I like to think I have the final say on these matters, but Ernesto is already out of his seat and calling the man sir. His normal slouch has been corrected and a hand keeps his baggy jeans from falling below the waist. They shake hands and a heartbreaking gleam of admiration washes across the boy’s features. I quietly close the door while they confer in the hallway.

My respect for the military is boundless. The pride of belonging to a military family for generations is an integral part of who I am, yet I would be lying if I didn’t admit to seeing these recruiters as somewhat of a threat to New York City schools. A salesman in a crisp uniform is still a salesman with a quota to make, be it used cars or young, beating hearts.

I realize these people are simply doing their job and that Ernesto is also looking out for himself. Next year he’ll have housing and benefits. He’ll practice teamwork and the art of discipline, something he’s sorely in need of learning. Yet I also know that Ernesto doesn’t have a father in his life. His mother works tirelessly to support him, and perhaps if family dinners were eaten at home, business at the local recruitment center would not be quite as good. Suddenly there’s this man in uniform, this really cool guy who knows exactly where he stands in an uncertain world, and he’s waiting in the hall, the lobby, the school library, because he really wants to talk to you.

More often than not, it’s the quiet ones who return to show off their own uniform, peeking clean shaven cheeks and bristly heads into the doorway. The faculty always stops to make a very big deal: How’s it going? We miss you around here. Do you have any idea how proud we are?

When Ernesto’s time comes he simply can’t wait. He’s finally done with this place. Out of here, man! But did his recruiter somehow beat me? Did I fail Ernesto by not steering him in another direction? It bothers me every time it happens, seven years worth now.

“Look, Ernie, you take care of yourself, okay? Make sure you visit after boot camp.”

And then…

“Ernesto, don’t be a hero, okay? If it happens it happens, but don’t you go looking for it, alright?”

I get a great big smile and one last fist bump. Then it’s up the hall, down the steps, and straight out the door.

JB McGeever, a graduate of Stony Brook-Southampton’s MFA program, teaches Writing and Literature in NYC public schools. His stories and essays have appeared in Hampton Shorts, The Southampton Review, Newsday, and Thomas Beller’s Lost and Found: Stories from New York. The student in this essay appears under a pseudonym.

When I was ten and living on the top floor of a building in the New York City Housing Project called Pomonok -- a word the Algonquin Indians used for Long Island -- I dreamed of stabling my horse in that elevator. The fantasy of actually having my own bay mare, white blaze down the middle of her face flanked by nostrils that would flare with joy at the sight of me each morning, lulled me to sleep at night. I had given up as childish the habit of clutching in my fist each night a plastic horse that I told my mother galloped me off to miraculous adventures, but truly, I half believed that a way could be found to accomodate both the relatively simple needs of my mare and the requirements of the other residents of the seven story building. I never claimed to be a very realistic child.

But now I was an grown-up. Of a certain age. Now, my parents were both gone, I was the mother of a young adult and I was back to visit the 93-year-old last remaining friend of the family -- the woman I had grown up calling Aunt Sylvia despite the lack of any common blood between us. The woman who always recalled me as the most beautiful baby she had ever seen. After a hiatus of more than four decades I was once again pressing the bulbous brass button in the shabby lobby and waiting for the elevator to arrive.

The elevator arrived -- no bell to mark its appearance but a light behind the wired glass window where there had previously been only darkness -- and I pulled open the heavy metal door and stepped inside as I had perhaps thousands of times before. But where there had once been space for hay, oats, a water bucket and a 16-hands-tall mare, was now barely room for me and the appliance repairman who had been waiting behind me.

I know people always talk about how the summers were hotter, the winter snows deeper, the waves at the beach wilder in their youth, but to my knowledge, no one has ever been gob-smacked by the sad reality of a shrunken elevator. I pushed the button labeled 6 and leaned deep into a corner, squinting a little, hoping to recover the original propotions. The repairman pushed 3 and in a moment got out. Even without his presence, there was barely room for me and a good-sized Bernese Mountain dog, and I know good-sized Bernese Mountain dogs, believe me.

The elevator reached my floor and I got out, turned right and walked to the end of the hallway, which -- surprise, surprise -- had also shrunk. As had Aunt Sylvia. But here's the magic part: in the six or so weeks since that visit, everything has once again regained its former glory. Thank goodness.

Ellen Greenfield is a poet and novelist living in Brooklyn and Jefferson, NY with her husband and two extremely loving and wayward Bernese Mountain Dogs. Her novel, Come From Nowhere, has recently been published by 3Ring Press.

I used to remark to friends and relatives that I would gladly teach any kid in the city. Oh, really? When I made this statement, I was already working at a large traditional high school in New York. We had sports teams. We had a band. We sang carols to the kids before the holidays. I signed yearbooks and hugged parents at graduation. So how do I describe this strange, new teaching universe I’ve recently entered? For starters, it’s become the greatest lesson on human dignity I’ve ever had.

My new school has a unique and troubled population. Yet they still have the right to a free education. They earn credits at this suspension site. They take their state exams here. We examine the speech patterns and motivations of Holden Caulfield, the original troubled New York teen, like we would at any other school in the city.

