Sunday, 02 March 2003 | A is for apple

(A is for asphyxiation.) There's a truck parked on my street with no head and no tail, but with just a trailer hitch and a little metal cone-shaped hat which I suppose covers a vent of some sort. Out of the truck snakes a homemade, insulated, soft, plastic-wrapped tube that arches over the sidewalk and is stuffed into a corner of my building. The snake is responsible for heat and hot water, since the traditional heater stopped doing its job on Thursday morning, an event the water heater announced with parties of smoke that crept quietly into my apartment, mingled for a while, and slowly dissipated.

(B is for bottom-dweller.) We got our picture taken together sort-of by accident; he saw a camera out of its bag and came out of his booth at the front of the train and jokingly suggested that we get our picture taken together. I waved him over and he plopped down beside me on the cold, blue bench, and our pupils shrank at the command of the flash. Then I started questioning him, asking some of the things I've been wondering about the subway system. Q: What are they doing to the L right now? A: They are working on the decade-long project of completely automating the trains, something my new friend was cynical about. Q: How fast does the train go? A: Generally it travels at about 35 mph. When it's going downhill, such as under the river, it goes as fast as 50 mph; uphill, it's only going about 20-25. The express trains sometimes reach 70.

After he spoke, I looked down the tracks and saw an army of people walking with flashlights, though all I could actually see were white lights and the mostly red glow of the surrounding plastic, dancing and swinging deep in the dark tunnel. Since then I've thought of a hundred other questions to ask him.

(C is for company.) We walked across the Brooklyn Bridge at dusk, even though it wasn't on the way to where we were going. The pedestrian and bike path (one strip of asphalt divided by a yellow line, a division policed by hissing bikers) is in the middle of the bridge, above and between the lanes of traffic, and below the orderly spider web of wires that gives the bridge support. We went to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, which is housed in a building that glows like a mirage. We ate dinner in a good, incredibly cramped Vietnamese restaurant. We went to where the posh, metal heads, swing dancers, and hipsters hang out. (In four separate venues, of course.)

(D is for death.) It's hard to remember how my mind processed his words when I was young, but I do know I liked the familiarity of his routine—the singing as he walked in the door, the systematic shedding of his jacket and shoes for more relaxed clothing, the announcement of where he was going to take us. I liked the cat that spoke in meows punctuated by a few clarifying words of English. I liked moving beyond The Land of Make-Believe, seeing the machines that twisted pretzels into doughy knots and the money-manufacturing machines that had pressed some of the coins that eventually made their way to me, the coins which sat disorderly in a cold jar on my desk, or that sat in a warm pocket and were slid across a counter in exchange for some candy. I didn't like the bloodshot nose that protruded out of the King's Friday's face. I didn't like when the show ended, because I've never liked endings.