YD6~30 Erin's Unexpected Nights Out in New York Adventures to Yail

Aetheria frustrated Erin to loop around the block, and I frown passing the corner post, “11th. Avenue.” Erin steering often with a wishful sigh, as I’m touring. “Greenwich village — SOHO...” She muttered, hinting. ‘_That’s where we’re going for the evening._’ She sees a gap in a train of parked cars. Stops, shifts gears and with heavy trucker’s arms wrenching the wheel back and forth, stalling the car. ‘_Erin!_’ I groaned. ‘_Why do you insist on driving by car into Manhattan?_’ As a ripped notebook page from her purse. “Take this,” she mutters, me to glance at the cryptic note. Hesitant, but her eagerness to help me is too commendable.

I appreciate Erin’s gesture, snagging the sliver of paper, scan catching an agency in the surname, underlining the scrawled phone number, before the engine sputters to a silence. She pulls the handbrake, as my pinky hooks to release the door latch. Both our doors swing open. Clearing my long legs, I kick my feet from the footwell, stud the asphalt - smack, smack - doors close. Over the rooftop, I catch her glance, toward the front fender. I pick my wallet to an impulsive wrist twist, flipping the left flap, then the right. Clearing my Seven-Star diary. behind, I slip the note in the purse, with a vow. ‘_A call from a payphone, the moment I’m alone._’ In my back pocket, I tuck my wallet, with a settling peace.

Erin seemed taller until the petite woman steps down the curb. She emerges from amid stalled cars’ bumpers. Leading across the deserted side streets, running into the distant window of the traversing artery. A charming tableau of old-fashioned townhouses — Aetheria’s twilight stare reflecting upon each of us coming up.

We turned the corner, “There is NOHO” Erin declares with a guide’s emphatic sigh. We walk toward the crossroads to a fenestrated hulking brick warehouse — that’s how it appeared, contrasting the row of houses lining the street. Conjure a spiritual apprehension teasing with people stacked within an architecture of boxes. Crossing through bright lenses, bar the median strip’s end, planted with a border signpost, “Houston Street.” Signaling a generation, defied the street’s townhouses. Adorned with staircases rising in front of half-buried basement windows to the stoops quiet ceremonial sentinel of entrance doors.

As we continued, “Fifth Avenue” winked off a street sign. Offering a riddle muddling my mind. As the passing far spread cars, channeling the four lanes One-Way artery. a flow of cars sluggish meddling through a flurry of jaywalkers. as the figures materialize from skeletal shadows casting the wall of townhouse facades across the street.

We reached along the sidewalk’s stretch a break in the row of the imposing facades. Aetheria drags my attention to the streetlight retracting into the hollowing darkness. throng of figures in a stretching perspective thinning before us, while revealing the widening nestled small park. The street in the disheveled appearances and unsettling with shivering grips of my skin. While Erin, unfazed, stopped by an artist, peppering him with questions. While I’m standing by, he explains. But to me, the T-shirt he wore, which itself was a canvas of his art.

Behind Erin, Eerie shadows cast by the trunk of a dark tree, emerging and clearing the umbrella canopy, slinking a lanky figure crossing a clearing. He moves toward the weasel of a slim man slouched against creeping vines, a bent leg propping a foot on the old wooden trellis. His gaze snagged on the hands stalking distant thin scattered peddling figures in the shadows of the sidewalk’s streetlights.

The lanky figure brushes past too near for a coincidence the propped slouched weasel, and both without acknowledging signs, an underhanded and firm palm slaps an illicit exchange. On an evanescent course, the lanky peddler melted into the shadows. Erin proceeds along the sidewalk by stringing peddlers, unperturbed. I shake my head. We cross the disheveled avenue toward scooting users. “Maybe we should go to the Israeli restaurant — Do you like Eastern music? Israeli!” Erin suggested. 

As I yearned for the raw energy of rock and roll. exploding on the dance floor, doubling the beat for a scorching Jive or a playful Twist. ‘_What else can I answer you._’ As Erin’s question hung in the air. “Yes!” I blurt. Erin amid the Avenue’s rows of grave ashlars, fenestrated masonry, and prominent quoins. a ridiculous wastes townhouse’s stairway. She descends by flanking raw-brick gable walls to an apron. At the entrance, she pulls the plate-glass, she releases into my hand the swinging door, while muttering an Israeli singer. 

