Lost in the City

Lost in the City

by Rick Pascal

Melvin and Shirley

        Melvin Addler awoke to the glory of a beautiful, sunny June Saturday morning, the first day in the new apartment on 81^st between Columbus and Amsterdam Avenues, on the Upper West Side of the city. He sat up in bed, stretched his arms over his head and yawned, that wake-up yawn that clears the head after a solid night’s rest. He removed the sleep sand from each eye with his pinky finger then gazed with wonder at the woman lying next to him, still asleep, her long blond hair curled around her neck.  He stared at her bare shoulders above the covers and the comely shape of her body underneath. My god, how lucky am I to have found, let alone married, such a beautiful woman, Melvin thought.

        Melvin and Shirley had always wanted to live in the city, close to theaters, museums, myriad restaurants and within an easy commute to their jobs.  Both worked in Midtown, less than thirty minutes from the apartment by bus. It was an ideal location. They were happy to have found an apartment within their budget, especially having spent the first three months of their married life relegated to the spare bedroom of Shirley’s parents’ home way out on Long Island.

        Melvin got out of bed and went into the kitchen and put up a pot of coffee. He then went into the bathroom, brushed his teeth, washed, but decided not to shave this morning. As he stared at yesterday’s five-o’clock shadow in the mirror, he noticed Shirley approach behind him, one strap of her silk nightgown dropped down off her shoulder, and her long hair flowing down one side of her face.

        “Good morning, handsome,” she said in her sexiest voice.

        “Good morning yourself, gorgeous,” Melvin replied, as he turned toward her, pulled her tightly towards him and kissed her passionately.

        “Now that’s the way to start the weekend,” Shirley beamed.

        “I’ll show you an even better way,” said Melvin, as he swooped her up in his arms and carried her back into the bedroom. Laying his wife down on the bed, he removed his New York Yankees tee shirt and, by the time he removed his plaid shorty sleep pants, Shirley had already slipped out of her nightgown and was lying in wait for him, the bed covers tossed aside.

        “Nothing’s better than Saturday morning sex,” she said after they made passionate love. She leaned towards Melvin and kissed him on the lips and then on the tip of his nose. “I’m hungry now,” she continued. “You made the coffee; I’ll scramble the eggs.”

        Breakfast finished, Melvin and Shirley decided to take a stroll through their new neighborhood. They stopped to say ‘Hello’ to most all of the local merchants who, in turn, greeted them warmly. They met Pete, the green grocer on the corner of 83^rd and Columbus; Sally, the florist next door to Pete’s; they introduced themselves to Ivan, who owned the newsstand around the corner on 82^nd street. They continued to meander up and down the streets for the next two hours, introducing themselves to store owners, then window shopping and people watching, all the while holding hands and smiling at each other as newlywed lovers often do.

        “I’m so glad we decided to live here,” said Shirley. “I think we’re going to like it.”

        “I’m with you on that,” Melvin responded. “How about a quick bite of lunch? How about we try that place right over there, across Amsterdam, the Apollo Diner?”

        Melvin and Shirley crossed the street and entered the diner where they were greeted personally by Dimitri, the owner, a man of about sixty, his black curly hair tumbling down close to his shoulders. He sported a huge moustache, twirled and waxed at the ends making him appear as though he were an advertisement for some kind of men’s facial grooming product. He handed them menus and escorted them to a booth. Cathy, the waitress, followed closely behind Dimitri, deposited two glasses of water on the table and, smiling, said, “What’ll it be, lovers?”

        Melvin and Shirley ordered burgers and coffee, after which Shirley said, “Feels like we lucked out with this place.”

        “I’m liking this part of town more and more,” said Melvin. “Feels more like a small town than a big city.”

        Shirley reached out her hand across the table and embraced Melvin’s hand while smiling the kind of loving and adoring smile that could melt any man’s heart.

Michael and Alice

        “Honey,” Alice Yang said to her husband, Michael, “We need to go over to Key Food for some groceries. Would you please get the shopping wagon out of the front closet?”

        Alice always used the wire shopping wagon when she went to the supermarket on the corner of 44^th Street and 5^th Avenue, only two blocks away from their apartment on 46^th Street in the Sunset Park section of Brooklyn. It was Saturday, a beautiful sunny day in June and, like most Saturdays, Alice and Michael went with their four-year old son, Luke, together to do their weekly food shopping at Key Food.

