Monday, 21 July 2003 | Ten minutes

The left side of her face was flared out like a fan. Originally I thought I was imagining it, or that her fur was disoriented. Several phone calls later, I'd assessed that her tooth had rebelled and inflated her cheek, so I packed her in her carrier and we slid through the veins of Brooklyn into Manhattan and into Brooklyn again before arriving at the emergency vet, one-and-a-half hours later. Whenever I land in a new part of the city, it seems like I've stepped into another country, although the buildings still obviously belong to New York. So it was a little unsettling to find myself walking among a pack of young English guys, as if I had just come up on the other side of the Atlantic. They were "hooligans," and were busy destroying everything left to them on the sidewalk, including an old refrigerator and discarded furniture.

It was late when we were finished; I decided to take a cab. I stood on the sidewalk and watched the old man behind the wheel of the cab meant for me lurch forward and brake, forward, brake, as he approached me. I think he was wearing a captain's hat. "You got an animal?" he yelled out the window. "Yes," I answered, and held up the carrier. "No animals!" he barked. "I'll call someone else." We looked at each other while we waited for the someone else to show up. "Is that a cat?" he finally asked. "Yes, it is." "Okay, get in."

Just as he said the words, the cab he'd called pulled up in between us, and I got in that cab instead, relieved to find a young, friendly driver behind the wheel who didn't seem to be bothered by my cat. The windows were down, which I like, especially in the non-weather we've been having. "You want me to go fast?" he asked with a smile. "Sure, I guess." Moments later I was gripping the handle on the door with one hand and holding the carrier in place with the other, to keep it from falling to the floor as he sped toward other cars and then slammed on brakes. We sewed a tight seam down the Brooklyn Queens Expressway, dodging cars like tiny pieces of fabric rather than crushing tearing lethal metal. Eighty in a 45, I saw during a glance at the speedometer. The stretch past the Manhattan skyline seemed to take only a breath (a gasp?), and soon we were at my exit. He turned to me once again, tapped the clock, and said proudly, "Ten minutes."