Chosen

Richard
Chosen
Starbucks, June 21, 08

It’s 8:30 in the morning, and I’m leaving my doctor’s office on York Avenue and 70th Street, briskly walking north toward the 86th Street subway, plenty of time to arrive downtown by nine. It’s late spring. The light is bright, the air unusually mild, and I’m lost in the bustle. Cabs trawl for passengers close to the curb. Ambulances stream toward New York Hospital, where workers in scrubs stand outside smoking. Amid the swim of New Yorkers on their way somewhere, I’m in my head, where I prefer to be, separate and anonymous, when a man suddenly steps in front of me and bars my way. I move to one side, and so does he. He’s wearing a heavy, soiled grey overcoat and a black knitted cap pulled close to his eyes. He’s young, early thirties, with the burnished tan of a street person. I catch a wild look in his eyes as he stretches an open hand toward me. “Change,” he says, more a demand than a request. I try to step around him, but again he matches my moves. I feel targeted, but it’s not my training or temperament to react publicly. I’d rather not be confronted, but I’m living in New York, so that’s like wishing for a field of heather to materialize on a traffic island. I left behind the English village where I grew up because I felt protected from what cities tell you, but I don’t want to be reminded of these things now.

“No thanks,” I say, looking straight at him, my illogic a sort of bravado. He stands his ground. “What the fuck does that mean?” Again and louder he says, “Change!” I’m impressed by his crazy resolve while I slide into my inevitable surrender. I feel in my pocket for change and put it in his damp palm, feeling as if I’ve forfeited some part of myself by complying, in the same measure he has contorted his character by begging. What has brought him to this place? That is one of the urban questions I don’t want to think about. As he looks down to count the money, I make my escape into the shoal of fish swimming toward jobs while the beggar stands apart.

Five minutes later, I am moving north on Park when I feel a sharp pinch on the back of my neck. I duck and turn. The beggar has followed me. He has grabbed my neck with his thumb and fingers. “What are you doing?” I yell, my heart beating furiously. “Fuck you, fuck you,” he shouts back. I turn and walk away, leaving him ranting, and it looks as if I’ve made another escape, that I’m free. But I’m shaken that he has chosen me, not once but twice. We have a relationship. Those fingers, his hands, intimate and terrifying. Why is he so angry? Because I looked him in the eye and at first said no? That I speak with a foreign accent and wear a clean coat? Do his actions have anything to do with me?

In the subway, I feel his pinch on my neck. At work I can’t concentrate and leave after lunch. I smell his greasy fingers. When Suzanne gets home, I ask her to see if there’s a mark on my neck, and I’m surprised when she says there isn’t. I awake in the night, sensing his presence in the room. I turn on the light and search. If he could follow me up many blocks, he can find my home. Suzanne says, “It’s nothing. Please come back to bed.” For days, I rub the spot he has touched, expecting to find the smear of him on my fingers. I remember his indignation and catch a whiff of myself. He doesn’t want to be ignored. Exactly like me, except he’s on fire and I’m, well, smoldering. Isn’t it always that way with the doubles who seek us out? Why aren’t I him and him me? I keep asking people, “Do you smell something funny?”