‘_What do I know?_’ I’m thinking, with a hint of nostalgia. A few Israeli folks songs, nestled amongst the likes of Jim Reeves. My audio cassette tape collection, which on my maiden flight here, couldn’t fit in my suitcase, and left with Lionel.

As Aetheria’s montages unfold before me, to observe Aladdin lamps, as heads swirl wisps of smoke twirl from cigarettes, genies thriving out their confines. The dimly lit restaurant hums with an energy to question. ‘_How will we find a table in this place?_’ I mull over. Erin, however, weaves past crowded shoulders, backwash an offshoot cocktail bar, engaging in friendly greeting chats.

An ambassador to the lace, leads Erin channel into the depth of the hall. As a vocalist was just launching into a song, backed by a full band. They rounded the corner onto engaging a hallway, with a bench run with round tables along the rear wall. The usher vanishes, as Erin squeezes between a pair of round tables, chatting with a couple seated there. 

From my vantage point across the table, I steal a glimpse of the couple and turn away to sit beside Erin. a seamless shadow from the usher appearing as a waiter. I lend Erin an ear, placing our order for drinks. The waiter departs offside, taking my gaze from a seated crowd, to the vocalist basking in the limelight. Drifting away, I cross a woman’s eyes resting on me, and retract from the adjacent table, to ours. 

From afar down the passageway, the waiter returns, serving our drinks, and departing Erin and I sip. I flick a curious gaze from the seven-piece band shining circling instruments in the darkness, flashing beams of light to the ceiling. When the music stops, Erin claps with the crowd as a Greek song ends. My curiosity niggles the woman’s earlier stare. To my surprise, I crossed her gazing eyes, flipped back at Erin, at ease in her dark corner. 

The vibrant band transitions into a sultry Spanish song, the singer’s voice booming through the microphone. As the smattering of applause dies down, Aetheria hovering over the scene beckons me. My eyes’ shift, flit catching the striking black dressed woman's gaze, to the singer silhouetted amid his orchestra in the encroaching darkness. 

The next click song rhythms, too amateurish for my trained ear, accustomed to the beats of the Xhosa tribe. I withdraw a curious glance, cross the woman in black, and hold an unsettling gaze on me. To my dismay, Erin remains silent by my side — to my dismay.

While I’m averting, the woman’s gaze. ‘_This woman can’t be real?_’ I thought. I steal a glance at her companion, seated next to me—a potato-shape profiled in his dark expensive suit, facing the singer, with a blatant empty regard. Oblivious, he seems bearing blinkers of his pretty woman’s eyes persist, enticing me. I’m attempting to decipher, his woman’s delicate stroking his far neck, her long sleeve collar and drapes her velvet black dress wave off her companion’s lap, by the sleeve of her other hand fondling his thigh. In shame, I retracted my glance, and run adrift to the singer.

The woman in black’s confident companion exudes an air of certainty about how his night will unfold. ‘_You obviously despise the man. Why do you hang onto him?_’ Slips through my mind. Meanwhile, offside, male and female vocalists trade off the microphone, weaving through international themes of their songs. Erin’s few words drowned by the vibrant orchestra, rendered meaningless in the cacophony. I steal glances, feeling ensnared by the woman, who appears Erin’s age.

I flit the captivating candid stare of the woman, afar to a shadow materializes — a figure emerges from the darkness, approaching along the passageway. While my resilient curiosity, churns her honey complexion’s wash, swirling in my mind her low-cut velvet black dress, which hugs her curves and shaded her modest cupped breasts. With a long, slump hand drag, she rises from her seat, as her eyes beckon the waiter to approach her side.

After dismissing the waiter, the woman tracks his path along the passageway, disappearing into the dark depths. After her brief absence, she reemerges, the waiter trailing behind her. Approaching our table, to stand square up to us, her pearls necklace sways her collarbones curves. separated by our table’s tag folded to stand in a metal holder, hand printed in blue ink, the band’s cover charges. The woman’s unfazed. In front of my date, she offers me a drink.