        Michael and Alice Yang enjoyed living in the diversity of Sunset Park, comprised largely of Asians and Hispanics, with somewhat smaller populations of Whites, African Americans and even Native Americans and Pacific Islanders. Most importantly, it seemed that the vast majority of the neighborhood lived in harmony.

        Both Michael’s and Alice’s parents had emigrated to America from China. Michael was two years old when they arrived; Alice had been a first generation Chinese-American. Both families settled in Sunset Park and met each other in the Brooklyn Chapter of the Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Association known as Chong Wa. The Yang family and Alice’s Tsai family became friends almost immediately. When Michael and Alice were children, they played together in family outings and other social activities sponsored by Chong Wa. They particularly enjoyed swimming in Sunset Pool during the summer. Friends at the beginning, Michael and Alice became increasingly fond of each other, fell in love as teenagers and, finally, to the delight of their parents, married. To their further delight, Michael and Alice remained in the same neighborhood as their parents.

        Michael was pleased with his easy commute to his job at Montauk Intermediate School in Borough Park, only a fifteen-minute ride on the Number 11 bus, where he taught eighth grade math.  Alice took the subway to her job in Midtown Manhattan (which everyone referred to as “The City”) where she was the IT Manager for an insurance services company. Luke was a regular at the Sunset Park Day Care Center, only a few blocks from their apartment, and an easy walk to the subway station for Alice from the Day Care. 

        Together Alice, Michael and Luke rode the elevator down from their sixth-floor apartment and walked to the Key Food Supermarket on 44^th.  As they strolled along 5^th Avenue, Alice wheeling the shopping wagon behind her; Michael keeping a firm grip on Luke’s tiny hand to keep him in check (Luke often had the habit of running off to chase a pigeon, or turning away to watch a dog), they greeted and were greeted by several of their neighborhood residents and local shopkeepers. 

        Pete Romano, owner of the florist shop waved, along with a “Hi Mr. and Mrs. Yang” greeting. “Beautiful day, isn’t it?” Michael was a frequent patron of Pete’s establishment, often surprising Alice with a bunch of flowers for no special occasion. Sue Lee, the owner of Sunset Cleaners, saw them through her front plate glass window and waved with a smile as she lifted her head from hemming Mrs. Salvatore’s new dress. Sue loved to watch people pass by and wave to her favorite customers.

        Alice, Michael and Luke enjoyed walking in the sunbathed streets on their way home from Key Foods. Alice towed the shopping cart laden with four bags of groceries, and Michael carried a fifth bag in one arm while holding Luke’s chubby hand with his free hand. Alice had made sure to buy cold cuts for the family lunch, which she prepared soon after they arrived back to the apartment. Luke especially liked bologna on soft rye bread with mustard. After lunch, they walked the two short blocks to Sunset Park, where Luke loved the monkey bars and swings in the playground area. Alice and Michael sat alongside other young parents watching their children at play, seemingly without a care in the world. They were also eagerly awaiting the opening of Sunset Pool where they planned to give Luke swimming lessons when it opened for the season on July 1^st.

Zoey and Gunner

        Mark and Sally Wiley live in Rocky River, a quiet suburb of Cleveland, Ohio. Mark commutes the nine miles to work in Cleveland’s Museum of Natural History where he is the Executive Director of the Cleveland Archeological Society. On Tuesday and Thursday mornings, Mark enjoys teaching a course on archeology at Cleveland State University, combining his expertise on the subject with his love for teaching. It has not been uncommon for Mark to lead a student group for two weeks during the summer to parts of the Middle East and Africa on excursions to archeological digs. One of Mark’s particular joys of these trips has been uncovering some rare relic that he has been able to display at the museum. Sally and their ten-year old twins, Zoey and Gunner, delight in accompanying Mark and his students on these expeditions. Zoey always finds something to bring home and add to her collection of “rare finds” as she calls them, whether it be a small chard from a piece of pottery, a stone, or just a few grains of sand that she keeps in a small jar as a memento of her time in the field. Gunner also collects souvenirs occasionally but is more interested in the dig itself, often handing his discoveries to his sister for her collection.

