Elevator Music

I had a man in combat boots, soviet issue army fatigues and white bandana offer me 40 dollars in the elevator if I could name the actor, winner of two Obie awards, born today some time ago.

I said I couldn't, not even for a hundred dollars. The rain maker in me considered a Monte Carlo approximation to it figuring out how many name combinations I could spew in the time the elevator travelled from the fourteenth floor to the third floor laundry room. The exercise was futile. Instead I went with the awkward nodding of the head as I muttered something lacking in words in an attempt to convey NO.

A banker today showed me what it's like to be boss. Not in the Hugo Boss kind of way. Not in the "Olivia! Fetch my coat and hat - I'm due at the Waldorf in 10 minutes" way. In the nerdy kind of I've done this particular lecture enough times to know what you will ask, how you will ask and when you will ask it. He also showed prodigal skill at hot key shortcuts.

In a matter of seconds he formatted and linked and hyperlinked things on screen without taking his eyes off of his audience in a quiet, passive challenge.

BRING IT.

I suppose this is how people in the real world. Wake up in the morning, go play with hundreds of millions of dollars and notional amounts of trillions and then go home and grill (for) the kids.

And now I get to spend afternoons dissecting seconds and interpreting verses written 10,20,50 years ago. The building I'm standing on has a shell that's ancient but an inside that hollow and sparse but the window outside looks at my second home - lit up for the night.

Often I travel so far away from the two little blocks I know as home to enjoy a taste of the tobacco continent only to hopscotch to a city of soup (Alphabet please) and then non-chalantly stroll through a village (or two if you walk for long enough. A place where you can run into friendly were-once's and sit on a stage while eating brunch. The elevated platform just enough to comfortably allow for one's imagination to fit in an idea that we are VIP.

And at the end of the day I get New York the way I liked it best.

Dark, gloomy and rainy while it holds my hand.