A chill settles at heart. ‘_ The woman’s not worth humiliating Erin for._’ slips in my mind. Despite her audacity, I’m avoiding rudeness. But Erin’s silence persisted and left me torched. stranded with the woman upfront. “No thanks,” I say with a headshake, waving the woman’s offer down. ‘_My woman is here with me!_’ I'm insinuating with an eyesight turn. Discover beside me Erin gelatinous on her seat, lips tight, cowered in her corner.

The pretty woman in black whittles her intolerance, frown creases her brow, her figure stiffened with a hint of indignation as Erin remains oblivious. Lost in the cacophony of the singers and the booming orchestra. I gauge the exchange that occurred earlier in the darkness, by the waiter at a pace over her shoulder. A ten-dollar bill rolled his index clipped by his thumb. When Erin flinches, it breaks into my runaway imagination whispering. “You can’t refuse the offer.” 

‘_Accept, accept,_’ to awaken my confused mind. Questioning both Erin’s encouragement over the woman in black. ‘_Is this a New York way of life?_’ I thought, and avoiding conflict, I announced. “I’ll take the drink.”

The patient waiter paces forward, leaning in, asking. “What do you drink?”

As I believed, I got rid of the pressure, under the woman’s unwavering gaze. I couldn’t fall foolish, to a whirl of doubts. I leap to my last known drink, the Jewish single gathering. “Vodka.” I declared. The waiter, however, remained poised. “And what would you like with that? Ginger ale?”

“Yes.” I stammered, thinking. ‘_Whatever?_’ and behind him, a hint of a smile played on the woman’s elegant lips, but a flicker of annoyance drove her swirl away. Flourish in my mind. ‘_This is over at last,_’ as she steps away from our table, casting a single dismissive glance back at her lagging companion. Her man followed, as the woman in black tracked the waiter vanishing into the shadowy depth of the passageway. Jumps to mind, she likely asks her man. ‘_Open your wallet, pay and tip the waiter handsomely._’

Swift as the woman in black disappeared, she emerges from the deep dark approach without trailing the waiter, but with her lagging man. Passing our table, she looked at me. I offer her a nod of thanks, from my unscathed heart. She acknowledges, brushing off a glance at Erin, heading on. Around the corner, she disappears into the shadows toward the exit.

Not long after, I followed the woman and her man through my earlier observed architecture past the entrance cocktail bar, before the plate-glass and stairway to the street. I lean over to Erin,.lending her an ear, her rising from her unconsumed drink, is telling, and mutters through the blaring music. “I’m tired. Can we go?”.

‘_For sure._’ I agreed after a willing “Yes.” Erin weaves from our table, leading me along the passageway around the corner. We pass the now thin crowd at the cocktail bar. She pushes the door, to the wide flight of stairs. Eyesight rising over the last riser, to a welcoming street breeze, I glance at my wristwatch. ‘_two o’clock!_’ Clearing the arty T-shirt guy, among weary street wanderers and beggars, untangled the skeletal shifty-eyed young men. 

We arrived at Washington Square’s iconic brownstone buildings of New York University looming across the park. To my surprise, Erin tracks down her car, gleaming in the street. We round the Fiat Uno. doors unlocking. I’m stepping into the car, meeting her slides behind the wheel. Erin drives away, adorned streetlights wipe by, dropping intermittent shadows on my lap, until she pulls ups at the nearest mouth to my subway line. I lean over, peck her on the cheek goodbye, I step out. With a last waving goodbye, I’m watching the Uno vanishing in the distant haze, before moving on and descending underground.

After a long wait on the platform for a train, I step i past the opening doors. weariness washes over me to sit for the long ride. I watch the far scattered eery figures settled for the night. The doors opened again, shedding my anxiety stepping to the deserted platform, with a breath of relief as I surface from the subway meeting the streets. Walking along the familiar path through street lights, I’m crossing the bridge, stealing a peek through the fractured parapet wall, seeing a silver railway track flit in the dark ditch. Beyond the bridge, shadowed the rows of individual houses, to arrive at the front door of my residing Polish Landlady. I step inside the sleeping atmosphere, climb the stairs. Tiptoeing through the dining room, following the corridor. At the end, with a whispering door to my room, closing behind, my clothes sloughing, I burrow myself under the covers.