The drama unfolding in their respective neighborhoods, however, often takes precedent over any literature we study in the classroom. Whenever a friend or acquaintance suffers a fatality, someone will wear a t-shirt with the departed’s face staring back at me all day long, rendering the book in my hand completely useless. The neighborhood is all that matters. They argue and compete over things I don’t understand. They make remarks in the middle of a lesson that sometimes shake me to the core. So as the student body files into the building one by one, and the scanner hums and beeps over every single pocket and curve, I have to find a part of me somewhere that understands the magnitude of being their teacher.

At sixteen, I went to work washing dishes in a Long Island restaurant where my mother waited tables. The owner, who would later become the county’s district attorney, ruled his establishment in a strict, authoritarian style. It was his place and his rules. I was observed wearing cut-offs during an unofficial kitchen tour and reprimanded for it. Minutes later, I committed the error of making eye contact and the tirade began. I answered back and lost my first job. As the owner marched me through the kitchen and out a back door, he made a comment that stayed with me forever, invaluable words that I would summon repeatedly during an extremely challenging teaching career in New York City. “You just wait,” he began. “We’ll see what becomes of you!”

It was during my student-teaching experience that I encountered my first unruly student. The kid showed up late, talked incessantly, and pushed all of his assignments onto the floor. Still a student myself, I was completely flustered and dumbfounded. As I bent to retrieve the work he’d dropped, it struck me how easy it was to slip into the District Attorney’s role from my dish washing days. “You just wait,” I thought. “We’ll see what become of you.”

That summer I pulled into a convenience store and there he was, half asleep against the wall, a can of malt liquor the approximate size of his forearm beside him. He was wasted and bleary eyed, but recognized me and said hello. I recalled the prediction I’d made about his future when he was my student and how I couldn’t wait for it to come true. I sat in my car afterwards and watched him nod off again, my cheeks completely flushed with shame.

Back at the suspension site, E. approaches after class to say goodbye. Today is his last day. He’s served his suspension and will return to his home school tomorrow with a proverbial clean slate. His regular building is five stories tall with a river view of the midtown skyline. Our place is a single hallway with very small class sizes. In twenty-four hours the kid’s world will expand tenfold. E. makes his way through the building, an actual sparkle to his eyes, shaking hands and saying his goodbyes. As he takes his final walk down the hall, I can feel the entire school holding its breath and rooting for him. The mission statement here is really no different than any other school in the world. As time passes, as it does for us all, we will eventually see what becomes of him.

JB McGeever teaches Writing and Literature in the New York City Public School System. His essays have appeared in Newsday, City Limits, The new York Times, and Thomas Beller’s Lost and Found: Stories from New York.

It is not every day that one visits an Ashram for yoga and encounters a “retired” Mafia soldier, adrift there because of illness and poverty. From my end, I envisioned a documentary film covering his faded world; however, for his own security - though the events occurred many years ago - he wished to limit his exposure to the following narrative.

If you travel on the Cross Bay Parkway, past what is called Howard Beach, you probably would not give it much of a glance. More likely you are traveling through the Ozone Park district to the Rockaways. But if you look to the right, you would notice a strip of non-descript stores and located behind them, ordinary, single-family homes. Howard Beach’s claim to fame was via its most famous resident - the now deceased, "Dapper Don” John Gotti. It was there that plans were made to develop, expand and make profitable various criminal enterprises that would make him infamous. This is the story of Johnny.  He was only one of the minor minions but in speaking with him, he was quite open in his respect for Gotti and proud to describe his path to the mob.

Johnny is tall and gaunt with a wide, open face marked by a certain sensuality that shapes the contours of his mouth. His language is marked with “rough” talk, but a beguiling smile belies his claim to be a “stand up guy." You cannot help noticing the shadow of a one time “tough guy,” but now a relic; ravished by time and cancer. He proudly defines himself as gangster; actually a Mafia foot soldier...

First, I want you to know that I was always a stand up guy. Personality doesn’t change. I was from a large family and we were all different in our ways. I respected my father, but he was distant like many men of his generation. A World War II veteran, he would never talk about his experiences. He was a hard, adventuresome man and in his youth even acted as a guide for hunters in Maine. Eventually he made his way to Long Island after marrying my mom and became a truck driver then later a fisherman. Myself, I didn’t like fishing. I didn’t like studying. I was always a person of action.

I would say my family was very straight but it wasn’t “Ozzie and Harriet”. Father was a driven guy and mother was overwhelmed with seven of us. They did their best but couldn’t do much with such a large brood. We were left on our own. In contrast to my brothers and sister who were into education, I liked the active, more physical world and hung around with older, hard guys. Since I was big and strong for a teenager, they accepted me. As for my own large family, I only ever had a connection with my brother John. He never made “judgments” but we still saw the world differently. He was interested in saving humanity and I, in making it in the world the best way possible. The family ignored me and with my negative attitude toward school, assumed I was “going to fall on my face”. For a while I worked in the family business and I learned early to play two types of lives; the “knock around life style”, where one lives for the excitement of the moment”; and the straight life, which I found to be mostly a pain with its predictable hills and valleys. But even with these two kinds of lives, I was a family man; the kids came first.

