New York’s a bitch in the summer, a slut in the fall, a bitter old cunt in the winter time, and in the spring, New York’s a chick you just want to fuck and talk to and share a meal with and then fuck again. Except on days when it’s raining, that sheet rain, the kind of rain the makes driving impossible, so you dive into a cab and pray you’ve got one of this bitter old drivers who went blind years ago and now just navigates around assholes by some kind of radar. On those kind of days you want New York to leave you alone, go hang out with her friends or go to the library or volunteer at the stray cat society or whatever the fuck she does when she’s not getting your bone tied up in knots and making you promise to be with her forever (or at least until the temperature tops 85). All you want to do is sip luke-warm beer because your refrigerator is shit and watch shitty college basketball on a snowy TV because you’re never home enough to justify cable except maybe in the fall for some Giants or on a desperate afternoon the Jets. You want to sit there in your boxers and your socks and sweat out the broiler because the sup’s a fucking nazi in hiding who doesn’t know shit about maintenance but you don’t give a fuck because if you don’t move the beer wraps itself around your brain and cocoons you from your own solitary, poor, nasty, and brutish thoughts.

Sometimes, though, you crack the window just hair, tendrils of cool air waft around your outstretched legs, you fall asleep to the sound of rain pounding on your fire escape, an occasional siren in the distance… then you wake up fucking freezing, a stack of mail and your ancient answering machine soaked, and you think, fuck you New York, it’s fucking over.

Whoever this broad was, she was cut from the same cloth as me, because she blurted out an address just right before I did, like the first one to speak gets to keep the cab. “96th and Columbus!” which is exactly what I shouted, except backwards” Columbus and 96th!” So many streets in Manhattan, sometimes you feel like you’re shouting out random numbers. Then we looked at each other. Finally, she said “Oh,” and sat back. The cabbie chuckled, said “Westmont building it is,” chewed his cigar to the other side of his face, wrenched the meter, and jerked us into motion.

Sometimes I get this feeling in my head, this light feeling, like I’m dizzy, but tight, too, like my eyes are filling up with fluid and my skulls not big enough to hold them in. It’s not déjŕ vu and it’s no panic attack, it’s like I’m at a crossroads and sure, a decision has to be made, but left or right or wrong, the fact that there’s a choice to be made at all is what’s important, giddy anticipation and dread, nervous excitement and dead-cold certainty all rolled into one.

I sat back, inhaling the stale cigar smoke, letting the feeling either make up its mind and send me out the door at the next corner, or leave me the fuck alone so I could get on with it. Eventually a voice said “Dentist?”

“Huh?”

“Are you going to the dentist? Murray Playwright? That’s’ where I’m going.”

“Oh. No. Playwright? You see a dentist named Playwright.”

She shrugged. “He takes Aetna, doesn’t skimp on the nitrous.”

I took a good look at her. More hair on her head than she needed, that sort of curly you get when you don’t try too hard, but you do try enough so no one thinks you didn’t try at all. Brown eyes, so the hair was probably a dye-job, but a good one, since her roots where blond too. Soft eyes, actually, not bedroom eyes, but the kind that never open all the way. Nose, what am I going to say about her nose. Red lips, a little gloss, smirk lines, and while she waited for me to get done feeling her up visually, she chewed on the inside of her lip, and that, ladies and gentleman, was me sold. That feeling, the one in my head, dropped to my gut and I was 15 years old again and trying to hide my boner.

“Uh, me, um, Where am I headed again?” I laughed. So did she. So did the cabbie, the fucker. I coughed on his smoke. “Crack a window, mac?” He chuckled again. Asshole.

“Let me guess. Banco Popular. You’re picking up your hot Latina wife for lunch.”

Yes! No, not out loud. I said it to myself. She’s fishing for my status. “Close.”

“Really? Which part, the Latina, the wife? The lunch?”

I wanted very much to lean over and bite her ear. “No, no, the hot part.”

“Oh really!” Her eyes lit up. If I was a masochistic surgeon with Paganini’s finger’s I would’ve just taken out my heart and handed it to her right there.

“Yeah.” I opened up my jacket, showing inside. “See that? That’s a fairly decent knock-off of a Diego de Çaias.”

“Okay,” she said.

“A guy in the Westmont wants it.”

The cabbie chuckled again. He was a regular laugh factory. I tried to ignore him.

She leaned forward, slightly, like I was supposed to speak again. I held my ground. I could smell, somehow, through the cigar smoke, the must coming off the seats, and my own sweat, her shampoo.

“So why is that hot? Does he know it’s a knock off?”

“Yes, he does. The real one’s in London, Royal Collection.”

“Is it stolen?”

“Not technically.”

“What do you mean.”

“It’s mine. Bought it on eBay. Seventy bucks.”

“So…”

“He thinks it’s stolen.”

“You are wicked.” And she was only being, I think, a little sarcastic. “Does that jack up the price?”

“Yes. He thinks it was stolen from the Baronette D’Orlange, a childhood friend of Prince Chuck’s.”

“Who?”

“He doesn’t exist. Neither does the replica.”

“You’re selling a fake replica that wasn’t stolen from a guy who doesn’t exist?”

“Yes.”

“How much.”

Now it was my time to lean forward. “Tell you what. Have coffee with me after your appointment, and I’ll tell you.”

She leaned back into her sit, her hair piling up around her head against the back of the seat. She had a gleam in her eye, a little smile on her lips, and she just watched out the front of the cab for a second. After another second, as if she’d really been thinking it over, she said “Okay. But you’d better call your wife, tell her you’re getting home late.”

“I will. Once I get married.”

She looked over at me, frowning slightly. “You’re engaged?”

I smiled at her. “No. Not yet. Have to meet someone first.”

The cab stopped and the hack wrenched the meter again. She looked at her watch. “Shit I’m late.” Then she opened the door. “I’ll get the coffee!” And she was off into the rain.

The cabbie chuckled again. “Fourteen fitty, cap’n,” he said.

I gave him a ten and a five. “Keep the change,” I said. “Use it to get some air fresheners.”

He laughed again, more than a chuckle this time, an out and out laugh. “That was bullshit, right? About the knife?”

“Yeah,” I said, opening the door.

“It’s the real thing. I knew it.”

The cab weaved away and I dashed into the Westmont, Idly checking the directory for Playwright. There was no Playwright. There was no dentist in the building, either. And the nearest coffee shop was six blocks away.

I’ll admit it, I didn’t have an appointment to sell the knife. But I’m standing in the rain, staring at the front door. I have no idea what I’m going to do to her when she eventually comes out, but I kind of like making it up as I go along.