By mid-morning on Sunday, I’m stepping down the street to the rising towering apartments, turning the pedestal of the undercover garage parking, entering the lobby, stepping in the elevator, and emerging on Erin’s floor. Erin opens the door, inviting me inside, greeting me as she steps away. “I needed some space. Time to sort out my feelings,” apologetic for last Saturday. 

It’s peculiar, I mused. ‘_Unlike Erin, I don’t wrestle with my emotions. When I’m troubled, I dissect, analyze, weigh the options._’ I allow myself to bear the consequences of my decisions. ‘_Erin, there’s no needn’t apologize for going out with friends._’ After all, she gave me the opportunity to catch up on my studies.

In the early morning, scolding words pierce through my dreams, why Morphy’s arms have abandoned me. “You better leave now.” Erin’s warm breath whispered in my ear. I flip the duvet over to Erin. With a kick of my feet, I jump to my feet and step away without looking back. I thread on my pants, buttoning the waist, and zipping my fly. Snatching my shirt, I slip my hands through the long sleeves, ducking my head into the collar, and tucking the tail of my shirt in my pants. I slipped into a moccasin, pace for my following foot, marching toward the distant door. 

With a tweak unlatch pull clearing the corridor, I pull the grip behind - click - shut with the elevator door in sight. I emerge to the lobby, greeted by the gleaming marble, with distant lanterns lights, waiting for me in the night. I push open the plate-glass door, to walk around the brushy island and meet the line of streetlights. The crisp air circulated, drained by my disdain, to solace the morning at reaching Queens Boulevard to catch the metro home.

At the first opportunity, to free myself from obligations to Erin, I step over to a telephone booth, clutching her sliver of paper. I dial the number. A man answers, “Ari Goldstein.” The owner-agent directs me to a house tucked off the main boulevard. By ten o’clock a man appears, crossing the street toward the gatepost. I watched. He nods, “Ari Goldstein,” keys at the ready, while he passes the open metal gate. Leading across the front yard with a few steps to the stoop. Pick the lock. The entrance door swings back, clearing the hallway. Along the side wall, he treads up the staircase that kinks through the corner of the walls to an upper floor’s perched door. 

With the swing of the door, Ari Goldstein steps in, stands by the door stile, releases his grip. Waving me on. I launch an eyesight around the man, Aetheria’s wispy call to the far window’s glow. Framed by the proximate doorway, picturing across the room a distant rear house. My mind is alert. ‘_a room, suitable to receive Lionel and Gavin in the Big Apple, during their southern hemisphere’s school break._’

I couldn’t disappoint Erin’s trust and edge my eyesight leading across the galley kitchen toward the doorway to the street front windows. “Stepping into the room, I scanned the space and paused. Glancing at its only feature: a small balcony extending from the lateral walls, overlooking the driveway below.” Upon my return to Ari Goldstein, I blurted. “I’ll take it.” 

We sealed the deal on the kitchen counter, left me a copy of the rent agreement and keys exchanged. The owner-agent leaving me with the weight of the key in my hand. 

Needing breathing space for my deed, I step out of the house. I walk the sidewalks as priorities swirl in my head, with curiosity shifting eyes at my new environment. Pausing by a corner phone booth. I dial Erin, enlightening her on the apartment. I hung up the phone. Reaching a grocery store. Next, I enter a convenience store, through the aisles, picking utensils from the shelves, paying at the cashier, hands full I’m heading home.

In the kitchen I unwrap the kettle fills under the faucet to a final - whoosh - after three rinses, filling the kettle halfway. Follow the electric lead, plug the wall socket. I wash the set of glass cups and saucers. Tear open a brick of coffee, scoop a few heaps full, pour the ground into a cup, and turn my back.

No sooner had I stepped into the front room, the alarm’s wail echoed wrangling walls, and wild through the empty apartment. I sprint back, to a genie erupting from the kettle, questioning a contraption on the kitchen ceiling? I pull the plug, silencing the excited apartment — Aetheria’s voiceless anger. ‘_What are you doing?_’ Boiling water poured over the coffee, I retreated to the front room. Mid-stride, I pause before reaching the window, step foot over foot, lock ankles, lower myself scissoring legs to sit on the floor, and pose my coffee and the spend settle. 