        Sally, a natural educator who adores children, was the proud recipient of the Teacher of the Year Award as a mathematics teacher in Rocky River Middle School. Sally would often challenge her students to determine the fallacy in two math puzzles she threw at them. One was the algebraic problem showing that 2 = 1. Another, in geometry, showed that the hypotenuse of a right triangle was equal in length to one of the other sides. The students had to determining the fallacy by identifying the improper assumption at the outset of each problem. Sally enjoyed watching the minds of her young students attack each problem and, on occasion, someone actually would identify the fallacy, to Sally’s delight. The students loved her. At Christmastime, there was no shortage of gifts on Sally’s classroom desk.

        From the time Zoey and Gunner were just tykes, Sally instilled in them the love for logic and solving puzzles, whether jigsaw, arithmetic, brain teasers or whatever other kind of solution-oriented games (such as the game of “Clue”) she could think of. Zoey and Gunner were outstanding athletes in their own right and played on the same Little League baseball team. Gunner was one of the best batters on the team, where he also pitches; Zoey, the catcher on the same squad, could throw the ball to second base on a fly. They loved to go bowling, watch Disney movies and especially loved to play games.  Both excelled in school. Mark and Sally could not be prouder of their children.

        On Saturday, June 17, a beautiful and warm day that spread from the Midwest to the East Coast, Zoey and Gunner celebrated their eleventh birthday. Following the Little League game that morning, which their team won by a score of 10-6, Sally and Mark treated the entire team to a pizza party in a private room in the back of Romano’s Little Italy Restaurant. The team and their parents celebrated both the birthday of Zoey and Gunner, as well as the team’s 6-0 record thus far.

        When the Wileys returned home after the party, Sally made them both bathe and put on fresh clothes before opening their presents.

        “Make sure you write down the name of each child and the gift they gave you, and get ready to send every one a ‘Thank You’ note,” Sally reminded them.

        Among the myriad birthday presents that Zoey and Gunner opened, tearing the wrapping paper off each one with abandon, so unlike the way they would dig for treasures while on a dig with their father in Egypt or on a hillside in Turkey, they came across two gifts – one for each of them – that they had never seen before. 

        “What kind of puzzles are these?” Gunner asked his parents.

        “Oh, my god,” said Mark with nostalgic delight. “Look at this, Sally.”

        “A fifteen slide-puzzle!” Sally exclaimed. “I haven’t seen one of these since I was a kid, myself. And look, there’s another slide-puzzle, too. It seems to be a kind of cityscape, like a series of street scenes that you can move around to create different pictures. What fun!”

        “Will you show me how to work it?” asked Gunner.

        “Well,” said Mark as he began to rearrange the fifteen numbers on the slide-puzzle, “All you have to do is figure out how to reassemble the squares back to their original configuration.  As far as the other slide-puzzle with the city streets, you can make up any picture you want.”

        Zoey and Gunner continued opening their presents, delighting in each one, and remembering to write down who gave what. But to their bewilderment, they could not find any birthday card attached to the gifts of the fifteen puzzles. “One less ‘Thank You’ note to write,” Gunner said, as both he and Zoey laughed. 

        Later that evening, after finding a place in their bedroom to store their birthday presents, at Sally’s insistence, they both wrote their ‘Thank You’ notes at the kitchen table to each of their friends. All the friends’ gifts had been accounted for but they still could not identify who gave them the puzzles.

        “Well,” Sally said, “Everyone who was at the party and who gave a gift received a note. I suppose whoever gave the puzzles will have received a note just the same.”

        Intrigued by the slide-puzzles, Zoey and Gunner started rearranging the small squares on each puzzle, moving them up and down, side to side creating different configurations. In the numbers puzzles, they relocated the numerals back to their original positions, but in the cityscape puzzle, it didn’t seem to matter to them what the final configuration became. There were so many different scenes to create. And so, after Zoey and Gunner created their own special scenes, they went off to slumberland to dream about being eleven years old.  

        Sunday, June 18^th, was another beautiful, warm and sunny morning on the East Coast. Melvin and Shirley awoke to the sounds of birds chirping in the trees outside their apartment window. They embraced once more, as the husband and wife lovers they were, kissed each other passionately before tossing back the bedsheet and arising to greet another wonderful day in their newlywed life.

