Count on It

Part of my job is keeping the cash drawer stocked with small bills, which makes for a quick-trip to the bank every couple of days. The man who inevitably appears behind any window I choose is excruciatingly slow. He wears gold cuff links, and his shirts are impeccably pressed. His face looks young, but he is so serious and strangely clean that I would guess he's at least thirty. Usually I hand him a stack of twenties and ask for a certain number of ones, fives, and tens. He takes the bills from me in separate stacks and then walks over to the drawer. He works methodically and carefully, always following some version of this pattern:

Count bills, straighten stack, straighten tie, count bills, type on computer, straighten sleeves, straighten stack.

Then he walks over to a counting machine, puts the bills in, and removes them, only to repeat the whole thing. It's all very straight. Everyone else at the bank counts the money once while trying to convince me to open a new account. I prefer the cuff links guy.

Do You Hear What I Hear?

A little girl was lying over two seats when I got on the T today. Her father lifted her up to make room for a huge crowd of people that had just boarded.

"Where is that music coming from?" she asked him.

"Someone's headphones," he answered. "The train doesn't have it's own soundtrack."

"Yes it does," I thought. Just ask Pauline. (Start with 3:15-5:25.)

Little Kid and a Motor Scooter

Seeing a child alone on the street is pretty uncommon in Boston's Back Bay. It causes an it-takes-a-village-sleuth-response in me, and I have to stop and search a moment, wondering where the attendant might be. During the snow last week, I saw a little kid standing next to a parked Vespa, no chaperone in sight. He was all bundled up. It looked like he must be waiting for somebody - the owner of the scooter? He brushed the snow away as it landed, making sure to keep the shiny, yellow panels clear.

Twenty minutes later, when I made my way back to the place where he stood, the boy was helping a man shovel, but the scooter was gone.

Keeping up with the Joneses

During the snow this weekend, one of the stores across the street sent a man outside to shovel the huge sidewalk in front of it. The ground he covered made a perfect outline of the width of his store, and he did not color outside the lines. When he was finished, he went back out to sprinkle salt all over it. Ten minutes later, a man from the next store appeared and scraped away his snow. The next time I looked out, I saw a guy emerge from the store on the other side of the first, all bundled up and extremely reluctant, busted red shovel in hand.

The fascinating part of all this is that there was less than one inch of snow on the ground.

Help for the Homeless

There was a guy standing outside Au Bon Pain soliciting customers on their way in.

"Do you have a moment to help the homeless?"

He caught the person right before me, so I was off the hook. I watched him while I sat in the front window of the shop. He stood in a ski jacket under the falling snow, with hat and mittens and clipboard. After a while, he was approached by a rugged man in a cotton army jacket, with a sand-colored bag spilling out over his shoulder. He was unkempt and under-dressed. I watched their confrontational body language at first, but eventually I could hear their conversation through the thick glass wall.

"So you have some money for me, then?" Asked the self-declared homeless man.

"That's not how it works," answered the canvasser.

The homeless man proceeded to ask him exactly how it worked, how a homeless man was to get this "help." But I don't know what he was answered.

I had watched the man pocket cash from all sorts of people, the way a beggar would with a paper cup - but in this case, it had to go through envelopes and bank accounts and many other hands. And he couldn't lose it to an unapproved homeless man. Especially not in its rawest, most delicate form.

Pristine Privacy

A friend from school was on the opposite train platform from me today. She wore a newsboy cap down over her eyes and held her head low as she waited. I willed her to look over and greet me from across the tracks, but instead she hid under her gray bill, and I could hardly confirm that it was her. When the train came, I converged our paths by walking to the next car. I planned to tell her how I'd tried to catch her eye for ten minutes. But she looked so completely anonymous and solitary; she was content in her own thoughts. So I left her alone on the crowded train.

Keith

Sometimes I let my backpack sit next to me on the train. Like a few weeks ago, for example - right before I met Keith. He came into the train and seemed confused about where to sit. Though there were other places all around, I felt like I should move my bag, in case that was his holdup. I asked him if he wanted to sit. He sat.

"I like friendly people," he said. "People who smile seem to know the same thing I do. I like to think they come from the same place I come from."

"And where is that?" I asked.

"My mother's womb," he replied, smiling under his sheety, white mustache. His teeth were yellow and few.

"Me too," I laughed. "I come from 'my mother's womb,' too."

"We musta been womb-mates," he suggested. "Two thousand years ago." He had sparkly eyes.

I looked on confusedly while he held up his brown leather briefcase and explained the perplexing circumstances surrounding its lost strap hook. He looked like a veteran - camouflage cargo pants, light denim jacket, long white hair.

"People who aren't friendly just walk around... look at 'em, they're in pain." He gestured to the full row of passengers across the way. "They read newspapers and play with their electronics to hide their eyes." I could see the river behind them as we crossed the bridge into the city.

"Maybe they're just in pain for now," I offered. "Maybe they're short on sleep or sick or whatever."

"You might think so. Although you're a woman! Women don't think. You're lucky you're a woman, so you don't have to think."

I was silent. With two stops to my destination, it seemed like a bad time to tackle that statement.

"Ya know, people like me go to the movies and get ideas down in Hollywood, you know? They'll do anything in Hollywood. S & M people like me, who cut off their tattoos with razor blades and go to the movies..." He trailed off.

"What?" What?, indeed. I was lost at his rapid shift of conversation and frightened by the content it brought. I wasn't even sure I had heard him correctly.

"Never you mind. You just pretend you didn't hear that, smiley. What I meant to say is, I'm going to the movies. Goin' to Lowe's to the movies." He laughed.

"Oh, okay!"

I clung to his mention of the movies - I made sure we did not stray from that topic. Meanwhile, my mind raced through images sprung from his confession and the mere utterance of 'razor blade'. I wondered if he had a sharp object with him - in his briefcase or the pocket of his white undershirt. I was afraid of Keith. I had trusted him with my smile and ears and personal space, and somewhere between his long mustache and Black Swan, he betrayed me. I arrived at work feeling ridiculously naive.

Furry Friend

A beautiful girl came on the train last night holding nothing but a stuffed puffin. She looked like a model - tall and blonde with a clean white coat, Uggs, trendy fur hat. But her bird was not stylish or novel. She was way whiter than its smutty, sooty fur. She carried it in a hug and placed it on her lap when she sat, without a hint of embarrassment.

Museum Advertisement

Paul Revere looked like Jack Black, I think.

The Coldest Night Yet

Weather.com says it feels like 20 degrees Fahrenheit tonight. And I rode my bike home from work. I thought I was going to die of hypothermia and freeze onto the grates of a gutter before I was halfway to my destination. I cursed my prickly frozen thighs, my numb finger pads, my cartilaginous nose, my neighborhood far away. And then I saw a woman in a too-big poofy coat and an orange stocking cap, pushing a shopping cart full of torn garbage bags uphill in the middle of the street. And I am warm at home now with hot tea in my belly, and I have no idea where she is.