April 3, 2010 - Lunch

I was down to return the old cable modem and end my relationship with the damnable Time Warner. Their office in Sunset Park, isolated across from Green-Wood cemetery, is a difficult place. Counters protected by thick plexiglass. Lots of poor people paying bills. Small and twisted with canes and limps. Sausage fingers. A man all in khaki yelled for ten minutes into his bluetooth headset, explaining the basics of a checking account to someone on the other end. In his world this man is rich, powerful.

The equipment exchange line was a mix of classes: young migrants from Taiwan and Mexico, a 30-something mom and her angry, stomping little girl; a woman with cornrows wearing a T-shirt that read "marriage is gay." Behind me a cheerful artist told his peers that he would be traveling throughout the month of May, that he was on his way to speak on art and commerce with Olafur Eliasson. Art and commerce, he said, can you believe it.

My bike ride had been a little much. I was feverish, sweaty. I lack proper identification because I don't drive. There were posters calling for valid ID all over the facility. I began to strategize what lies might allow me to return my equipment. Listen, I could say, my wife is on hospice care in Philadelphia and I'm moving. My ID is down there; I had to leave it with the nurse. Can you help me? Can you please help me? Thus passed forty minutes of standing in a warm fog of impatience and despair.

But they took the modem and gave me a receipt. So I went four blocks north to the restaurant/bakery where we bought our wedding cake. There I had sopes (I count them here as a burrito) and biked home with two slices of tres leches, which my wife and I enjoyed. They tasted like our wedding.