before I made the last bit of her journey needlessly complicated by dropping her at the wrong point.

I asked her if she wanted to be let out in the courtyard or around the side. The courtyard had three fewer steps leading in than the side entrance, but would let her get right onto church property without walking through part of the driveway. The side entrance had more steps, but also sported a ramp . . . but in turn would also force her to share part of her approach with traffic under the porte cochere.

I briefed her on the differences, and she asked to be let out into the courtyard, again showering me with quite unnecessary proxy thanks on the part of her deity. From there, she walked back into the driveway . . . toward the longer steps of the side entrance.

I have no idea how my golden years will arrive, whether as a gentle slowing of function, a dissolution of mental capacity so slow I don't even notice its disappearance, or as an abrupt break with soundness of mind or body that revokes any connection with my past. With few if any remaining chances to produce children, much less to presage grandchildren, I suppose I, too, will have to rely on my wits and others' altruism to negotiate the days' challenges when I arrive at the same stage of life as this ride-wranglin' churchgoer has. Let's keep our fingers crossed for both.

Penny for Some Thoughts at the Five and Dime

A HALF-DECAYED IRONING BOARD cover compelled me to walk to my local five-and-dime for a replacement. Coupons in our town savings mailer sweetened the deal: 15% off, which, combined with a stroll to the store instead of a drive, helped me stack monetary and gas savings. Keeping the spending local, rather than pouring it into a big-box store whose profits are counted out of state, also had appeal. This trip was dipped in win.

I combined this run with a drop-off of books at the library and a stop at the dry cleaners — another key coupon-use center — with some work shirts. Once at the five-and-dime, I wandered the ware-crammed aisles for a spell, eventually triangulating on the housewares via the kitchen goods. A display of various board covers awaited, as did someone who recognized me.

A woman in her fifties said, "I know you." I couldn't place her — a friend of my mother's? Local restaurant owner? Someone from a doctor's office? — so I let her continue. "We used to work together. I left [the company] in December."

I still didn't recognize her, not having memorized all the office names and faces by that point, but her citation of last-year's layoffs was recognition enough. She said she'd heard about the company's most recent play — the move of jobs to Central City — and added a depressing detail I hadn't heard: Those who did move out there would have their salaries cut to match the local market.

From my perusal of the Central City real estate guides placed in the lunchroom for those considering relocation, I had noticed a striking difference in rent and home prices. I'd suspected the new additions to my magazine staff would be paid less than the local veterans who'd left. The rents (about 50–70% what I'm paying here for the same digs; my full NJ rent would get a whole townhouse) and home prices (the bubble-inflated price of my parents' average suburban home on a quarter-acre would get a multiacre estate, an empty plot to McMansionize, or a palatial condo) listed in the guides confirmed this hunch. But somehow I didn't imagine they also would slash current salaries.

Back to my former coworker. I told her that few seemed up for the move, and that the head of one afflicted department estimated a zero-percent acceptance rate. In this light, I said, this effectively was another round of layoffs. She agreed and urged me to grab all I could. I mentioned I'd been through a layoff myself, so my current level of trust in any employer to provide long-term job security was nil, so I had been doing just that since my start. I also let her know how my new coworkers on the book all were hired in Central City, which made my retention mystifying and tenuous. She smiled and reiterated her "grab all I could" advice, adding that eventually we'd be able to lodge the remaining Tri-State Area employees in someone's house. Considering this is probably how we started up, I said, at least it would be a return to our roots. She laughed, and we parted ways.

That evening, I spent several hours reading about financial management and freelancing.

Entranced by Dextrous Fingers

AT THE CHRISTOPHER STREET stop on the inbound PATH this morning, a mother and her little girl boarded the train. The former was pushing the latter in a stroller. The girl, no more than 3, was quite happy, as train-bound children go, squealing and smiling as she rolled onto the car. Many kids take poorly to the rail-travel experience. Not this little blonde trooper.

Once we got rolling, the girl began studying her right shoe. She tugged at the lace, letting both ends go when the knot dissolved. She then unlaced the top two eyelets. The mother did not intervene. I credit her for this. Safe in the stroller as she was, the child was in no danger of losing her shoe to the oblivion of the gap between train and platform or anything like that.

Or perhaps the mother knew what was to follow. With strikingly nimble fingers for such a young girl, she took both laces and slowly began relacing her shoe. She managed to thread both laces back through the fairly narrow eyelets with delicacy and determination. Then she began looping the laces while musing to herself in an imitation of the singsong her mother might recite while tying the girl's shoes.

I was riveted by this precocious display. I didn't successfully tie my own shoes until I was at least 7. I didn't have time to watch the entire procedure, with the train arriving at my station before the girl could finish the knot. From what I saw, however, I am sure that the shoe was tied by the end of the line at 33rd Street. Whether it was an observant and talented girl, a mother unafraid to let her child learn when she shows a skill, or a combination of the two, it left me with some small hope that at least one kid showed a sign of becoming a self-reliant adult.