There were always challenges, but I was an optimist with a faith that ultimately life is run by the angels. I believed whatever the adversity, one should figure how to make it the best way possible . In my first marriage, our new born was lethargic and had difficulty breathing. They could not handle him at the local clinic and urged us to rush him to the hospital. But there is no hospital in Howard Beach. So there I was on Cross Bay Boulevard and my car broke down. Jumping out onto the road, I tried to flag down help but no one would stop. In desperation I scooped him up in my arms and ran and ran until finally some cop picked me and brought me to the hospital. Staggering into the emergency room I screamed for a doctor. They immediately attempted to revive him but it was too late. Only years later I learned about the diagnosis of “sudden infant death syndrome". I didn’t feel anger; not at the drivers who passed me by or the failure of the doctors. I believe that when things happen, they are ordained to happen. In a way I am a religious person marked by a certain fatalism; “God chooses when to pick the flowers”.

Through a friend, I was recommended to join Gotti’s crew where I could make real money. I was invited, but not as a made man; more like a stand-in for different jobs. “When they called, I went.” I was a part time member of a crew and I knew where I stood in the pecking order. If I wanted to score in the territory of another family, I would send out feelers to learn how much it would cost to work a job on their turf. Meanwhile I was a craftsman and maintained a legitimate contracting business. I knew if I was picked up and did not have a “real job” the IRS or the cops would pounce.

Why did they let me join even though I was not Italian? Well in the straight world, you go for an interview. In that world, you need someone to vouch for you. They would tell the boss or maybe it would be a crew leader, “he can be relied on; a knock around guy, give him a shot”. We mostly functioned like a regular business. Profit was always the motive and we tried to bring in more each year. It was like a corporation with a pecking order from the top on down; and the bottom line was paramount. We were no different than the corporate raiders, except we were more likely to go to jail. We had meetings just like them. There were even family barbecues to keep us together. Anyhow it was more comfortable to socialize with the other gangsters and their families than with neighbors; we didn’t have to hide our line of work from each other since we all knew the score.

As for working for Gotti, a lieutenant vouched for me; “this guy can do the job”. I rarely interacted with him except on social occasions. He was a pleasant enough guy. Most of the time I was used as a collector or helped work the gambling weekends for high rollers. I am big and can look fierce so they used me as security, which meant keeping things peaceful and safe. The gambling crew would rent a floor in a shabby motel for the weekend and there we would set up the game tables and provide food and even women. The crew would rake in a 20% take from the gambling and, of course I would get a small piece - but it might amount to as much as two or three thousand cash for that weekend. I also had a collection route for the “numbers racket” but never prostitution or drugs. I identified with the “old timers” and they were not interested in going there.

Over the years I kept my head down and maybe I was just lucky, but I was never busted. Even if it would have happened, I was confident that someone would contact me with legal and financial support. My view was that it was important to get all my ducks in a row and if I would be hit, then I would look for the least amount of time for vacation (jail). When busted, a lawyer would probably be sent out who would suggest that should the “ducks fall” (which means convicted and go to jail), I should behave myself and keep my mouth shut. It was understood when I got out, money would be waiting for me. This made good, business sense.

For a while I served as a "bag man" but to the outside world I described myself as a “financial facilitator”. The mob trusted me to transfer their "bundles". Piles of cash were tied into blocks, fitted into garbage bags and taped up nice and neat. Money came in from various ventures but I didn’t speculate about the source just so long as I was taken care of. How they distributed it or where it was invested, I have no idea. My job was just to transfer the cash and at that time it was usually to Las Vegas; my favorite city.

One trip stands out. I was taking the back roads through Tennessee at 2:00 AM, going about four thousand miles per hour. I'mrelaxed, listening to music, I notice lights flashing behind me. The cop pulls me over and asks why am I traveling so fast on his road? I try to be cool and friendly. I explain that I am off to Las Vegas and suggest we go for a beer. I'm casual with him, though I admit my heart is pumping away. On the floor of the backseat and in the trunk, I have a few "bundles”.  He points to them but I explain, “no need to go there” and reach into my jacket. I say, “I have an envelope here that will convince you to go somewhere else. It is my intended gambling money of $15,000 and it is now yours”. This might sound cynical but wherever you are, the city or the sticks, all cops want to supplement their salary.

Finally I arrive in the City of Lights and make my way to our meeting place; not only me but “carriers” from all over. The bundles are emptied and then both are hand and machine counted. The other guys  and I wait to be rewarded, but instead of sending us out to the Strip to enjoy ourselves, they drive us out to the desert. We all get out of the limo and these bruisers who are packing order us to kneel down. I am fatalistic -“what is gong to happen is going to happen”. After several minutes of agony, they tell me, “my cards are good” and I am sent back to Vegas. Some of the guys are made to stay because they were caught short bagging. I never saw them again and I assume they found their burial plots out there in the sand. Why they'd take such a chance, I have no idea; maybe just plain stupid. If we don’t have trust, even amongst gangsters, what do we have?

To be part of that life, you need a tough temperament. Charlie, who is now on “life vacation,” was my early mentor. I met him as a kid when I joined a motorcycle gang. He taught me how to handle myself in intense situations. I learned that in this business the key is to get results with the least amount of physicality. Before sponsoring me, he arranged for a test. I guess it was like trying to get into school, but this was Mafia college. He gave me information on a guy who owed him money and was “reluctant to pay up”. I was instructed to convince him that it would be in his best interest to meet his obligation. I was given a background story, included the fact that he is a “tough son of a bitch” and two previous attempts to retrieve the debt had failed. My job was to go in with as little fan fair as possible and collect.

