In the heart of Brooklyn Commons today. Apparently Metrotech will now be known as Brooklyn Commons? Temporary relocation of the office for the weekend, of which I work only Saturday. The R train from Astoria to here was uneventful. I’ve become wise to the non-stop trains, even if they take a few minutes longer. I’m fine with that if I can skip the fucking stairs at 59th Srteet. It’s not just their palatiality but the way people scramble and run, dangerously, from the 4/5 express to the N/R/W to the 6 local. It’s a daily dose of near-collisions at which my portly gait puts me at less risk, I would think, unless I become that slow-moving/no-moving pain in the ass that triggers a stranger’s rage and I get shoved down the stairs so the victorious can sprint to their connection.

I am not slow by nature, or by entropy. But my bag has become very heavy, slowing my gait, and I’m early enough most days that I don’t need to rush like others do. I don’t like to rush. The BP and anxiety meds keep me calm these days, but my heart still can pound pretty hard after all those stairs.

I was at a station once where I became the victorious one, or at least I had a brief fantasy of conquering the slowepoke in front of me. I needed the next train but woe was me, trapped in a narrow staircase behind an elderly woman just barely moving, barely alive, going nowhere fast. I don’t remember if my thoughts turned homicidal but I certainly imagined shoving her aside so I could make my ever-more-important quick access to the train before it left her behind.

Nothing like that happened. I missed the train. There was another. I think she missed that one, too.

I am at chapter IV of “The Goldfinch” by Donna Tartt. It is a lot. A friend recommended it, describing it as the closest a book has made him feel to New York in the 1990s or early 2000s (I forget which decade he specified). I guess I can see that assessment so far. A lot of well-developed characters.

At present the main character and his mother are en route to a “meeting” or rather a “conference” among himself, mother, and school officials. We don’t know yet what crimes he will be accused of but there are many possibilities, it seems. I remember these “conferences” from the schools I knew. One incident remains foggy to me, and I guess it always will remain that way I was in the school library, grade 3 or maybe grade 4, which one of the other kids opened a book and showed me it was filled with dollar bills maybe even a couple of fivers. The kid was like “Here, take ’em.” I did. I didn’t know what this was, or if this was wrong. It seemed as if someone left these bills up for grabs. I think it was the collection of library fines, or some little pot of petty cash the library kept on hand. Library fines were typicall a nickel or a dime, not dollars. In short, I don’t know what the money was or why it was there but I took some of it, and the other kid who told me to do it took some, too. Next thing I knew I was “in conference” with well-dressed investigators whose names I never knew but who were apparently outside consultants or law enforcement brought in to investigate, or maybe just brought in to scare the snot out of us. My mother was present as I was questioned about the money I stole from the library. I sung like a jaybird, telling the truth about how the other kid brought it to my attention and told me to do it. I had no allegiance to that kid and I don’t think we ever spoke again. He did not get expelled but he did not return the next year. I came closer than I thought, it seems, to expulsion.

So yes, at this point in the book I’ve started I’m waiting to see what the “conference” amounts to, though it’s already looking like it won’t happen. Terrorist attack at the Met Museum?

Gotta go.