Thursday, February 25, 2010

Could you just....?

I had to go to a press conference in NYC yesterday. Well, technically, I didn't HAVE to go, but there wasn't any way in hell I was going to sit around in this greasy blizzard and peel my own skin off layer by layer.
Yes, the diagnosis is cabin fever, in case that wasn't blatantly obvious.
Anyway, I invited my mom to go, which never ceases to make me laugh. She was white-knuckling it all the way to the train station as trucks were flying by us. Mind you, she has a 4-wheel-drive car, the windshield wiper is going so fast I feel like I'm about to puke.
"Ma, you know, you could probably pick up the...."
"Nope, I can't, I can feel it under the wheels, we'll fishtail and that will be it."
My fatalist genetics seem a little less mysterious to me now.

So, after a 2-hour train ride in which my body realized it was hungry and hers remembered that it was crippled with Lyme disease, we got to Grand Central and needed to hit the bathroom. As we are entering the East Bathroom, an NYPD cop walks right in behind us. I thought that was weird, but my urge to pee literally drowned my common sense at the moment. I get into the stall to do my business and the smell hits me like a refugee camp in the heat. Someone in the stall next to me has forgotten to wash herself, and I mean EVERYTHING, about herself. I am peeing and gagging at the clammy smell and through the slits in the door I can see the cop standing outside the stall. That's when the screaming started, the gravelly voice in the stall next to mine.
"I didn't f*cking kill nobody! I hate this f*cking place!"
"Why don't you have any shoes on, ma'am. Were you sleeping in here?"
"Why would I sleep in a f*cking bathroom. I ain't doing nothing in here."
"You never are. Now c'mon get your shoes on and get out of the stall."

Let me tell you something, I stayed in that stall until all was clear. When I came out my mom was standing stunned at the sink.
"Let's go," I said, as if nothing happened.
As we were walking down Lexington in the pouring rain I was bragging about not bringing my cigarettes, how I left them in the car, etc.
Then I stopped in my tracks at the sweet smell of cigars and nutmeg. I forgot about the "gentleman's" shop halfway to East 69th. Of course, we went in, chatted with the manager, and I left with a pack of Dunhills (red, of course) and a smile. Surprisingly, my mom seemed delighted by the purchase.
"Where were they made?"
"London, Paris, you can't get them around here."
"Nice. You know everything French is back en vogue."
No judgment, just one clumsy lady with bad eyesight following the other with addictions and a hearing problem....

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