When I arrived at the deadbeat's deli, the first thing I did, without a word said, was to knock down the glass shelves. This was my wake-up message to remind him to meet his fiduciary responsibilities. Nobody likes to pay up to the shylock, but if you make the contract, you have to stick to the deal or there are consequences. My mentor watched my back and at the same time observed how I operated. I was successful and from then on when they needed a collector, I was the man.

It was not always so simple; sometimes there would be a fight and a few times, I got my teeth knocked out. I proved myself at the job though. In the regular world, you need to pass an exam. This was tougher. But once vouched for, there was no turning back. As a reward there was exciting, lucrative work. The word would be out, “he is a knock around guy and effective”; “give him a shot”. For example, if there was to be a truck hijacking and an additional crew member was needed, I was invited to join. They knew I would keep my head and could be counted on. Over time I became more trusted and was invited to more lucrative jobs. Like in the straight world; you do a good job and are promoted.

I am proud to say, I never needed to pack a gun because I was confident I could take care of every situation. My cue was a rage button. It was a felt sense of a rumbling fury. There would first be a “baby cry” in my voice that would build momentum until there was an explosion. The message is, “don’t be around me when I am this way.” It was a controlled anger and ended when I got my way. In many ways it was easy, I just needed to play the part of a scary gangster.

As for my family, my wife was not happy with the life. She loved the perks, but the fear of my being busted was too nerve-racking for her and it eventually broke up the marriage. My son looked at it differently.

When he finished high school he asked if he could join a crew. For him, it would be big money. I felt it was his decision to choose his life, but just as I was tested, he needed to pass and learn if there was a fit. He was big and brawny and could be physically imposing. Like how Charlie had sent me out when I was a kid, I put him to the test with a collection job - though it was actually a set-up. I instructed my pals to play act by muscling him when he arrived but not too badly as to do him harm. Well they gave him a black eye, kicked him out the door and that was the end of his career. He decided he didn’t have it in him and now has a real profession; a cop.

Do I or those “wise guys” have a conscience? I believe everyone has one. Look, I even went to Confession. The priest would tell me that he was shocked at my behavior and suggest that I do “hail Marys” and take the straight path. I knew where to draw a line. No problem for me to break someone’s thumb, but never to kill. There would be no amount of money that I would accept for that. We all have our own rules. Mine allowed me to crack some limbs but not murder.

How did I get out of this line of work? “Well, it is not like a job, where you just quit. You know too much. My cancer, which occurred a decade ago, was the “big casino” and that was my ticket out. First there was colon and then prostate cancer. The first time, I got fixed up and tried to stay healthy. The more recent bout was more difficult. First, since I had no health insurance, I went through almost two million dollars; essentially the medical costs brought me down. Once the private hospital had all of my money, it was “goodbye Charlie”. Who is the real gangster here?

Broke, it looked like the end of the rope, but I knew a lot of doctors. They taught me how to play the innocent and get medical service without paying. I kept my head straight and suffered it all; from the loss of my testicles to facing a life of homelessness. Look, all my plumbing is gone but I stay tough. Admittedly, I thought of giving up but at that time, my grandson was born and I made the decision to be around to see him grow up.

After the first bout, it was important to regain my strength but also my finances; so I returned to my favorite place, Las Vegas. I am a good gambler but I am also a guy who enjoys going to the edge. Teaming up with a friend, we decided to cheat the House. We used a number of tricks and were successful, but eventually we were caught flipping chips in a grade B casino. Four husky guys came up behind me and another four surrounded my partner. They quietly escorted us to the parking garage. There, we were given a choice; a one way trip to the desert or the cinder block routine. It was a no-brainier and I just asked them to get it over with. They placed my arm between the blocks, and broke it with a bat. For my friend, they chose to break his legs. They were gentlemen and dropped us off at the nearest emergency room. “I was not angry; to me, they were doing their job.”

I wondered to myself, why I took the risk since I could make money by legitimate gambling. For me it was the excitement of the score; the juice high. It was the same feeling when I did collections; it was not just about money but the “juice” flowing through the veins.

Now I make do in a totally different world; an Ashram, a million miles away from Howard Beach. Almost homeless and without resources, I came at my brother’s invitation. In contrast to the Mafia guys who have no illusions, here I think most of the people are full of shit and play holy. I openly tell them I used to be a gangster and that seems to be okay with them and ensures they don’t mess with me. Meanwhile I help out and my mechanical skills save the Ashram a shit load of money. In turn I found a temporary home.

In the end, the issue has never been one of conscience for the life I chose, but regrets. I failed to do more to help myself in this life. Meanwhile I am a survivor and wait to see what the angels will bring. 

A game of extreme constraint, played in the tight confines of a handball court with the diamond grid of the ballpark chalked in miniature on the buckled cement, it demanded more cunning than real skill, more spryness than hand-eye coordination, more gumption than athletic prowess.