Peppermint Death March

I TYPESET NEWSLETTERS. They tend to arrive 2 weeks to a month before they mail out to subscribers. Around this time of year, I should have at least half of the December titles out to the printer. I'll start getting January 2007 issues around Thanksgiving. It's a bit of a time warp, but I am used to it.

What I am not used to is seeing full-scale mall Christmas pageants 2 weeks before Turkey Day.

I went to Paramus Park last night for pizza. Big spender. The food court is actually a second-floor plaza above the mall's atrium, capped by a glass roof. Noise tends to echo from the space, and when I entered the mall, I heard big, amped voices from the food court.

I was stunned to see the mall totally tricked out for Xmas. Moreover, a large area usually filled with tables for diners was hosting a full-scale pageant. Poorly amplified singing echoed off the glass ceiling and filled every corner of the food court with shrill holiday cheer. This on the second of two days' worth of 60º weather.

Wincing, I edged up to the pizzeria, which had the misfortune of being adjacent to the floor show. I'd seen the counter-kid on duty there before, so after I ordered, I commiserated with him and asked how long he'd been putting up with the noise. He said they had started that afternoon, and the mall was done over earlier in the week. So they donned the red and green when November was still in single digits.

I noticed a guy dressed as Santa Claus edging up to the scrum. The boss of the pizzeria said, "Here comes Santa! He's probably crocked."

"Wouldn't you be?" I asked.

"Oh, yeah. I'd have to be totally lit!"

The pizza arrived, and I stuffed a dollar into the tip jar, saying to the kid, "Put this toward a pair of earplugs." As I sprinkled hot pepper and oregano on the slices, a third employee, a teenage girl, covered her ears and yelled, above the holiday din, "I am so sick of this!"

I ate at a table as far as I could scrounge from the show, drowning it out as best I could with the inspired violence of a James Ellroy novel. It's not that I haven't seen any traces of the holidays this early before, or that I am a fanatical anti-Xmas zealot. In fact, I host a holiday party each year. It's just abrupt to be immersed in the season while Halloween pumpkins are still moldering on porches across my slice of suburbia.

After downing the last chunk of crust, I descended to the main level of the mall and the exits. Santa had moved downstairs, and what I heard described as a two-hour line of families was snaking around the atrium, waiting for picture time with Saint Nick. With some satisfaction, I saw two of his "elves" argue briefly before snapping out of it to smile at one of the families in line and pass some assurance of imminent service. Maybe they were already sick of the season. For them, it still stretched long ahead of them, like a road of shattered candy canes, a peppermint death march serenaded by impatient parents, frightened children, and the mindless shriek of a million shoppers' ringtones.

Wandering Monster

I TAKE THE TRAIN in and out of the city each workday. Others settle for just the tracks.

While entering the 14th Street PATH station this week, I passed two street people on their way out. Both wore layers of dirty clothing, disintegrating shoes, and heavy facial hair. They also carried huge garbage bags over their shoulders. Not an uncommon sight in New York City, though usually not in the PATH stations, because the range of transit through the city is far more limited than via the New York Subway proper.

For those unfamiliar with the PATH tubes, the far wall of the station is lined with shallow niches. Some of them are open and join with the tracks on the other side, permitting pipes, wires, and workers to pass through. Also, evidently, street people.

As I took a place on the platform, a third street person emerged through one of those open nooks. Keep in mind that the third rail hugs the far wall as well. I watched — never having seen someone get electrocuted before — as this guy stepped with practiced ease over the shielded third rail, walked casually to the platform edge even as a train approached down the tunnel, and heaved first his bundle and then himself up onto the main floor. He then strode out the turnstile to join his comrades as casually as if he had debarked the train that screeched to a halt in the space he had just traversed.

How Not to Beg on the Streets

AFTER WORKING IN NEW York City for more than 7 years, and having spent another 4 living in Boston, I have a fairly thick skin when it comes to panhandlers. I would rather aid an organization that works to secure them the means to escape their dire straits long term via mental-health care, employment, or lodgings. Failing that, I would choose food as a means of direct assistance to these folks.

This attitude was born of seeing people like the woman sitting outside the 14th St. PATH station this morning. Next to this busy portal sat a well-fed woman with an extended written request for money on a clean-looking piece of cardboard. What made her stand out from the average beggar was her cup of coffee and her cigarette.

Now, this wasn't some nub of a filter she might have scrounged a la Roger Miller's "King of the Road" with his cigar butt. This was a healthy length of nail. Cigs in New York cost upwards from $5.50 a pack, and coffee starts at six bits.

This isn't the first instance of misplaced charitable investment. Up in Midtown, I used to pass a man who had a table, a water bottle with change and a few bills in it, and some literature on the homeless outreach program he supported. He had a solid rap, too, one that he projected well over a block. For a while I could recite it from memory.

