The Artificial Silk Girl

I spent all day Saturday at the Met.  It was a lovely day outside with beautiful skies and sunshine, with people in the streets and people in the park, and I thought about what I was missing, but choices need to be made and there are nice days at home, too.  But there is no Met.  And so I stayed indoors taking my meals at the cafe then pushing onward, getting lost, room after room after room.

I woke Sunday wondering what to do.  Departure day, but not until the early evening.  I checked my bags at the hotel desk and decided on a course.  First the Guggenheim, then the Neue.

The Guggenheim had a photography exhibit that started off mediocre and got progressively worse.  "Haunted" it was called, and I was, not by images but by theory.  The Picture Generation, as they were dubbed, mirrored the cultural theories of the time questioning authorial ownership and the ability to "author" anything at all.  It might have been necessary.  I don't know.  But I might as well have been at the Whitney.  I'm sure the show was critically well-received.

Thinking I had time still, I then stopped at the Neue Gallerie to see the Otto Dix exhibit.  I went to the bookstore first and realized I was tremendously hungry, so I wandered over to the Cafe Sabarsky before heading upstairs to the art.  I was seated in a corner booth looking out across the room, next to a fifteen foot oak-framed window giving out to 5th Avenue and the Park.  A glass of wine and the chatter of the crowd, then an open-faced sandwich on hard, dark bread, an egg-spread covered with slices of ham, topped with slices of pickle and shredded horseradish.  "I'm German," I thought in a low, harsh voice.  "I need pickles and radishes and hard, dark bread.  I need beer."  It was a treat.

After lunch, I went upstairs and wandered the show.  The Neue is small, so it was not so much wandering, really, as walking from room to room, standing before each harsh painting wondering at the zeitgeist of the Weimar culture, wishing to see the paintings of Christian Schad right away.

But time was moving me now.  The bookstore was full of things I wanted, but I settled on a novel by Irmgard Keun written in 1932 called "The Artificial Silk Girl."  The cover is what got me, I think, though it may have been the title as well.  And besides, the book was small.

It was simply a quick walk up 86th Street to the Metro stop for the 6 line which would put me one block from my hotel.  I would get my bag and go back to the train and get to the airport on time.  But that is how it was supposed to work--in theory.  Practice was another thing.

I waited on the 6 for a very long time while three trains stopped going the opposite way.  I was getting nervous.

"Hey," a woman yelled at me.  I turned to her.  She just stared.

"Are you a photographer?"  I guess she saw me sneaking pictures.  Her tone was more a command than a question, and I thought she was going to give me a hard time.  But that question always makes me smile.  Why do people ask me that?  There are hundreds of people with cameras.  Everyone everywhere is always taking photos all the time.

"I keep trying to think so," I told her sheepishly.  She looked like Jessica Lange in "Far North."

"Do you have a card?"

I had to laugh.  "No, why?"  Now I was intrigued.  Maybe this was it.  Maybe she was going to make me famous.

"You live here?"

No, I told her.  I'm on my way home.

"You look like you're from New York.  Well, that's too bad.  You coming back?"

"Sure," I said, "all the time."

"Give me your number."

"Why don't you give me your email address?" I said.  "I'll send you some photos."

"Man, I never do this," she said looking through her purse for a pen.  "I just thought. . . well, I never do this."

I guessed she wasn't going to make me famous.

"How often does the six run here?" I asked her.

"All the time, just not today, I guess."

There was a stairwell down to another track for the 4 and 5.  "Will the 4 stop at 51st?" I asked.

"Yea, let's go."

We dashed down the stairs just in time to catch a train.  It was the 6.

"What the hell, why were we standing upstairs?"  I asked her when we were on the train.

"I don't know.  I'm drunk.  Been drinking with friends all day."  She definitely looked like Jessica Lange.

But the train didn't stop at 51st.  It chugged along squealing its breaks never picking up much speed, and when it finally stopped, I was at Grand Central Station.

"What the hell?" I said again, nervous now.  I was going to be late for the airport.

"It's New York, sugar.  You never know.  You're just nine blocks back.  You want me to come with you?"

"No, I know where I am, I'm just late.  I've got to go," I said, jumping off the train in a trot.

"Send me something," she said with a smile.  "I never do this, you know."

When I got to the hotel, I asked the concierge about the trains to make certain.  She began writing down each train and each stop.  "It is going to be a little difficult today.  They are working on the lines, so everything is slow."

"How long will it take me if I get a cab?"

It was my only hope.  The doorman said, "I have one right here.  Half an hour.  Fifty bucks."

The driver took my bag and put it into the trunk of a giant white stretch limo.  I sat in the far back next to the bar.  "Hey," I said, "I'm in a hurry.  I'm late for a flight."

"Don't worry my man," he said.  "Here, take our picture."  He grabbed the doorman into a buddy hug.  Obviously they were friends.

Traffic was horrible, and my new friend took us up an avenue, then cross town, then back.  He must know what he is doing, I thought, but why'd I have to take a limo.  Jesus, he is slow.

Finally we crossed the Queens Bridge out of Manhattan, and I thought I might just make it.  But the highway was jammed as well.  What was I thinking?  Everyone would be leaving Manhattan on a Sunday afternoon.  Shit shit shit.  But the driver had tricks maybe.  He was cutting off the highway, and then we were in a rundown industrial district making lefts and rights on abandoned streets.  What the fuck?  And then we were on another road passing stores, turning left, right.  I could see the highway.  What was he doing? I wondered, avoiding the tolls?  Yes, of course.  I was ready to kill.  We would never make it.

Relax, I thought.  What happens happens.  Getting into a wad will not help.  If you miss it, you can fly out on a later flight.  Relax.

But I didn't relax.  Rather, I looked out the window of Moby Dick while we stopped at light after light in some crowded part of Queens I'd never imagined.  Now the people were poorly dressed and overweight.  The stores wore loud signs that announced the appeal of their wares in giant reds and yellows and blues.  It was all awful, truly awful.  "My Manhattan" began to play itself inaudibly.  I thought of the thin women from the night before in fashionable clothing.  Here, everyone wore the same t-shirt.  There seemed little difference between genders.  The great leveling, I thought.  Paradise.

Then suddenly we were on the highway again.  "How long?" I asked the driver, my fingers crossed.  We were down to the second.

I'll give it to him.  He drove Moby like a champ.  Suddenly he was on the horn and we were passing cars on the left and on the right.  Maybe the whiteness and the size scared them, but cars were pulling over now as if we had our own lane.

Jet Blue.  Fingers crossed, I gave him the money and a big tip.  "I think we made it," I cried, remembering my murderous thoughts from twenty minutes before.  But everything must go like clockwork.  First the curbside check-in, then through security, down a long corridor, the last gate, running.

"This is the last call for flight number. . . ."

And there I was, the last man on.

As I settled into my seat, I put my hand into my pocket and found a piece of paper.  I took it out to see what it was.  It was the paper the woman had given me on the subway.  I laughed.  Of course it was.  Of course.  What other name could she have.