As an aphorism is to an epic, so slap ball shrank the expectations of the ballpark to bite-sized proportions. For whereas the vast sweep of the playing field ringed with onlookers had always seemed intimidating, invariably bringing on bowed shoulders of defeat and an asthmatic wheeze, its microcosmic equivalent squeezed into the confines of an outdoor handball court felt strangely comforting. It was as if the safe haven of my childhood nursery had been lifted, walls and all, from home and plunked down in a distant corner of the schoolyard where nobody noticed it. That precisely was the game’s greatest attraction and its greatest fault: that nobody noticed.

Slapball victories were won way off the radar of public approbation, and any attempt to boast about them would have been met with blank looks.

But I can still recall the day in sixth grade when a few of the same champions, gruff Kenny P., tall Mark R., glib Gary S., and my nemesis Robert H., not a one of whom would ever in the grand public sphere of the spectacle have deigned to choose me for their team, stood there holding their ground with meager expectations, when somebody pitched. Bluffing with a grin at Gary S. and a wink at Robert H., I swung with the flat palm of my hand, putting a devilish spin on the red rubber ball so that it went careening, almost perpendicular to my slap, in between the legs of a disconcerted Kenny P, grazed the crack at the chalk baseline near third base, and bounced toward a rattled Mark R., who fumbled with and dropped it, while Robert H.’s jaw dropped, permitting me ample time to round the bases and make my way to home plate.

They stared at me as if I had just stepped out of my loser’s skin and revealed a hidden side of myself, like the bespectacled Clark Kent morphing into Superman, or the wimpy Peter Parker into the spry Spiderman, a local hero who had recently made his first appearance in the pages of Amazing Fantasy. Just this once I might have earned bragging rights, were it not for the news report from Dallas.

It was just after the start of recess, approximately 11:35 Eastern Time, Friday, November 22, 1963. The teachers suddenly called us into the auditorium for an unexpected assembly, at which the principal announced in a solemn voice that the President had been shot, simultaneously perhaps also the death blow for slapball, and we were dismissed for the day. Expecting adulation, I could barely choke back my disappointment. Dallas seemed as far away as the moon. All everybody really cared about was the half day off from school.

A writer in multiple modes, Peter Wortsman is the author of fiction (A Modern Way to Die), drama (Tattooed Man Tells All and Burning Words), and travel writing for newspapers and websites, and selected for five consecutive issues of Travelers’ Tales’ The Best Travel Writing 2008-2012. He has also translated numerous books from the German. His forthcoming books include Ghost Dance in Berlin, a rhapsody in gray, Travelers’ Tales/Solas House, 2013; Tales of the German Imagination, From the Brothers Grimm to Ingeborg Bachmann, an anthology, Penguin Classics, 2013; and Selected Tales of the Brothers Grimm, a new translation, Archipelago Books, 2013.

We’ll walk down 49th street, slowing our pace to grab at the privet leaves that grow all the long way down the block, crunching them with our fingernails and then throwing them to the sidewalk, already littered with blossoms from the few flowering trees along the way; mostly they’ll be sycamores – the ones with patchy bark that looks like the camouflage outfits everyone wore decades later after the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, as a fashion statement.

We’ll walk all the way down that impossibly long block, turning left at the very last alley, mine, and drop our school stuff at my house. There we’ll stop for some milk and cookies – though my mother never buys very good ones – and then dash out, candy bars lining the pockets of my jacket, and head across the alley. We’ll take the path on the right side, bordering the densely wooded upper community garden with moderately tall shade trees and bushes and maybe some tall purple irises scattered about – the colorful blossoming of early blooming crocuses and sparsely planted daffodils already gone – and wind up at the center of it all, at the heart of our garden.

Just before we get to the lower community garden there will be a walkway in between the two where, halfway across, will be an oddly situated set of short, widely set steps that stop at the upper garden and are blocked off. On each side of the stairway will be the iron bannisters with curlicues at the end, and twisting through them will be thorny bushes with small flowers which attract bees.

I’ll offer Nancy a piece of a candy bar I’ve unwrapped and we’ll sit, talking or resting in the companionable silence that we know as our safest place to be. But we’ll only actually be seated – and only at the very center of the stairway – for short bursts of time. We’ll have to get up suddenly and we will, shrieking, at the threat of being stung. But all the while, we’ll gaze up to see the tall, tall trees which stand in two broad lanes before us in the broad, grassy rectangular patch of the lower community garden. Birds will be flying high there, squawking as they light from branch to branch. It will never be quiet there – spring, summer or fall. (Only in winter will we make our way to the steps, buried deep in snow – trudging around, leaving tracks from our boots in the deep, silent whiteness.) Eventually it will be time to part, to leave our special sanctuary and return to our separate homes for dinner.

Nancy’s gone now; she died in Ohio years ago – as much, the doctors said, from complications resulting from their treatment of her scoliosis as from the breast cancer. I visited her there several times there, briefly, returning to my home in Brooklyn, and then for longer some months before she died. It was Halloween and I bought much more candy than we needed to fill the bowl Nancy held as she sat, dressed as a witch, handing it out to trick-or-treating children who came by.