I occasionally dropped some pocket change in his bottle, seeing as he had a powerful sales pitch and would sit out there in any weather. What stopped me, though, was seeing him smoking one day. This guy could be dropping that money, anywhere from $5 to $6.50 a pack, into his own bottle, which depending on his dosage could be anywhere from $120 to $360 a month. Granted, even charity god Paul Newman might have a glass of wine with you now and again. But as vices go, this one is entirely needless and could have helped a lot of the people he was exhorting the office workers streaming around him not to forget. My contributions to his bottle stopped that day.

Fast forward to this "beggar" outside the PATH stop. I wanted to ask her precisely how many commuters she had to hit up to get enough dough for a loosie cig, but I hadn't the time or the inclination. I can only hope others who passed her by had the same thought as I did. What's more regrettable is that she might bias people of charitable leanings to snuff that impulse when presented with a legitimate opportunity to do good.

I Am the Key Master

SOME TIME AGO, I detailed how I stumbled upon a handbag at Whole Foods and, via the store's customer service desk, returned it.

Evidently, this began an unwitting streak of being a roving lost-and-found. Two recent incidents, both involving keys, point to this trend.

The first one occurred about two weeks ago. While entering the lobby of my building, I spotted a car key. It was one of the more recent ones, with the functional fob forming the base of the key, which was more of a long metal probe than a traditional key-shaped implement. A tag indicated the car was purchased at a Bergen County car dealer.

I went back out to the lot and pressed the panic button. (This feature, a Nobel Prize–level innovation if you ask me, is the only way I could find my various rental cars in the anonymous sprawls of the many Vegas parking garages in which I have wandered. Until I learned to write down the level and section, that is.) A white sedan in the parking lot across the street began honking and flashing its lights.

I took a look at the car, inside and out, to see if I could determine the owner. No clue. Based on its location, though, I figured that this person had bought something in the strip mall to which the parking lot catered, then had visited someone in my building. I went back upstairs to make two simple signs with my phone number, which I planned to hang on the two most likely exits this person would take.

I found the owner of the car while posting the signs. It turned out to be a regular visitor, whose elderly father had, until recently, lived directly across the hall from me. (He suffered a fall some weeks ago, and has been recuperating under close care in a rehab facility.) She left the key out front when she switched hands between her father's mail and her house keys, and when I found her in the entryway, she was digging through her handbag with the unmistakable air of someone who knows he or she came in with something and now, for the life of him or her, cannot put a hand on it. I asked her if she was looking for something, and she accepted her car key with gratitude and relief.

So upon returning home tonight, I had cause to think about that incident when what do I see sitting in a jagged brass jumble next to the mailboxes but a hefty set of keys. This was a little more serious. Anyone with half a brain and a larcenous heart could spend a little time figuring which key opens the front door, then do a few things: enter the complex at will, copy it and allow confederates to do the same, go door to door with what they suspect might be an inside key and try to break in, or sell the whole lot to someone with the time and inclination to do any of the above. Plus they'd potentially have a free car, as there was a key for some vehicle among the bunch.

As with the last car, I had only a fleeting moment of the risk–reward equation of grand theft auto, and scooped up the keys to at least get them away from thieving hands. Once upstairs, I had dinner, and while finishing, I made up another sign, this one with my cell number, because my plan was to write for a while at the library (my current location). I cleaned up, bagged my Mac, and headed out, affixing the sign to the front door before leaving.

Just as I was checking out a book that, fortuitously, had arrived today via interlibrary loan, my cellphone vibrated. I missed that call, but it immediately began vibrating again. Definitely the panicked repeat dialing of someone down a couple of dozen keys. It actually turned out to be that person's employer. The owner was a domestic or a home health aide (I didn't inquire which), and the caller was ringing me to see if she could head over to my apartment to pick up the keys. I explained that I would be there in about 5 minutes, as I was at the library, and the caller said the person would be downstairs to meet me. I also got her name — Maria — so they could ID themselves.

I drove back to the apartment quickly enough (despite a traffic backup from the train passing through town), and found a Latin American woman waiting in the front hall. She walked up to my car, said her name was Maria, and gratefully received her keys with several thank-yous and God-bless-yous. I briefly told her about the previous key incident, and she pronounced me a good person. Well, let's not get hasty, I thought, but I thanked her for it and let her head on out as I returned to the library.

So it seems like I'm on a streak! If you should happen to misplace something over the next few weeks, you might call me first before panicking. At this rate, I just may have found it.

Good Deed for the Day

I MANAGED TO SCORE one for the side of good, which, despite my low-smoldering desire to be reborn as a comic-book supervillian, is where my allegiance really lies.

I was at the Whole Foods supermarket, wending my way among pyramids of pornographically stacked produce, I noticed a handbag. It was sitting on a corner display table, alongside some avocados, as though someone had placed it there to make room for fragile fruit in the basket section of their cart, then rolled along without it.

I hefted it. Despite its small size, it was heavy. I peeked through an opening and spied a bunch of keys nestled against a loose wad of bills. So unless she walked to the market, she was a captive audience.

