My Friend Bailed On Me Last Night, But It Turned Out To Be Alright

I received a text message from my friend, Ben, who said he was around West 4th.

“Is that around Local [138]?”

I told him to stay where he was. “Going to take the A to you. Will be there in about 20 minutes.”

The A train is three minutes away from the apartment I share with Devon. The C train came before the A did — so I thought I’d be able to transfer to the F since the A, C, and F all go to West 4th (just that the C is local and the F is on a different track).

On the C, I remember one woman doing this eyebrow thing after she looked at me.

I got off at Jay Street to wait for the F, but I thought, If the A comes before the F, I will take it. And that’s exactly what happened.

I play games on my phone while I’m on the train. Right now, I’m obsessed with 2048. I’ve beaten it three times. My strategy is to keep the large number on the top right corner of the screen and stack numbers around it. It’s quite successful. I played the 5×5 tile — I think the 4×4 is far more challenging.

Two young boys entered the train on 14th Street. They were brothers — that’s that’s they said. I recognized one of them because I had seem him before. He was doing something he loved — dancing. This was the boy that danced on trains to Michael Jackson’s Thriller. He was doing something different than the kids that yell “Showtime!” on the train. This, to me, was far more intimate and passionate. A tourist next to me took her camera out and started taking pictures of them. You owe him money now, I wanted to tell her. Someone told me that if a street entertainer gets you to stop you to watch him or her, you owe them some money. That applies for taking pictures of someone performing.

The train stopped at West 4th Street. I quickly gave the boy going around with a hat a dollar and briskly walked towards the West 3rd exit.

My Galaxy S3 takes an extraordinarily long time to find reception after getting out of the subway — that’s even when I turn mobile off and on again. I’ve noticed that Facebook Messenger lags after its update. I had to wait about three minutes for my phone to find reception. I received a text message from Ben.

“Yo they are trying to leave, the lazy bastards.”

I called him. It went to voicemail, so I messaged him.

“Yo where you at? Did you leave?”

I walked around the neighborhood waiting for an answer. When none came, I figured he was on the subway back down towards Coney Island. I messaged Devon.

“I’m so hungry and I think my friend went back home.”

She sent me back a sticker of that sailor on fire because he’s angry.

“I’m sorry baby,” she wrote back.

“You want sushi? I’m going to get some food.”

She said she didn’t want any.

I called my brother to see what he was doing.

He picked up and said he was making okonomiyaki. He asked if I was going to have dinner. I told him I’ll get a burger.

“That sounds nice,” he said. I agreed.

I remembered that there was a Five Guys around Houston and LaGuardia. I was on Bleecker and MacDougal. I walked by bars and this group of hippies standing on a bus singing some song and blowing bubbles at the dazed gawkers on the pavement. I remember thinking, I just want a burger.

I wish I had looked up Five Guys on Google Maps before I even walked there. I would’ve saved time and some grief. That particular Five Guys ended up being closed. I remember walking towards where the store used to be (at this point, I had no idea it was closed). I thought, “Yes, I’ll get a cheeseburger. It’ll be exciting. I’m going to get some greasy-ass burger and I’m going to enjoy it.” As I walked to the store, I realized that there was no more Five Guys at that location. No. They had closed — and it appeared that they had closed some time ago. Layers of graffiti covered the storefront. What was I going to do now?

With the idea of eating a burger fully ingrained in my mind, I decided to go get it from a place I hadn’t gone for a long time: Wendy’s. This particular Wendy’s was located on Broadway. I doubled back up LaGuardia. I thought I saw someone that I went to college with — Kat, if you’re reading this, and you’re in NYC, hi, I would’ve said hello, but I was too hungry to do anything but look for a burger.

While standing in line, a man in front of me, who I think was extremely drunk, ordered a baked potato with sour cream and bacon. He also ordered a frosty with cheese sauce. The cashier looked at him. “Are you sure?” she asked. “Man, man, man, I said I wanted a frosty with cheese. How much do I owe you?” he said. When it was his time to get his food, he got upset because the number on his receipt was “wrong” (it was right) and he was visibly irritated with the cashiers (for some reason). He grabbed his food and he swayed away from the counter mumbling, “Man, I’ll kick your ass and sleep with your mom, I’ll fight you, man, you want me to jump over the counter and fight you…” I later saw the very same man when I walked down Crosby St. to take the F from Broadway / Lafayette. He had turned on a faucet outside of one of the buildings and he was lying in the water that came pouring out. His food was carefully placed on a ledge nearby. He was still mumbling. “I’m going to kick his ass real good, you know what I’m saying?”

At home, I read some funny Missed Connections with Devon and we drank some whiskey. She showed me a picture of a cute baby on Instagram. “Your baby’s going to look like that,” she said.

My friend, Eva, who I worked with in real estate (she did all of the heavy work, I just did tech blogging and lead gen), messaged me around midnight. “Come to Wyndham hotel rooftop, friend’s birthday party.” I was in bed sleeping. Devon says she woke up because I had taken all of the covers. She says I was drooling a lot. Maybe I was dreaming about burgers.