The community gardens on my old block in Sunnyside are no more now, divided up many long years ago so that each home owner could have a bigger piece of land. So there is no longer access to that central spot with its strange stairway to nowhere. Or maybe it’s not even there any more. I haven’t gone back to check. But in my mind, in my heart, I return quite often. Especially during that time of spring when the days start out with a promise of warmth and an after-school visit with Nancy to our private place at the heart of the gardens.

Heidi Rain is a writer who has hosted poetry readings and written New Age book reviews and columns. She is currently working on a memoir about rediscovering her original father.

They and others like them found a felicitous culinary compromise at Bloch and Falk, a short-lived kosher idyll of Wurst run by Berlin émigrés that briefly thrived in the early sixties and then disappeared, as a consequence of changing demographics, on 37th Avenue, near the corner of 74th Street, in Jackson Heights, Queens, an enclave subsequently redubbed Little Bombay where now the Indians, Pakistanis and Sikhs coexist with their conflicting tastes and taboos.

In that Jewish replica of German Wurst-lust, the reprehensible pig-craving was painstakingly and precisely transposed, or rather reformed, into a kosher cow-craving. But even as a boy, I fathomed that, to get the flavors right, or at least to find a fair Kosher approximation for pork sausage, some enterprising Jewish butcher armed with a meat grinder and a willing tongue, had at least temporarily to suspend his Semitic aversion and embrace Teutonic taste whole-hog, applying a Talmudic rigor to isolate and translate porcine products, and beef them up for a Jewish palate.

How well do I remember Bloch and Falk’s the grand opening, with banners unfurled and mountains of Belegte Brötchen (finger sandwiches) stacked tall, free for the picking, stuffed with slabs of sausage and smoked meat of every description, Teewurst, Krakauer, Kopfkäse, Jägerwurst, Leberwurst.

From near and far they came, the strongly accented refugees of my parents’ generation, dressed to a T in ties and jackets or skirted suits, German from head to toe, except for a few recalcitrant curls and a certain sadness that never quite muffled their innate exuberance. Waiting patiently on line, with their little native-born progeny in tow, their mouths watered for a licensed taste of the taboo.

One woman, I recall, got so excited approaching the counter she could not control herself and succumbed to a nervous cough that sounded suspiciously like a dog’s bark. “Bitte, Lise! Control yourself!” her mortified husband looked aghast. But she couldn’t help it, and in any case, nobody but me seemed to notice, every other customer consumed by his or her own craving. Was it an involuntary response to the scent of sausage, I wonder, or just a bad case of the hiccups mythologized in my memory?

But on Saturdays, when Bloch and Falk was closed, my understanding mother turned a blind eye. My father, a man of prodigious appetite, took my brother and myself along on his weekly expedition to the City, ostensibly to buy tea from a Palestinian tea and coffee shop downtown, my recollection of which is laced with exotic scents. But afterwards we always ended up at Schaller and Weber, a German deli, now a chain, to sample a thick slab of the real thing, forbidden flesh cut off a fresh hot loaf of Leberkäse, still steaming under the knife. Sliced by a bald-headed counterman with gold-capped teeth and a grotesque grin straight out of a Georg Grosz drawing, it was the incarnation of what my father had fled. I watched him savor every bite.

I had remembered to pack everything—the sunscreen, the bikinis, the breezy beach read. My passport was in hand and up to date. I had waxed and pedicured and researched ground transport. I just hadn’t arrived at the airport on time.

And it wasn’t for lack of travel anxiety, either. That was what had gotten our family to the airport on time throughout my childhood, so why hadn’t it worked today? It had been a nail-biter all the way from my apartment this morning. First, I had to wait longer than usual for the B train at 81st Street. Then, the connecting E barely crawled through stations it didn’t even stop in. Finally, I arrived at Jamaica Station, and it came down to mere minutes on the air train to my terminal. I sweat bullets eyeing my watch, knowing that I had less than five minutes to get to a kiosk and print my boarding pass before entering the dead zone within thirty minutes of departure. The train doors slid open at terminal 5. I bolted out with my “personal item” over one shoulder bursting at the seams and my wheeled carry-on in tow. Shoot—an escalator. I hoisted my luggage off the floor and yelled up a frantic “EXCUSE ME!” to the one passenger who had made it onto the escalator before I had so he would move aside and let me pass. I stepped off the moving stairs. A quarter mile of corridor suspended over the street separated me from the terminal proper. I sprinted down the passage past its several moving sidewalks, wondering if this was what a panic attack felt like. A woman walking with her little girl laughed unabashedly at me as I ran past. My breath whooshed, and adrenaline pumped. I was thankful that I was in shape and had worn my running shoes. But I usually did this sort of exercise without luggage. Finally, after a downhill pass and a twist around the corner, I saw salvation just before the terminal entrance. Two kiosks where I could print my boarding pass.

I fumbled for my credit card, panting in front of the welcome screen. Every traveler who passed turned his head to see the crazed sweaty trembling passenger-hopeful. I was too focused to glare back. I swiped my card. The kiosk read 10:02, thirty-three minutes before departure time. I entered my destination city. The kiosk gave me nothing. I did it again. The computer refused to print my boarding pass but issued me an “oops” coupon to take to the check-in counter. I proceeded toward the terminal, this time at a mere brisk walk, since I had my coupon in hand as proof that I was here on time. Another escalator. At least this one went down. Once descended, I rushed straight to the first desk, where a woman was helping a middle-aged couple.