At the end of the aisle, I saw a woman walking around the corner. Keeping the bag in view, I got some jellybeans from the adjacent bulk-foods wall. She didn't return, but that didn't mean it wasn't hers. It crossed my mind to open it, look for a license, and match her up to the picture, but from the view of the security cameras, that could only look suspect.

I decided the best place for the bag was at the customer service counter. Once up at the front. I suggested to the employees there that they page the person to get her to come forward. Both of the crewmembers agreed, and thanked me for turning it in.

Shortly thereafter, a page did indeed alert a "Christine" somebody to come to the customer service desk. I peeked around the corner of an aisle to see that it was, indeed, the woman I had seen leaving the produce area earlier. I flirted with the idea of disappearing into the night anonymously like some sort of good-deed ninja, but then I figured, what the hell, at least wander past. It sounded like she was genuinely surprised to have set it down without thinking about it.

For someone who takes mass transit like me, there's always a chance of leaving something behind on the train. I have done so twice, with a return percentage of 50%. I left my prized light winter jacket on the bus, immediately drove to the depot when I realized it, and reclaimed it. With a fantastic long scarf I had gotten while in college to help defend against penetrating Boston wind, however, I was less fortunate. That scarf made the Tom Baker Doctor Who's scarf look like a well-used Kleenex. My point is that I know that feeling of having forgotten some needful item behind, like a pit opening in your gut, and the panicked retracing of steps to retrieve it. Worse than either of the two articles above was a credit card I had used to pay for a meal at TGI Friday's. I had gotten a few miles down the highway, and had pulled into the lot of a strip mall when I realized my mistake. I tore ass back to the restaurant and ran in, to find the card still under the bill on my table. Thank goodness for sluggish servers.

So for now my karma is in the green. I wish there were some sort of conversion chart to see what I can now get away with. Hopefully I can spend it like some spiritual green stamp and club an obnoxious cellphone user to death.

Emergency-Vehicle Exacta!

NEW JERSEYANS ARE PRACTICALLY issued cars at birth. This state does not lend itself easily to car-free existence. Unlike a progressive state like Oregon or New Hampshire, where a thriving bicycle culture encourages the maintenance of options for those without cars, or New York City, where walking and taking mass transit is king, New Jersey has a sprawl structure and a culture to match. Acquisition of some form of beater car sometime in mid-adolescence is as solid a landmark for a Jersey boy or girl as the senior prom or the SAT. How else are you gonna get down the Shore on Memorial Day?

Thus the loss of a car is particularly painful. The violently exothermic death of a vehicle, however, carries a taboo fascination. This was evident in the parking lot next to my complex, in the parking lot of happening food market Trader Joe's, when I returned home from my usual Saturday chores.

As I rounded the bend to my cross-street, I couldn't help but notice a huge column of smoke arising from the vicinity of my apartment building. Flashing lights winked through the hedges bordering the parking lot. Traffic stood deep along the street, deeper than usual for this time. I learned why upon turning onto my street itself. An SUV was on fire. Flames belched from its open hood, giving it the look of a devilish forge. Firefighters swarmed over the busy lot — which surely had been thick with Trader Joe's shoppers before this car somehow burst aflame — diverting incoming traffic, keeping onlookers back, and aiming a hose full blast at the immolated engine.

I threaded my way down the street among cars being routed from the Joe's lot, parked, and called my parents as I tried to get a better view. As I briefed them on what I had found, the firefighters got in point blank on the car with the hose, suppressing the flames as their potential for setting off a gas-tank explosion diminished. By the time I had called Anne on the other side of town (who lives next to the fire station and had noticed more sirens than usual), the fire was more or less out, and the smoke rising from the truck was white instead of the sickly chemical brown.

But this wasn't all the excitement the emergency services of my town would face this weekend! As I had pulled into my lot, I noticed an ambulance parked next to the entrance of my building. I figured they had run out of room with the two firetrucks in the Joe's lot, so they had stashed this one here. Not hardly. While I was winding up my call to Anne, two EMTs exited my building, wheeling an elderly female resident out on a stretcher. (The average age of the tenants here is well above mine.) What were the odds? I didn't recognize the woman as I peeked in the ambulance window on the way in, but I did mention what I had seen to another tenant on her way out (under her own power, lucky her), so maybe she was able to determine who it was and can get news around to the other folks in my place for any follow-up.

I'll have to get the full scoop on how the fire started tomorrow in the paper. There sure wasn't anything inflammable around, not after the soaking rain we got over the course of last evening and part of the morning. For now, there's at least one more pedestrian in New Jersey, at least until the person's kin or friends scoops them up and rescues them from the horrors of having to expend effort on transport on foot.

That Street Is Poi-son!

ME: WALKING EAST ON 15th Street to the subway station on Friday night. Ahead: a slower, smoking woman talking on a cellphone. I speed up to pass. As I do, I hear her say, "I'll meet you on Bell Biv DeVoe Street."