Bare room blues had me contemplating the night, when a car’s persistent honking shatters the silent street. Until curiosity calls me to rise on scissoring legs to my feet, and pace over to the window. As I gaze down on the deserted street. When from amidst a smothered street with curb parked cars, a mattress surfing up the street — African style modest, atop Erin’s only white Fiat Uno is circulation. Veering, the mattress dipped into the driveway, seeming to vanish beneath my balcony.

I sprint across the kitchen, down the stairs, and out of the house, stepping the path along the stoop, nearing Erin with oversight. ‘_What a woman?_’ I chuckled, watching her wrestle with the knotted strings. I round the lumpy mattress by the Fiat Uno’s trunk, to grip the passenger door, opening and coordinating Erin’s untangling web of strings wound through the car’s interior and over the mattress.

With determination, she yanks the sloppy mattress slip off the roof of her car. I lunged for the mattress’ back end over the trunk, guiding the slipping mattress into her walking hands along the top edge toward the front. With both her hands clawed, she turns away. The mattress bends, and I’m following. Between us, the mattress borrows the path along the stoop. She climbs the few stairs, bending the mattress, and scooch through the entrance door. Courageous she treads up the stairs, with a hint of her exasperating clawing. a merciless flight of stairs, kink, with another flight toward the upstairs doorway. The mattress bent around the door into the kitchen. She crosses over the threshold, depositing the mattress. She swirls away, uncoils, overseeing the mattress lying in the middle of the room.. Sighing her achievement. ‘_That should do for the night,_’ her eyes declared. She springs out her swirl, steps on, disappears from the apartment, only to return with a blanket and a pillow.

Coffee in hand, I’m sip, pondering the potential cost, rising doubts furnishing the apartment without an outlet — ‘_Should I even bother?_’ I contemplate my roller coaster career. My mind tumbles through defied predictions. Priority shifted. Enrolled in the School of Continuing and Professional Studies, I must complete my Construction Management to leverage my South African experience. Little did I know, whispers swirled among students like dust devils: “Studying breaks up relationships!”

As I’m turning my head on Erin’s pillow, the night had ferric adorned the balcony. In a white fluffy snow, wrap around the railing and balusters and the branches of nearby trees canopy peeked at my window — A silent expression of good omen. Aetheria’s voiceless presence lingers — the white decor remains throughout the weekend. Monday, I’m awoken by a prolonged screeching. I jump to my feet, watching a car driver’s curse, smoking burned rubber, by determination to reach the top of the street.

I glance at my wristwatch. My hand flings back the blanket to the carpet, bolts and I perch on the edge of the bare mattress, to fist-push and exert my thighs muscles, rising to my feet. I pick my pants from the carpet, tread into them, zip up, tighten my belt. Followed by my shirt, while scanning the floor, only my book, other than stepping into moccasins, I snatch my book, keeping my place on the open pages, where I left off reading at a snail’s pace, studious, before dozing off.

Looking forward to crossing the state border through Connecticut, to reach my desk in New Haven. I’m closing the door out of the kitchen behind me. I descend the stairs, keys jingling in my hand, pulling the street doors. I cross the street and pick the Oldsmobile door swing open, slipping to the seat, leaning over to lay the book open on the passenger seat, of the most relevant law books. Out of the construction law professor’s four recommendations. To read even a paragraph when I’m stuck in traffic, and there are a lot of bottlenecks, lagging traffic, and red traffic lights to encounter. I tweak the ignition. Driving away from amid curb overnight parked cars, in my mind map my course onto the highway.

As I cruise amidst the 55 miles-an-hour traffic flow, tempted to press the throttle and cheat a five-mile notch to dare. My thoughts flash back to my first day at work — I stumbled upon a small, windowless room, separate from the old estimator’s, at an island of four blueprints tables pushed together making the estimating department. Rhymes in my head: “IBM PC.” where someone deserted their post — blank monitor perched atop a beige “CPU” box, sharing a small wooden desk with a keyboard and a dot matrix printer. 

I took my chance, with walls echoing the screeching wooden legs as I snagged my ankles, shifting the chair up. I extended my hand. With a flick of the thick red switch on the back, a stream of text livened the booting computer files. ‘_I couldn’t fail this time,_’ ran through my mind.  

