We’re sitting around in the living room, talking, when suddenly D. jumps a little in his seat.
“Did you hear that? It sounded like someone crying.”
I’d heard it, but it had barely registered. “It’s probably just street noise. There’s always someone crying.”
As the words leave my mouth, I feel like a jerk. Isn’t that a bad stereotype about city dwellers? Shouldn’t I care more? But D. just nods. “It was like that when I lived on Madison Avenue,” he says. “There would always be someone out on the street screaming and crying, shouting for help.”
I’m convinced he’s making fun of me, but he says he’s completely serious. “The first week I was there, I woke up at three in the morning because someone outside was screaming ‘Oh God, help, please, why won’t anyone help me?’ And I’m jumping out of bed, grabbing my glasses and the phone and running for the window to see what’s wrong, and then I realize that I’ve just called 911 to report that some drunk a–hole can’t find a cab. The next five or six times it happened, I at least checked out the window to see if it really was someone getting murdered. I used to hear those stories, that Kitty woman? Where no one helped her? I used to hear those stories and think, god, New Yorkers must be such heartless bastards. But eventually you learn that when you hear someone screaming for help, it’s just a drunk a–hole looking for a cab.”
Posted Monday, November 3rd, 2008 at 6:17 pm. Filed under: Uncategorized.
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