I slow down to hear the rest of this.

"Yeah, Bell Biv DeVoe Street. 'That girl is poi-son!'"

I turn at this point, laughing at loud, to catch her eye. She smiles and says, "No, he's totally laughing with us."

She catches up with me at the corner of Seventh Avenue. I ask, "There's really a Bell Biv DeVoe Street?"

"No, it's Devoe Street in Brooklyn. My friends and I call it Bell Biv DeVoe Street."

"Oh," I laugh. "I thought some overzealous borough president had decided to name a street after them. Right next to Naughty by Nature Boulevard."

She laughs even harder, and walks up Seventh and away.

Is This Train Haunted?

I HAD AN ODD, potentially embarrassing encounter on the homebound train this evening. The first major shift in the train seating pattern occurs at the Wood-Ridge station, when the first group of riders disembarks and the folks stuck standing since they got on at Seacaucus get to sit down. It was at this point that someone decided to take the aisle seat next to me (I always sit next to the window).

Out the corner of my eye, I was convinced I knew the person. I don't think with the corner of my eye, though, so I tried to steal a full-on view so I could rule it out or face up to it. This is because I haven't seen the person I thought this might be for 8 years or so, a streak I have no desire to break.

Rewind for a briefing. This person was one of the few fellow graduates of mine with whom I remained in touch. He and I met in freshman year as next-door neighbors, then roomed together in junior year. He was the first acquaintance of mine to own a stereo component with a CD player in it, and he had scores of discs, which at the time — 1987 — were still novelties in long, tree-killing boxes. In expanding his collection to well over 300 over the first year of college alone, he also became the first peer of mine to face down immense credit-card debt. But his parents were loaded and he worked for his father, so his pain was minimal.

The reason I broke off contact with him was his eventual wife, whom he met in sophomore year. She was an expert psychological manipulator, in addition to being seriously troubled herself, and through a combination of sex and guilt, she latched onto him hard. They did break up a couple of times after college, though he eventually did return to her. It says something about how close I was to this couple that, not only did I get a detailed description of one of the breakups from both parties, the woman invited me up to college (she was a year behind us) for a weekend. I am almost certain that had I taken her up on this, I would have been a little more than a crying towel for her. I made excuses, gritted my teeth, and stayed the hell away. I knew how she had treated him, and I had no desire to wreck the friendship between him and me or to let her get into my head the way she had drilled into his.

They eventually reconciled. They had a lot in common: Both came from wealthy backgrounds, both had stressful childhoods (he lost a sister to a wrenching battle with leukemia and wrestled with his parents' divorce, she was adopted but was very much not adjusted to the fact), both were virulently racist. They married in 1995, at a time when I had finally found a girlfriend of my own, and was paying little attention to them as a result.

The marriage, like the relationship that led into it, was rocky. The bride's level of manipulation via guilt and, now, compulsive shopping rose to new heights. It was sad to see. The guy had the demeanor of a golden retriever, but she took advantage of it and fell back on her psychological diagnoses when he called her on her bullshit. She was seeing a therapist for a genuine condition, but she never failed to remind her husband of it when she crossed the line from gentle nagging to overt harassment. An example would be when we all went to Williams-Sonoma, and she filled a basket to the rim with junk, unneeded gimcracks and foodstuffs that she bought just to spite him. When he asked why she needed so many pieces of oven ware, she said, "Baking season's coming." He confirmed to me, later, that this was the first he had heard of her interest in such things. One hundred and sixty dollars of aggravation went on his credit card that day.

Perhaps worse, she antagonized and repulsed his other close male friends. She turned him against two of the other four guys in his wedding party besides myself and a guy whose residence in Germany probably spared him such direct assault. I forget precisely the excuses she used, but she convinced him they were no longer worth his time. I think I escaped this fate because I didn't live down there and thus wasn't on the scene all the time. Maybe she had some special fate cued up for me that I didn't allow her the time to enact.

This is because, in the late Nineties, I cut them off. It made me sick to see him so ill treated, and yet to have her speaking to me on the phone, by herself, as though nothing was wrong at all. I decided after one visit to make it the last. I hated to hear their racist ravings, their constant sniping at each other, and especially her hectoring him about how her AOL addiction was caused by her medication and job. When I moved again in 1999, I gave instructions to my parents not to disseminate my phone number to either one of them if they called. I have neither seen nor heard from this couple since.

And now it looked like the guy was sitting right next to me.

On the surface, his presence in Bergen County made no sense. The last I knew, he was living in the same mammoth condo development as his mother in Somerset County, a good hour down 287. Also, he worked at his father's business, which was based both there and way out in western New Jersey. Unless he had left his chosen field, he would have no reason to move up to Bergen and away from his remaining family. This, of course, presumed a divorce, as his wife would surely never allow such a move away from her own chosen position of maximum grief and frustration with her job, his family, and the community. But I wasn't sure it was him, and I was still angling for a better glimpse of his face, let alone his ringfinger.

