Closed Captioned

For years I exercised at the Y... mostly nights when it was underpopulated.  There's an older woman... maybe 90-something now...  although she seems much younger.  I'd seen her for years, just before closing, dressed in street clothes, on a seated stretching machine... usurping this sole piece of equipment.  Maybe she showered there--- I'd noticed people that slipped in and out for various hygiene rituals; I avoid locker rooms.  But perhaps at home they must share a bath... they don't clean... I don't know... but back to the woman... her name is Lois or Gloria-- for a time she had a male companion who waited for her on a bench, with a newspaper... at 11 PM... but he must have died. 

She often tried for some reason to speak to me... as though we were old friends... would offer her 'place' on the little machine... once gave me Carnegie Hall tickets she wasn’t using (she is a habitual concert-attender)... and I think I didn’t go… it was useless trying to explain I was working… impossible to converse… she's absolutely stone deaf-- has a sort of shortened language, like verbal stenography... with gestures.  Otherwise she spoke to no one... only me... as though we shared something; she'd look at me with this sort of anticipation-- the way children look at their new teacher at the beginning of a term-- with innocence and trust, as though she has something to do with their fate. It was uncomfortable. What had I done?  What did she believe? Once or twice I'd say something and she'd muster some total non-sequitur, some bizarre inane remark to assure me there was no conversational understanding whatsoever.  

When my fiancee was deported, years back, I briefly began to swim at the Y... laps, ovals... crawl then back-stroke, staring at the ceiling, weeping, unseen.  There is a swim-culture among older women-- I absorbed this and it stopped me... but no Lois or Gloria in a bathing suit.  Just the street clothes with the oversized track shoes the way older women cater to awkward feet.  

During the pandemic nearly every night, like grief therapy... I ran the upper Central Park loop, most of the time counter-clockwise, finished up on the reservoir.  I'd soliloquize, weep, talk to Alan wherever he was... When I looked east on the final lap, she’d be there, at 90th Street, perched on the stairs, watching the sun set behind the El Dorado across the water... among a small crowd mostly with phones, taking pictures… but she just looking… hands in pockets... alone. She’d wave.  I must have logged 500 sunsets by now… she, too. Most old people stayed home from fear, but she was out there… winter, summer… like a human landmark… like a mother, like a ghost.   I kept my distance... waving distance.  Masks make lip-reading impossible— not that she ever did much of that, either.

On Thursday I wrecked my finger... the sort of injury that will most likely heal but it was a random kind of bad luck thing.  To distract myself I circled the park as usual, wearing a new splint and ran into another night-time Y exerciser on his bike.  We walked together until way past dark... and just as we parted company, there was Lois-- on my block this time-- giving me that raised-eyebrow childlike look... I tried to introduce the two; they had zero mutual recognition and there was obviously no dialogue... she making those broken-word non-sequitur comments and gestures... just an odd intersection of three. He's a writer; I sketched her verbally for him, like a Dickens character.  Twain. Maybe she'd been on the reservoir, late... dawdling on her way home to no one or nothing.  

I worked at my gallery job today… still fucked up about my damn finger… went to Chelsea afterward to see a (great) show that was closing… stopped in Tribeca downtown, then remembered some friend sent a ticket to his show at Damrosch Park… (the injury sidelined my fragile 'plan'...) so I’m on a 1 train and realize it’s 8 PM… passing Columbus Circle… I get off, walk toward Lincoln Center.. there are lines, people waiting… but they usher me right in.. and suddenly that woman… Lois or Gloria...is yelling my name… jumps the line… says she’s with me… and sure enough my ticket is for 2… they have these reserved ‘pods’ of 2 seats… so I take her in… I’m alone.. and she wants to move up… she can’t hear... she’s telling me about the performance (?) … and the music starts… it’s completely my friend’s gig… she has no clue.. she’s deaf as a stone… sitting there… WATCHING the music, gesturing to me… it’s insane… was apparently on line for something that didn’t exist... But the night is beautiful… I'd played there a couple of times… the sunset, the buildings… guests at the Mandarin Oriental leaning on their windowsills, people on balconies… acoustics are crazy… sound carries… and a woman selling merchandise comes over to greet me… Lois gestures that she can’t hear a thing… waves her away… but keeps looking at me as though she’s waiting for a dialogue… something...

Anyway, after two musical pieces I started to think I was hallucinating… I'd been up fretting (the emotional kind, lol) all Friday night.  Or dreaming... she was like a human hawk sitting there… like a shadow… like a symbol.  It started to freak me out.  I’m reading Álvaro Mutis… contemporary women on ships sleep with Napoleonic colonels… ghosts… so I left.. took a crosstown bus and I guess she stayed in my pod-seat.  

On my block the streetlamps were turned off; it was dark... it's late summer.  I feel 'omened' by her, although I suspect my hand will be fine, and maybe she is a kind of angel.  Maybe I was really alone at Damrosch Park.  I kept looking at the stage set-- a kind of wavy cloud-like sort of backdrop.... it looked so absurd against the expanse of evening sky, like a tiny moment in the context of infinity. She'd been annoying me-- just her presence, her childlike 'anticipation' as though she wanted me to look at her.  Coming inside I remembered how I'd get home after working at night when my son was little... and just sit there in his room, inhaling the scent of children... I wondered if anyone had ever sat at her bedside, radiating that mother-love.  Maybe it was mean that she creeped me out and rude that I abandoned her but I am also reminded that finger or no finger, the world at my age is beginning to wind down-- or grow, I'm not sure which-- and suddenly the 500 evenings are like an old deck of cards... plus one, because without a plan, we'd apparently shared another sunset.