Lucy

Somewhat unnerving/disturbing encounter just now. At 34th Street and 35th Avenue an elderly woman approached me and asked where 33rd Street was. I pointed toward the street. She seemed unsatisfied, or rather confused by my answer. I asked “Where are you going?” She said “I can’t find my house.” She mentioned Key Foods as being nearby, and some other comments, when I asked if she knew her street address. I swear she said 33-54 33rd Street, which sounded like how she described it as being 2 blocks from the Key Food and the subway.  She mentioned that she had worked in the subways selling tokens for 27 years, and that she got a lifetime pass, whih she prooudly showed me. She said something about a cab driver stiffing her by charging her $25 for a ride from 21st Street and Ditmars in Astoria. She was returning home from visiting her husband, who was in rehab up there. He was a Korean Conflict veteran. I told her that $25 from a cab from there sounded nuts, that $13-$15 sounded closer to reality. I assumed it was a livery but she said it was a yellow cab. (Keeping it real I I realized later that I think it’s possible that she gave the driver confusing directions.) Conversation moved along. I kept saying I just wanted to make sure she got home. She said I was “the best”. We got to 33-54 and she said that was not her house. I wasn’t sure what to do next but she asked me to show her where the Key Foods was. That would help her get her bearings, she said, as she rarely comes out after dark and could barely recognize the area with the lights out. i had to admit, that stretch of 33rd Street leading up to 36th Avenue is pretty flippin’ dark. We walked toward the Key Food, past a bunch of loud drunks standing outside Mad Donkey. We got as far as 32nd Street, where she asked another passing stranger where 33rd Street was. He correctly told her it was one block thattaway. We went back toward 33rd Street. She entered a cell phone store and asked the man behind the  counter “Do you know who I am? Do you know where I live?” He smiled and said “You’re Lucy. You live on 33rd Street.” He gesturedin a general direction that proved to be accurate. I think he asked who I was, and I replied “I don’t know her, just helping her get home.” I think he responded something affirmative, then repeated gesturing in the general direction of 33rd Street, adding that her house was on the east side of the street. We exited the cell phone store and headed back toward 33rd Street. The drunks outside Mad Donkey gave us a particularly curious look as we passed them by a second time. She grasped my coat sleeve as we crossed 33rd Street. I asked her “Did he say your name was Lucy?” “Yes! Lucy Miller. What’s your name?” “Mark Thomas.” “Oh, what a lovely name. Lucy Miller and Mark Thomas.” Various other chitchat ensued. She asked two women standing on 33rd Street if they knew Michael. They did not. I asked if Michael was her husband. No, she said, Michael owned the building in which she lived. She commented that nobody around here knows anybody. I responded “New Yorkers never know their neighbors.” I asked how long she had lived in Astoria. I thought she said “7 or 8 years” but now I wonder if she didn’t say “78 years”. I had her age pegged at 80, though I had thus far not really gotten a good look at her. We reached an apartment building and she produced a set of keys. My relief was colossal when I saw that key go into the lock and successfully open the door to the building. I told her I could not stay but that I would go upstairs with her to be sure she got in safely. I looked at the mailboxes in the downstairs foyer to see if one of the boxes said MILLER. It did. Slowly she climbed the stairs to her 2nd floor apartment. She unlocked the door and ushered me in. I have to admit that I had fleeting images of this person pulling a mask off their face and revealing a middle aged transvestite, or that this was some kind of police sting operation. No such insanity occurred. The apartment smelled a wee bit of pee but not so bad that opening a window wouldn’t relieve the odor. It was no palace but it looked comfortable and, save for the smell, tidy. She showed me every room. She showed me how her television worked — she turned it on, that is. The kitchen was roomy. A closet was filled with paper towels and day-to-day essentials. Her clocks were off by an hour. I was about to offer to fix them for her but then she started talking about going back to the rehab center to visit her husband. I told her to stay home. She had just walked a long distance and would be very tired. She insisted that she was going back to the rehab center. She being a free person I was in no position to get in her way. We went back downstairs and as she slowly made her way down the steps she made some biting comments about how I must have thought she was lying. “You thought I was making all this up, didn’t you? You thought I was lying.” I did not and do not know what she was talking about. I never thought she was lying I just thought she was confused. I have not hailed a yellow cab in years but my memory of doing so in Astoria had me thinking I should call her an Uber car. It is a good thing i did not, as I reflected later on how she may have given the first cab driver confusing directions. She might have told an Uber driver to take her to Portland! I hailed a cab on 36th Avenue, directing the driver to head north on 33rd Street. Lucy got into the cab and told me to come with her. I have no idea what made her think I was going with her to visit her husband at the rehab center but if she wanted to go back up there having returned from an earlier visit just 20 or 30 minutes earlier than she was free to do that. At this point I started to think she was playing games with me, intentionally or not. She moved over in the back seat of the cab, patting the seat next to her and telling me to come with her. I said no, I had to get home. She turned more sour, and more sharp. She said “I trusted you. I trusted you.” I said “Tell the driver where you want to go” and shut the door, heading toward 32nd Street and not looking back. The drunks outside Mad Donkey had gone back inside. I got home and looked her up on ancestry.com. I thought she was 80. She is 90.