I could see his features more clearly on a second look. Glasses were similar, as was the hair and profile. I suspected his hairline should have been higher, based on the last time I saw him and how his father's hair eventually went. But I also noticed he was reading Car and Driver. The college guy was also an avid car fanatic. Yet I lived with this guy for 9 months, so it was difficult to believe he had sat down without noticing me. I hadn't changed all that much, aside from having more gray hair and a little less of it overall.

I remembered a sure test. The guy I knew had a fairly unsettling way of clearing his throat and nasal passages periodically. Not as comical as Felix Unger, but actually fairly gross. Over 25 minutes, he would surely make the noise I had learned to dread while living and — worse —eating around him.

I heard nothing save a few common coughs.

When the train neared my stop, I got up to retrieve my coat. He stood. I still averted my eyes, for fear of being recognized, although I was convinced it wasn't him. From the position of the train door, I looked back. Definitely wasn't him.

Why I would be shy to reestablish contact with him alone, if he was alone, was a mystery I tried to unravel as I walked home. If he was split up from his wife, reacquainting myself with him wouldn't hurt. I guess I was afraid that he might still have been hitched to this unsavory woman, and that I would be pulled back into the drama with them. Frankly, if they need me that badly, they can write me checks as though I was a couples therapist. If, of course, there's anything left in the budget after the purchases for this year's baking season.

Evolution's Bones Showing Through the Skin

SOMETIMES, WE GET ABRUPT reminders of our simian roots. We are only a few million years into this form in evolutionary terms, a mere spit in the broad ocean of genetic trial and error. Maybe I was in the frame of mind to notice such links because I took in King Kong this weekend, which I enjoyed greatly. I found myself wondering, during the film, how much work the filmmakers had done with primatologists and in observing gorilla behavior to get the big guy's movements and actions correct. (I subsequently learned that Andy Serkis, who did the motion-capture work for Kong, went on his own to Africa to study gorillas directly.)

So assuming my primitive primate radar was twitching today, I regarded the following scene in those terms.

I boarded the train this evening at nearly the last minute. It was also short a car, so I didn't find seats until I reached the front car. There, I sat down next to a red-haired woman who was reading a book. She took notice of me as I stashed my coat and a loaf of bread on the luggage rack. Natural red hair, glasses, freckles. Nice outfit. Boots were a plus. I took all this in at a glance, then dug my own book out of my bag and awaited our departure.

As I read, I noticed her playing with her hair. With a sideways glance, I saw her twirling the fingers of her right hand through the longish red hair as she continued to read. I didn't read anything into this. I have read that, if a woman does this during conversation, it indicates interest. I don't know if this opinion came from someone with any sort of psychological degree — or, perhaps more pertinently, an actual woman — and besides, we weren't talking, so I didn't invest the theory with too much credence in this case.

I focused back on my book, but couldn't help noticing she was still twirling a skein of hair in her fingers. Perhaps she was trying to work out a knot? Not having had hair that long since about 1991, I don't have too much immediate experience with the problem. Only she seemed to have some serious knotting, if this was how long she needed to disentangle it.

I also noticed she was chewing a nail or a cuticle now and again. I watched her hand once, and noticed she wore her nails man-short, and had a half-healed nick on one knuckle. Now she struck me as someone who had a lot of nervous energy. Maybe she felt caged in. Perhaps she didn't like her job, or was somehow unsettled with her home life, and this tension was spilling out via these behaviors. Animals in close confinement will exhibit stereotypy — repeated behavior or motions — when they are understimulated. Parrots, for instance, will pull out their own feathers when in unexciting environments. Again, I'm no psych major, but this is what crossed my mind when I noticed the repetition of her hair and finger motions. And true to the pattern, she returned to her hair play after she finished with her nail, or cuticle, or whichever (I couldn't see directly because her hair curtained her face, and I didn't want to make her feel self-conscious).

This lasted for a good 15 minutes. The only people with hair this tangled are Rastafarians and Rob Zombie. I made as much of a sideways study as I could, not being able to read because I could see her fingers twirling, twirling through what wasn't even to my side enough to be considered peripheral vision.

This is what I learned:

• She was pulling out individual strands of hair;
• Some of them she smoothed out with her other hand, studied, then dropped;
• Some of them she brought up to her mouth and chewed on — whether it was root first, I'm not sure.

The term trichotillomania is not one to be used — or, as you can see, spelled — lightly. I first encountered the word in a print interview with director John Waters, where he and the writer discussed various psychological disorders. In this case, the term describes obsessive pulling out of one's own hair, be it scalp hair, facial hair, or other (:::shudder:::). I began to wonder if this was a mild case of that problem. She had a full head of hair, no question . . . no bald spots or missing eyebrows. But she was definitely eating something that she was taking from her head.