By evening, I had no clue how I would get home. The office staff had already left, when I crossed Mr. Gates III, the CEO himself in the lobby. To my surprise, he handed me a car’s keys. I felt my heart pounding, then stepped out of the building. Descending the stoop stairs scanned across the street the muzzles of parked cars. I walked along the beaten-down tracks of an abandoned lot. ‘_No idea what the car looks like?_’ I rounded the taillights of parked cars. I spot the tags, “Oldsmobile Cutlass” square-shaped models. Picked the lock, swung a coupe’s wide door. Bewildered, I step inside, settle behind the wheel. My eyes swept the dashboard, I calmed myself. Then I turned the ignition, listened to the engine purr. I palm the gear shift, toggled the lever out of Park, and into reverse. My foot feathered the throttle. As I backed up, the landscape rotated—the postmodern concrete decks four floors, glass fill-ins reflected a permeating dusk. Shifting into drive, I rolled out, rocked through the gutter to the deserted evening streets. A sense of royalty washed over me, as I sought my way out of New Haven bound for the highway for New York.

By Wednesday, Arriving at the office, I found the old estimator, a relic bathed in window light. Perched on his high stool, presiding over an island ghosting three estimators. While the man held valuable secrets. From a greeting, we chatted every day, discussing my project in the small room. I mentioned a computer. He’d scoffed. “Computers can’t do my complex task … ‘_The intricacies of multitasking, time and motion, material pricing_’ — it’s impossible!”

Undeterred, I turn toward the opposing doorway, to enter the small backroom. I settle behind the IBM PC, booting, text livening the monitor. Hunching over a SuperCalc spreadsheet. I’m ahead of my lecturer, resorting to trial and error. Back at NYU, despite learning on Lotus 1-2-3 software. Here, after I’ve completed the imperial-to-metric conversions, and formula testing, I found myself lost streamlining a database process. Striving to prove my worth, the week ended, and I’m leaving the office, weaving my return route home.

Caving to Erin’s whim, She drives us to town for an evening out. Stalls the car in the street. We step out, walk a short distance to emerge among throngs of tourists on Times Square, in the midst of towering hotels on Broadway. She presses the glass doors to a wax museum of figures thinly crowded. As I scan our whereabouts, the cubic arctic cul-de-sac, of a lobby morphed as people stand funneled facing a far corner’s single elevator door. 

Erin walks into the lobby, pausing amid the flare of latecomers tapering a court over a passive audience toward an elevator door. She chats to a pair of seemingly male friends in her line of shoulders. After chatting for a while, she takes a break. By now I’m standing idle for a while, I ask. “Do you know them?”

“No!” Erin replies.

My brain scrambled, as I muttered, ‘_What the heck is going on here?_’ I decipher her cryptic message. ‘_Erin, you’re all out making me jealous!_’ I step forward, weave through the crowd, to stand beside a woman buried in a mane of wavy hair, and profile a sharp little nose. The doors whoosh open. upfront and at leisure, people thaws, onto stepping into the bright cabin. I blurted out to the woman, “What’s happening here?”

“Jewish singles club meeting,” the woman muttered, doing little to appease my confusion.

Outrage bubbles up at Erin’s inappropriate initiative. ‘_How dare you drag me into this market?_’

“I’m Gail,” the woman offered. Her sad eyes and soft lips betray a reluctance that mirrored my own. “I studied at the Sorbonne. Teach French.”

‘_That’s interesting,_’ I thought, as we inched into the elevator, with a lame crowd, stepping out on a floor, where few men stood in a queue. Further ahead, others faced each of the three women sitting behind tables, processing the registration paperwork.

My rusty French, a relic from childhood elementary French school playground games, connected with Gail. Her eyes sparkling with understanding. “Veux-tu partir d’ici ?” (French, Do you want to get out of here?) I blurted, the question tumbling from my lips. Gail’s drooping eyes brightened, as I grew impatient, squinting. Without another thought, “Voudrais-tu aller ailleurs ?” (French, Would you like to go elsewhere?) Flows over my lips. Without hesitation, we executed a synchronized scootch, through the small crowd gathered behind us, back to the elevator. The doors slid shut behind us, blurring through the lobby. We emerged onto the bustling street, the cool night air a welcome relief.