I was in New York last week for a few meetings, staying at a friend’s place on 8th Street not far from where I used to live.
I woke up early one morning – jetlag – and, having always liked the city best in the five o’clock hour, headed out for a walk.
There are a lot of people sleeping on the streets these days, but one couple in particular caught my attention. They were just south of Union Square on Broadway, lying next to each other, in an almost-spoon. The hoods of their jackets were pulled down so I couldn’t see their faces, but the longer of the two was on the outside, as if protecting the other from the street. There was something about it that struck a chord, and I worked for the next two blocks to identify which, exactly, it was – was the scene sweet? Tragic? Raw? Elemental, I finally decided.
Several hours later, I passed the couple again as I came back from a run. This time they stood out not only for their positions, but because morning commuter traffic was now in full swing and had roused most other homeless people to move. This time, my brain searched for the appropriate reaction – were they so hungry they didn’t have the strength to move, in which case I should feel sad and hopeless? Were they working off the effects of a lot of drugs, in which case I might still feel sad, but in a more logical way?
When, though, I passed the spot again en route home from dinner and found the pair still lying there, positions unchanged, there was no need to search for the word.
They were dead.
An eerie cold gripped my chest as I walked on, trying to process. Finally, I stopped and turned back, just in time to see a man walking and texting almost run into the outer body, only to scowl down at it before continuing on his way.
What does one do, when one realizes there are two dead bodies on a major city street?
I wasn’t sure, so I decided to tell the doorman in my friend’s building to see if he knew.
As I opened my mouth to tell him, though, the whole thought of it seemed so impossible – thousands of people had walked that route today - that I braced myself for the humiliation of discovering that I was, in fact, the prone-to-drama, watched-too-much-Law-and-Order-in-my-twenties Karen I’d always feared.
Instead of coming out with it, I walked him through my logic – first I saw them at five, then around ten, and just now…
As I drew nearer, he grinned, as if anticipating the punchline of a joke he’d heard before:
“You think they’re dead?” he finally interrupted.
I flushed. “Yeah,” I said.
“We already know,” he assured. “Called the cops and they’re coming to clear them out.”
I let out a breath I didn’t realize I’d been holding.
“Am I, like, the thousandth person who’s told you?” I asked, laughing at myself as I imagined being the latest in a long string.
He paused, grimaced.
“Nah, you’re the first one. We just do rounds every so often to check for stuff like this.”
The next morning when I walked the same stretch, I found the couple’s bodies removed, and the sidewalk freshly bleached.
I find myself thinking about it now, as I sit here in the southern town where I grew up, listening to a New York-based news podcast. As is common these days, the reporters are analyzing the values of people like the people ‘round here with that little hint of impatient New York disdain. And I find myself neither angry nor unaligned with many of their points, I just wonder whether, when they are once again ineffective at changing others’ minds, they’ll blame it on the rest of America being stupid or backward or in some other way behind. When, in fact, it’s just awfully hard to take seriously the critique of one’s moral code by those who walk, oblivious, past dead bodies in street.