At this point, the mental image I had was of two primates preening each other and crunching down on any found bugs. It crossed my mind to move, but insofar as she seemed fairly clean — and let's face it, not hard on the eyes — I decided not to make her feel any more self-conscious than she already did by gathering my stuff and taking another seat.

On the other hand, she might not have even known she was really doing it. She was still balancing a book on her knees as she preened. Maybe this behavior had settled so far into the background of her consciousness that she did it without regard for public space or needing to divert a lot of attention to it.

Either way, I hope she was just unkinking some knots and was not grappling with any deeper conditions, other than those that, in times of idleness, might peek through any of our refined fronts and give a window across millions of years to a time when instinct and impulse were all that ruled us.

Winter Knocks Twice, Then Kicks in Door

IT'S NOT NICE TO ignore Mother Nature. Last week, she twice requested our attention by way of a snowfall. Like toothsome icing, it sweetened our area with a white frost, which endured due to near- or sub-freezing temperatures for the past few days.

But this was insufficient to rivet our attention. We had had enough of weather extremes. Hurricanes into the Greek alphabet. Devastation along the Gulf Coast. Ridiculous heat in autumn. No, we were quite content to have a proper late fall for a change . . . bare trees stark against gray skies, yellowing grass on varsity football fields, winds finding cracks in the caulking. December would usher winter in at a reasonable pace.

Nature, as she usually does, follows a different schedule. When I awoke Friday morning, even with my lenses out and my glasses somewhere on the nightstand I could see fat flakes fluttering down. From what had settled on the trees and fence bordering my apartment complex, it looked like it had indeed started shortly after midnight, when the previous night's poker game had broken up.

Not unexpected. I had set aside street clothes for today so I didn't get my work pants all salty. I got my act in gear, dug my heavier gloves out, and set out for the train station.

Outside, the snow was exerting its usual eerie sound-deadening effect. Aside from the hiss of billions of flakes settling on cars and parking lot, road noise was muted. I wondered at the contrast from a week earlier. This is how quickly seasons can change. Even if we saw this snow melt in a day, there was no denying that autumn was over. There was no taking this back.

As usual, the sidewalks leading to the bus and train stops were not as well plowed as the roads, so I walked up the streets, snagged a bagel and Diet Coke from the bagel joint (note to self: travel back in time and establish a bagel and breakfast spot catty-corner from a busy transit hub, then semi-retire at 45 and run the joint from Vegas), and trudged over to the station. Here, too, little had been done to clear the still-falling snow, so I had to take care to avoid stumbling on the rise from tracks to platform. Under my deployed umbrella, I waited for the 8:05.

And waited.

A crackling speaker on a lamp jarred everyone there to attention, and said that the 8:05 had been cancelled. Next train: 8:20.

Shit. If I'd have known that, I'd have slept for an extra half hour! With no choice but to wait — the buses would be barely moving across the crash-choked highways of New Jersey — I took a seat in the station building, which used to be the ticket office before machines rendered it obsolete. Unlike some of this line's stops, which have been converted to gift shops or closed outright, this one was left open and provided with climate control and restrooms (thank God). Seemed like a good time to assimilate my bagel, which I tore into.

Shortly thereafter, some guy came in and began talking to himself. Not a street person or anything — he just walked in and began bitching about the weather, with all of us sort of on the other side of the conversation. Not wanting any part of this futile discussion, I buried myself in the Wall Street Journal and hoped his string would eventually run out before someone replied and kept him going. No such luck; he immediately got a cellphone call, which he proceeded to conduct AT FULL VOLUME while pacing around the echoing confines of the ticket office.

I will suppress the rant on cellphone etiquette that you surely have read or even written elsewhere. I decided to stare at him as he walked around. Whether he got the hint or not, he eventually walked outside with the call . . . but because he stood under the eaves to avoid the snow, it offered little sonic protection from his braying.

I looked at the guy sitting next to me and asked, referring to his initial, untargeted complaint, "Who was he talking to?"

"I don't think his phone was even on," he replied. This caused me to spit Diet Coke on my paper.

Eventually, the train did appear, at around 8:30. I had since gone back outside, as the dickhead had returned to the interior and resumed his rant. I had no reason to let some specimen like this elevate my blood pressure, so I decided to exit and appreciate the snowfall. Work was gonna get done one way or the other. I knew the snow in the city was surely being churned into a foul grey slush by vehicles and pedestrians alike, so aside from watching it fall on Chelsea from one of the north-facing offices of someone who quailed in the face of harsh weather, I would have little chance to enjoy its beauty.

Between the late arrival of the train itself, and the slow progress across snow-swept Bergen and Hudson Counties, I didn't get into work until 10:00. The last two blocks, from the PATH station to my building, were, as I suspected, a slushy slog, made worse by the switch of the snow over to rain. I squared my shoulders, cued up The Power and the Glory: The Original Music & Voices of NFL Films on my iPod, and let the gladiatorial fanfare of Sam Spence's orchestra fuel my plunge through the defenses of slow-moving pedestrians and corner puddles of slushy water and toward the end zone of my cube.

