It’s amazing how different a subway ride can be depending on the time of day and the day of week. Ride the subway in the morning on a week day and it’s full of tired students on their way to high school and sober-looking grownups on their way to work. Ride the subway on a Saturday night and you end up sharing your seat with people like the pair sitting next to me. They snuck a six-pack onto the subway and each has finished his first and has fitzed open his second. They have goofy laughs and they try to carry a conversation with two girls sitting across from them. The girls are dressed suburban ho style and you know just by looking at them they’re the sort who never learn anything except the hard way. One of the boys is showing off by demonstrating his ability to fart at will. The other announces that he’s a poet who can come up with poems on the spot. He asks one of the girls her name. “Judy?”

“Trudy.”

“Trudy?”

He stares at the ceiling then squeezes his eyes together tight like he’s sitting on a toilet. “There once was a girl named Trudy/Who was reedy and trudy a cutie/She looks hot in her pants …” The poet stalls. “She looks hot in her pants …”

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What can I say? It was a busy morning. I had to cram three hour-longs in before eleven so I could take the conference call with the boys on the coast. There were closings to close and openings to open and letters to let. There were negotiations with recalcitrant jerks, getting to yes with a push and a shove, and shouting matches with dumb-ass fence-sitters who wouldn’t know their own best interest if it waltzed up and kicked them in the teeth. Marianne, my secretary (I mean my administrative assistant), had been in and out a dozen times with documents for me to sign. In the midst of all this a man in a uniform burst into my office forcing me to cup my hand over the phone. He was a solidly built black man with a patch over his right eye and he leaned heavily on a walking stick. Marianne poked her head out from behind the man: “I’m sorry sir. I told him he had to make an appointment but he wouldn’t listen.”

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