“My flight is—sorry.” I feigned politeness and flashed an apologetic smile to the couple who had gotten to the airport on time, actually stood in line, and waited to be helped. “My flight is leaving in just over 30 minutes, and the machine gave me an ‘oops’ coupon at 10:02.” Surely they could understand the supreme urgency of my plight. They seemed to. They repeated my assertion. “Ah, 10:35. It leaves at 10:35,” the husband said. The desk agent looked at me evenly and stated as a matter of fact, “That flight has closed.”

Now I was not only gasping from my boarding pass relay race, but it seemed I had somehow caught a tickle in my throat. I was wheezing and coughing between raspy words. In addition, the body heat from my mad dash was burning me up inside the layers of fleece I had donned for the blustery March morning. I was in rare form. Wiping my brow and convulsing with coughs, my words came out in guttural spurts while I unzipped and unpeeled layers of clothing. “But the ugh-bsite didn’t say! I guh! Ulways ged here thirty minutes bah-ugh! Fore.”

You might think the desk agent would feel sorry for the sickly speech-impaired stripper, but it was no use. She looked at me like the leper I appeared to be. “St. Martin? That’s an international flight. You missed it. You needed to check in one hour ahead.” Somehow, though I had remembered my passport, I had forgotten that St. Martin was part of a foreign country.

Speechless, with my hope deflated, I didn’t have the oomph to argue when she relegated me to the back of the queue for rebooking.

After twenty minutes of standing in line, I was beckoned to the desk of the same woman, who greeted me with an “oh!” of recognition and a snicker. She proceeded to inform me that the single flight that would get me to St. Martin today had closed check-in eight minutes earlier, twelve minutes after she had sent me away from her desk. I would have to repeat my journey to JFK tomorrow, preferably with certain modifications. I thanked my new worst enemy and walked away.

This is how I ended up sulking in the plastic blue chair.

I called my seven-month-pregnant sister, whom I was scheduled to meet on the island for a long girls’ weekend getaway before the arrival of her third child, to tell her that I would be there only for the last forty-eight hours of the trip. She was gracious as always. My dejection was debilitating.

When I could bear to stand, I hung my head and sulked back to the air train, wallowing in thoughts of what an idiot I was. It would have been the easiest thing in the world for me to print my boarding pass yesterday, when I was in my office, which happens remarkably to be equipped with internet access and high-speed printers galore. Alternatively, I could have stopped in the Kinko’s-like store across from my apartment this morning and cut five minutes from my morning workout. I could have gotten up forty minutes earlier. I could have taken a cab instead of the subway. But being me, and assuming that nothing bad would happen, I chose to get to the airport late and cut a day of vacation, leaving my pregnant sister alone in a foreign country.

I shuffled down the escalator that I wasn’t supposed to descend until I had a tan. I rode the train back from Queens to Manhattan, having no more to smile about than the tired faces on board. I trudged back up the front steps to my apartment building, hoping I wouldn’t run into any neighbors who had seen me bouncing down them with the same packed luggage this morning. I unzipped the suitcase that wasn’t supposed to be opened until I arrived in my bright tropical room where I could smell the ocean.

I was so full of self-loathing that I decided to call the one person who could rightfully say “I told you so” and wouldn’t hold back. She answered on the second ring. Though I wanted to punish myself, I pre-empted her speech. “Mom, I’m such a jerk.”

She responded more sympathetically than usual for such a foolish blunder, and I let down my guard. I told her all the details. “I’m on standby for tomorrow’s flight. I can pay to be confirmed, but the lady said there are a bunch of seats available. I’ll confirm if they start to fill up.” I should have known from thirty years of experience that this sort of information would not meet silence or approval.

She began to rant. “Please, Sabrina. I’ll pay the money! I’ll write you a check right now! Confirm the seat. Just confirm it!” Her tone verged on hysteria. I agreed that it was silly to risk the second flight and that of course it made sense for me to buy the confirmation. Then we hung up.

I thought about it a little more. How many people are going to book a trip to St. Martin between this afternoon and tomorrow morning? I’ll take my chances.

Sabrina Hassan is a lawyer. She lives and works in Manhattan.
 

On a recent Sunday the crowd pressed to the right of the stairs in a long drawn-out amorphous ring, from the midst of which emanated deafening music. Even the two Jehovah’s Witnesses stationed stiff as wax figures to the left of the stairs gave up God’s business for the moment and joined the onlookers, since nobody seemed to be interested in their message.

The object of everyone’s rapt attention remained a mystery to the chance passerby until suddenly the wall of humanity parted a crack, revealing a tiny figure mistakable at first sight for a little boy, but soon recognizable—on account of the powerful shoulders—as an adult dwarf. With a black hat set at a dapper tilt, dark sunglasses and a tight black sequined jacket, he moved gracefully and rhythmically backwards, in the soft stepping, faked forward motion of Michael Jackson’s trademark cakewalk, transforming the filthy, chewing-gum-flecked, floor into his stage.