The most amusing aspect of the day came around noon. I noticed more light in the office, so I walked over to the northern end of the office. Blue skies had assumed dominion over the snowcapped city, the sun even now melting rooftops full of snow. Century-old brick and years-old steel glittered alike under the melt. It was like someone had grafted an early-spring day onto this late-fall storm.

Fickle bitch, that Mother Nature.

The Drive-By Haberdasher Strikes Again!

DO I EXUDE SOME sort of pheromone that attracts these types? In case you're joining us late, back in October I detailed my encounter with an Italian man trying to peddle clothing from his van.

Well, evidently he has a regular beat. I was walking along the very same street this evening, just one block west, when I hear, "Sir! Sir!" from the street. I recognized the accent, and just to confirm my suspicion, looked up. Sure enough, it was the same guy in the same van!

I stopped and let him speak. In the same unsteady tone as the first time, he says, "Lincoln . . . Tunnel."

Tonight was dinner with the parents, and I was not missing tacos. Quoth I: "We've been through this before. You have suits to sell in the back, right?"

I think I stunned him off the track of his usual spiel, so I gave him a cursory left-right-left set of directions to the tunnel to allow him a face-saving and literal answer to his question, and then just kept on walking.

What are the odds against running into this guy again? Do you think he actually sells a lot of suits this way? I thought the days of the pushcart vendor were long over, gone the way of the wandering ragpicker and knife sharpener. Evidently the tradition still lives on, updated to the Gasoline Age.

Drive-By Haberdashery

I AM WORN OUT. I successfully got my ass to the gym in the morning, about 5:30 or so, and did about an hour there before work. Oh, it was bliss. The temptation existed to call in sick and spend another hour there. But I cut it off at 30 on the aerobic gadget and 30 at the shoulder machines. It was still a victory to get out there at that time. The first time is the roughest when trying to switch schedules on my gym routine. If I can grab a decent amount of shuteye tonight, I should hit the mark again tomorrow. Then, I just do that 2,000 times more, and for a follow-up, drop dead.

I want to share an incident from last Thursday. Seems like it was an eventful week for all of the crazy nasal suffering I endured. I decided to eat a hearty lunch that day, because I knew I would be giving dinner short shrift in favor of prepping the apartment for poker night. So I started out for the diner a block away, on 7th Ave. You can get a reliable grilled cheese sandwich or matzoh ball soup there, or both if your tolerance for cholesterol is good. I was leaning toward one of these, or perhaps a nice French toast and bacon. Why should hobbits be the only ones who have second breakfast?

So I'm pacing along — and here a word on my walk. Rotund though I may be, I am a fast walker. Nimble, too, from 6 years of ducking through Manhattan foot traffic. But more than anything, fast. When from point A I spy point B, I am halfway there before you hear me saying, "I'm on my way." If Jerry Seinfeld had to categorize me, I would be dubbed a "darter." I walk like an assassin ten paces from his victim.

So I'm darting down a cool midday Chelsea street, streaking past brownstones and basement-level shops, when a man called out to me. I looked up and saw a shaven-headed guy, no older than early thirties, at the wheel of a dark blue van. He waved me over. From the curbside — no closer — I asked what he wanted.

He made it clear that he was looking for directions to the Lincoln Tunnel. Easy enough. I directed him up the street a bit to the nearest uptown thoroughfare and told him to look for signs to head west around the mid-30s. He thanked me, and I turned to go.

"Sir — Sir!" he called out again. I turned back, and he said, "I work in fashion. I work in Javits Center." This seemed odd. If you actually work at the Jacob Javits Convention Center, you know that you are within walking distance of the Lincoln Tunnel. "I leave New York tonight" — he mimed a plane taking off — "I have Armani suits. . . . "

The upshot seemed to be that he was in town with some sort of trade show, or fashion show, and he had some spare suits to get rid of before he flew back home, and that he wanted to show me them in the hopes of selling them to me. I've never been drive-by haberdashed before. It was certainly very kind to be fitted out for new clothes on the fly like this. But at that moment, I wanted nothing more than a platter of diner grease and a cuppa caffeine.

So I overcame my natural aversion to saying "no" in a direct, conversation-ending way and apologetically said I wasn't really interested, but thanks for the offer.

The enterprising Continental pressed the issue. It must come from being in the rag trade. He said he had a suit in my size (hah — I'm not exactly Big Chief Off-The-Rack), and that he had to get rid of them before he flew home, and the whole spiel again from the top. In his accent, I half-expected him to follow up with, "For your fadder — for your fadder," like Enzo the baker's son in The Godfather outside the hospital with Michael.

So what could I do? I said, "I'm sorry, I'm on lunch, and I am not interested, but thanks."

This convinced him, and, wordlessly and with an expression of mild annoyance, he turned back to the wheel and gunned the van away . . . possibly to the Tunnel, possibly to another ill-tailored, high-velocity fat man.