I look over at Posey, who’s sitting back at the table again. She has her phone next to her ear and is frowning. I watch her shake her head and mutter something into the phone before hanging up. I want to be nosy, to ask her if she’s okay, but at the same time, I don’t want to pry into her life without her wanting me to.
“Do you need anything before I go?” I ask while I walk behind the bar to check my schedule and make my espresso. Double espresso. I consider doing a triple, but that might not be the best idea.
Posey’s shift should be close to over by now. She shakes her head, thanking me, but says she’s fine. I wave goodbye to Lila and Posey, shouting goodbye to Jane loud enough for her to hear me from the stock room.
Chapter Eleven
AS I PUSH ON THE heavy shop door and walk out into the coming night, my phone pings in my front pocket. Heavy bags of trash line the street, nearly bursting open to spill their litter onto the sidewalks. It’s the same every day, but I don’t see myself getting used to it. Manhattan must be even worse, with all the shops and a million and a half people sharing the smaller space. It’s an impossible city to live in if you don’t want to be bumped into, honked at, or hassled.
It astounds me that so many people can be shoved into so many little apartments with tiny windows and tiny kitchens. The rooms in my place are bigger than I had expected (the bathroom is snug), but I knew I couldn’t afford to live in an expensive place in Brooklyn that was any bigger than five hundred square feet. My stepdad, Ken, helps pay our rent, but I’ve been putting money aside since I got a job and I plan on repaying him someday, at least some of it. I’m not very comfortable with the idea of him helping me with my bills. I’m responsible enough, partly thanks to him and his lectures about money management and student expenses. I don’t blow my money on booze or going out. I pay my bills and occasionally buy books or tickets to a hockey game.
Having a parent who occupies such a high position at a university has unquestionably made my college life one hundred percent easier. I got help with each and every form, I had a helping hand in choosing all my classes, and I managed to get into some that were supposedly full. Ken had a lot more pull at Washington Central than at NYU for sure, but it still helps to know the ins and outs of admissions departments.
I often think about how life would be if my mom had stayed in Michigan. Would I have left her alone there and moved to New York with Dakota? I feel like I would have been less likely to move if she didn’t have Ken and her group of friends in Washington. My life would be so different if she hadn’t met him.
Sometimes I think that outside of the few obvious things, New York City isn’t that different from Saginaw. The sun is often hidden in Manhattan, keeping the light from the city’s residents in a small box on a beach somewhere on the West Coast. I’ve become so used to the overcast sky shadowing every town I’ve ever lived in that when the sun shines here in Brooklyn, my eyes burn for half of my walk to work. I bought a pair of sunglasses, which I quickly lost. But the sun shows its face in Brooklyn often enough that I would actually use them, marking one of the many reasons I chose to live here instead of Manhattan. In September, the overcast has blotted out everything close to the skyline. The farther you get away from the towering buildings, the more luminous the sun becomes.
A short, stocky bundle of layered coats with a hat on top moves past me on the sidewalk, the man beneath them pushing a shopping cart full of aluminum cans and plastic bottles. His hands are encased in thick, faded brown gloves covered in black dirt. Patches of gray hair poke out from under the red-and-green plaid hat he’s wearing and his eyes are half-closed, like time and hardship have wilted him to the point of near collapse. He stares straight ahead, paying me no mind, but my heart aches for him.
To me, the poverty in some parts of the city is the hardest thing to deal with. I miss my mom, but seeing the sad, shameful look on the weathered face of a middle-aged man sitting against a bank window using the words printed on a piece of cardboard to beg for food money—that kind of thing is especially hard for me. Even so, it must cut even deeper for men like that to be leaning against a building that is home to millions of dollars. To watch, with an empty stomach, as groups of suits walk past on their lunch break and spend twenty dollars on a grain salad while they are starving.
Saginaw doesn’t have a large population of homeless. Most of the city’s poor have homes. The siding on their old homes is almost collapsing, the walls are rotting with mold, and the beds are infested with little bugs that feed on them in their sleep. But they have roofs over their heads. Most of the people I know in Saginaw try and try to get ahead, but it’s hard there. All of my friends’ parents were farmers or lifelong factory workers, but since all the factories closed over the past decade, there just aren’t any jobs. Outside of heroin, the city can’t boast of any growth industries. Families that were doing well ten years ago can barely put food on the table now. Unemployment rates are at an all-time high, along with the crime rate and drug problems. The happiness ran away with the jobs, and sometimes I think neither will ever return.
That’s the biggest difference between my hometown and this city. The hope that buzzes through New York City makes all the difference in the world. Millions of people move to the biggest city in the entire country based solely on this emotion. They hope for more. They hope for more happiness, more opportunity, more experience, and—most of all—more money. The streets are crowded with people who leave their native countries and build a home and a life for their families here. It’s pretty amazing when you think about it.
People pack up and move here, some crazy statistic like over a hundred people a day. Twenty-four-hour subways—heck twenty-four-hour services of every category—and no large pickups or