"So beat it, just beat it!” the familiar androgynous voice blasted from a somewhat battered boombox, as the dwarf abruptly grabbed his private parts, and with shoulders flung back, obscenely heaving his hips, dry-humped the air before him. Some snickered, others cheered. “Don’t wanna be a boy, you wanna be a man. You wanna stay alive, better do what you can. So beat it, just beat it!” echoed the shrill command. Whereupon, after lowering the jacket slowly, provocatively, first from the left shoulder, then from the right, to demonstrate with rippling muscles the amazing strength of his arms, he started trembling suggestively, ever more unabashedly, first with the chest cage, next with the stomach muscles, and finally with his entire body, consumed by a carefully choreographed orgasm. Some spectators laughed out loud. Others turned red, covering their children’s eyes.

But they did the dancer an injustice. For his dance was at once a great tribute and an extraordinary send-up, in which he invested his entire tragic being and a remarkable comic talent altogether worthy of Aristophanes and Harpo Marx. –“Showin’ how funky strong is your fight, it doesn’t matter who’s wrong or right. Just beat it, beat it!”

The crowd fell silent as the song came to an end, and the dwarf took a slow bow, his hat pushed back, his glasses pressed down over his nose, his sadly noble, strikingly handsome Latin Mestizo face held up like a hidden treasure with the pride of a true artist and the desperation of an eternal outsider. For a split second his size was forgotten. In that instant he also revealed a striking resemblance to the fallen popstar. Coins and crumpled banknotes flew through the air. Every injured soul saw himself reflected in that face. And as the spectators scattered, the two Jehovah’s Witnesses surreptitiously slinking back into their corner, the dwarf deftly swept up his take, whereupon with hat, glasses and expression once again set aright, he bit his lower lip and prepared to be born again in the next dance.

A writer in multiple modes, including fiction (A Modern Way To Die), drama (The Tattooed Man Tells All and Burning Words) and translation (most recently, Selected Prose of Heinrich von Kleist), Peter Wortsman is the recipient of the Beard's Fund Short Story Award and The Geertje Potash-Suhr Prize of the Society for Contemporary American Literature in German, and was a Holtzbrinck Fellow at the American Academy in Berlin in 2010. Also a widely published travel writer, his texts have appeared in The Best Travel Writing 2008, 2009, 2010 and 2011.
 

My first visit prompts this assessment.

Arriving on the Flushing Line #7 subway and approaching the front of the building on foot, it is indeed an impressive site. The classical baseball stadium façade mimics and upgrades old Ebbets Field memories, while Jackie Robinson memorabilia and a photo-op with his number 42 dominates the rotunda.

In general, the facility ignores the New York Giants history (Willie who?), as well as the early and not-so-early Mets history. It is understandable, given the Wilpon family nostalgia and their friendship with the O’Malleys and the Dodgers. (It’s their prerogative, since they own the team.)

Approach or bypass the stadium by car from the east and there is another completely different visual experience. The outside reminds me of some junked-up construction sites, with an annoying array of posters, billboards, and a jumble of signs.

Access to the innards of the building is easy. “Visitors” and “Guests” — sorry, the staff of greeters and workers are encouraged not to call us “fans” — are funneled to the enormous main gift, sports shop or the first array of restaurants and bars. From there, guests are encouraged to circulate the concourse of food courts before heading for their seats. Along the way are numerous, spotless restrooms, quite a change from Shea.

There is a Kosher corner, Caribbean food, Hispanic food, Asian food, Italian food, seafood, soul food and in case you don’t fit any niche, a food-serving supermarket. Premium beers of all caliber from around the world are of course available at some premium prices. Steak sites multiply and frank and burger spots diminish.

When you finally get to your section of the ball field, you are chuted to your seating area. No longer can you enter the stadium anywhere and just walk around the stands, looking at the field and absorbing the baseball atmosphere, as you move to your section.

Oh yes, there is a ball field within the building. The seats are closer to the field and many are angled so that viewing the game from the foul lines doesn’t result in a stiff neck . But it has a strange configuration, with overhangs, corners, and fence heights varying without rhyme or reason.

Unlike Shea Stadium, where almost every seat had unobstructed views, there are whole sections at Citi where the only way to see the play in a corner, or down the line is — you guessed it — by watching it on the TV scoreboard as a replay. Unfortunately, it is also no longer easy to peer into the dugouts or the bull pens.

Once you find your seat, you discover you are in a long — a very long — row of seats. And with minimal in-the-stands vendor service — you’ll see an occasional ordinary beer vendor, a hot dog seller, a peanuts guy, — the guest is encouraged to go to the concourse for food and services. This means the visitor is constantly standing up to let someone come or go. Not to worry, though, there are TV sets all around the court and you can watch the game on a TV as you wait in a line somewhere.

And I’ll ignore the outrageous increase in ticket prices, the disappearance of promotion days savings, parking rates with an astronomical hike — after all, visitors and guests are likely to be more well-heeled than baseball fans.

All in all, an interesting tourist attraction, or a business meeting distraction. What are missing are the fans just going to a ball field to watch a game and root for their team.

Peter F. Eder recently retired from the marketing career he began in the mailroom at J. Walter Thompson. He’s written for The Futurist magazine and served nine years in the New York National Guard as a Sergeant and qualified Army engineer. His passions include the Metropolitan Opera and the New York Mets.