        “How’s about we go down to the Apollo Diner for breakfast?” Melvin asked. “I noticed yesterday that they had breakfast specials until 11 AM.”

        “What time is it now?” Shirley inquired.

        “Nine-thirty,” Melvin responded, looking at the Swatch watch that Shirley had given him as a marriage gift. Melvin loved that watch, and especially liked the sporty brown leather strap. Shirley knew so much about him and the things he enjoyed. “That’ll give us plenty of time to shower and get there well before eleven.”

        They showered together, “to conserve water” Shirley had implored, hugged and kissed, washed each other’s backs, then hugged and kissed some more before toweling off and dressing to greet the city streets. They walked out the front door, arm in arm, to witness the shock of their lives that stopped them in their tracks.

        “C’mon, sleepy head. Rise and shine,” Alice said as she shook Luke’s shoulder. Luke was always a good sleeper, even when he was an infant. A model child, Alice and Michael thought, being blessed as they were. “We’re having breakfast at Nei Nei’s this morning. And it’s such a beautiful day. Your cousins will be coming in from Flushing to help celebrate Yeh Yeh’s birthday.” Luke and his cousin Louie were the same age, and enjoyed playing together. Louie’s mother, Margaret, was Alice’s younger sister by one year. The family, as many Chinese families are, were extremely close knit and enjoyed getting together at Nei Nei and Yeh Yeh’s house as often as possible. Today would be special because of the family patriarch’s 80^th birthday. Luke always looked forward to Nei Nei’s jiaozi and baozi, her special stuffed dumplings, as well as her youtiao, the most delicious breakfast crullers you could imagine. Needles to say, Luke hopped out of bed and quickly began to get dressed, as best he could by himself. Tying his shoes was still a problem and he was thankful that Alice had bought him a pair of sneakers that closed with Velcro instead of shoelaces.

        “Are you ready yet?” Alice called to Michael, who had just finished shaving in the bathroom.

        “I’ll be ready in five minutes,” he responded. “What time is it?”

        “It’s nine-thirty already,” Alice called back. “They’re expecting us by ten.”

        “It’ll only take a few minutes to walk the two blocks to your mother’s,” Michael said. “We have plenty of time.”

        The Yang family, hand in hand, walked out of the elevator and out the front door of their apartment house onto Fifth Avenue. As they turned to their left, toward what they expected was 47^th Street, they froze in their tracks, Alice’s and Michael’s jaws hanging agape.

        “What’s wrong, mommy?” asked Luke.

        By some strange, mystical, unexplained metaphysical phenomenon, a four-by-four block section of Sunset Park, Brooklyn as well as the Upper West Side of Manhattan had been rearranged. Streets were not where they were the day before. The Key Food supermarket on 44^th Street was now on what appeared to be the corner of 47^th Street. The Apollo Diner on Amsterdam and 83rd was now at the corner of Columbus and 81^st. As Alice and Michael stared at their surrounding neighborhood perplexed and confused, so did Melvin and Shirley regard their immediate surroundings with similar bewilderment. As did virtually every other living being within the same four-block radius on the Upper West Side and those living in that certain four-block radius in Sunset Park.

        Corey Meyers, a cute and curious child living in Denver, Colorado had celebrated his eleventh birthday at the Mountain Lanes Bowling Alley on Saturday, June 17, where his parent hosted a party for Corey and several of his close friends. Upon returning home, Corey opened his presents and was excited to find a new puzzle. This puzzle comprised fifteen sliding pieces housed in a four by four plastic casing. Each of the puzzle pieces had pictures of houses, trees, stores and the like. Corey could design any scene he desired utilizing each of the sliding puzzle pieces. He played with his new slide-puzzle that evening before going to bed.

         The following morning, the people living within a certain four block radius that included the Pike Place Public Market in downtown Seattle, Washington, were perplexed, bewildered and stunned when they went outside their homes and noticed that an apparent mysterious, supernatural force had rearranged their neighborhood.

The End

Author’s Note:

The mathematical puzzles that Sally Wiley gave her students included the following fallacies: In the “2=1” algebraic puzzle, the fallacy is division by zero that yields a meaningless answer. In the right triangle hypotenuse puzzle, the fallacy is the intersection of the angle bisector and the opposite side bisector meeting inside the triangle. They intersect outside the triangle.