I once took the Number Seven to Manhattan to see the ball drop on New Year’s Eve. I was on my own. I had no idea how many people really would show up. Thousands came, maybe a million. And there were barricades. And police. It was shivering cold. I figured once I got in this first set of barricades at Times Square, I could find a bar. A line formed that we all froze in, and one by one, told the cops why we should be let in. Everyone said ‘ball drop.’ When it was my turn, I said, ‘I just want a drink and am looking for a bar.’ I might have mentioned the ball drop.
They said, ‘no.’
They motioned me aside. A guy with a family, a family like I have back in Chicago, said the magic word – ‘ball drop.’ And they let him in. I was pissed. I went back to the subway and headed home. I passed through the turnstile and heard the rattle of the Seven. The sliding doors opened, and I got on board. It wasn’t very crowded, but there was this one guy. He was younger than me, and he wore a suit underneath his overcoat. He had some flowers in his hand and a glum look on his face. I said to myself, ‘A girl just stiffed this guy. He had an evening planned with her, maybe to see the ball drop, but she stood him up.’ I put myself in his shoes. This city had about seven million people in it, more if you count Long Island. He wasn’t thinking that. It took just one girl to ruin the night for him. He was headed home.
I was headed home too, not to my real home, but to where I was staying, in Lynbrook, miles away. I would go to the end of the Seven line, walk to College Point where I parked my car and then drive to that tiny apartment I’d rented six months ago, call my home far away and wish everyone a Happy New Year. Then I started thinking. How many people were in this city? Millions. Most of them, for right now at least, were happy. They were celebrating either the end of one year or the beginning of a new and better one. I didn’t want to be like this mope with his flowers. Sure, it’s hard getting stood up, but you have to be positive. Maybe the New Year would be great.
Nobody noticed, not even him, when I got off the Seven at Queensboro Plaza. The platform was cold and empty. Nobody was going anywhere. Everyone was where they wanted to be, except him and me. The Seven took him someplace where he could throw away those flowers, but me, I got on the next Seven going back to downtown. The inbound Seven stopped, I got on, the train whined and headed into the curve towards Manhattan. I heard about those barricades. I knew there was more than one entry point to the ball drop. So, instead of going to Times Square, I went over to 8th Avenue, where there was another entry point, and of course, different cops. I knew what to say now.
They asked me, ‘Where are you going?”
I said, “The ball drop.”
They let me in. It was near the Port Authority Bus Terminal. There was a huge crowd there, just like there had been at 5 th Avenue. More, probably, because people were coming and going to the buses. And it was still cold, but being among all those people I didn’t really feel it. I felt a sense of something, something I hadn’t felt much here in this strange city, a sense of camaraderie or belonging or togetherness, something that made me feel like I wasn’t all that alone. I never did find that bar because I really didn’t look. Instead I found a deli and got a hot cup of coffee. Buy now it was getting close. I nudged some of the strangers near me and made some stupid comments like, ‘It won’t be much longer.’ Then a countdown began. Nobody could see the ball drop. We were too far away. But we counted down the last minute like we could actually see it. There was this tension that ran through all of us.
We saw some preliminary flashes of light over Times Square. Then as the moon looked down on the millions of us, smoke and glorious multicolored fireworks exploded over One Times Square. We all went crazy, cheering and high-fiving each other, the puffs of our breath making tiny explosions of their own on Eighth Avenue.
And then it was over.
I went back to the 5 th Avenue subway station and paid my fare. The Seven was about half-full. I took it all the way to the end of the line at Main Street in Flushing, rode the escalator for that long ride up to the street, then looked down Main Street and realized I had about a twenty minute walk. It didn’t seem that far when I hoofed it from work earlier. It hadn’t seemed so cold. The crowd from the station thinned out as I began walking. Now there was no one but me going down Main Street, passing pharmacies, jewelry stores and delis with exotic names in neon but confounding Asian hieroglyphics. I was so cold I stopped thinking, stopped thinking about the fireworks, the millions of people who’d gone home, the millions of flowers that were thrown out. All I did was look up at the lonely moon, who looked back at me with that icy smirk on her face the way she does when she knows you know you are nothing but a fool. Then, on Linden, where the low buildings hugged the sidewalk, I sensed she was right. Here I was, hurrying to my apartment to call home and wish them a Happy New Year, thinking now that so far the New Year was lousy for both of us.
I looked up at the homeless moon, and decided to wave at her and wish her a Happy New Year anyway.
“You too,” I said to the cold dark sky.
Paul Smith writes poetry & fiction. He lives in Skokie, Illinois with his wife Flavia. Sometimes he performs poetry at an open mic in Chicago. He believes that brevity is the soul of something he read about once, and whatever that something is or was, it should be cut in half immediately
The Queens Review 