It’s 8:10 am, just north of Times Square, and soda cans, bottles, and discarded paper face masks are blowing around on the ground outside a grimy office building. The entrance is between a gentleman’s club and a boarded-up restaurant. I use a plastic key card to get inside the building and operate the elevator. Getting off on the ninth floor, I use keys to enter an empty office.

Since I’m the first one there, I turn on the lights and air conditioning before walking back to my designated classroom, where the filthy floor probably hasn’t been mopped in years. I set my coffee on my desk, my backpack and canvas bag on a student desk-chair and quickly rev up my computer for the day’s Zoom classes.

To my right, outside the window, a huge blue animated M & M man on a large LED video wall waves a greeting to me. Sometimes the gloved man is red. Other times he is yellow. Out the window, straight ahead is a long narrow billboard featuring PrettyLittleThing: a low-rent Victoria’s Secret that advertises its products with swirling women, models, displaying lots of skin. Another day, as I look out the window, Bob Dylan’s face keeps appearing. I’m not sure if he has new album or if he is performing somewhere.

Time for the day to begin. Visitors and tourists think Times Square is exciting, hence this four-classroom language school in this decrepit building. I am the only teacher actually at the site, as the school is now online due to the pandemic. I watch some friendly pigeons roosting on the windowsill while I eat my croissant, sip coffee, and take out my lesson plan and attendance list.

In the empty classroom, the students appear in blank boxes on a computer screen. They rarely choose to show their faces. This morning Guri arrives first. He is Albanian with a master’s degree in business from Baruch College but works as a bartender at an upscale restaurant in the Bronx. He’s here because he needs a student visa to stay in the United States. That is the reason for this school’s existence; it’s a visa mill. Actually educating the students is not a priority. Qualified teachers are hired, so that the owners can point to our credentials and have a modicum of credibility when the government audits them.

I discuss politics with Guri for a while. He’s conservative and doesn’t think Curtis Sliwa is a bad choice for mayor, but I explain he doesn’t have a chance. The Democratic primary is the big event in New York City, I tell him, not the general election. Except for Staten Island, New York City is a largely Democratic city. The presidential election is coming up, and Guri thinks Trump is the lesser of two evils. He doesn’t have the legal papers that would allow him to vote, but even though I disagree with him, he is better informed than most. He still has faith in capitalism and an optimism about the American Dream that I lack.

Then Gabriel shows up. He’s Brazilian and works as a bike messenger. He says he listens to the class while doing deliveries, which does not sound safe. Gabriel also works as a sound engineer at a Brooklyn recording studio. He’s told me working with hip-hop recording artists is easier money than dealing with a rock band, and all their instruments and different personalities, because he’s dealing with just one guy. Then Haruno shows up; she’s a hair stylist from Japan. I think, ok, maybe it’s time to start teaching. 

The class is supposed to run from 8:15 to 1:15. During this time students come and go. No one stays for the whole class. Some log on to the Zoom site and then disappear. In my college teaching, I would mark them absent, but not here. I do my best to impart some information and instruction to those who show interest. I speak and present Powerpoints on using adjectives correctly, modal verbs, and gerunds and infinitives. When I feel like I’m talking into the abyss, I tell myself I’m only doing this for the summer, until the fall semester begins at the community college where I teach.

—

After a few hours the other people who work in the office wander in. When I walk by them, to use the bathroom, they give me big fake smiles. They sit at their desks and speak Korean. I know Seyoun is in charge, since she gave me my keys on the first day. When I come in after lunch for my afternoon class, she passive aggressively checks her watch. I assume she is in close contact with the owner. 

At the front desk a gorgeous young Brazilian woman in short shorts is busy with her phone. In front of her is an infrared thermometer device to take people’s temperature that I’ve never used, since there are no students here.

—

Finally, with happiness and relief, I hand in my key card and metal keys to Seyoun. A week before I had given notice to my previously distant and uninterested supervisor, who I never met in person, but now seems sad that I’m leaving. On my way out, the M & M man waves his final good-bye to me.

***

Randi Hoffman has published nonfiction in the anthologies “Places Like Home,” “The Zen of Mothering,” and “Moonstone Arts 2024 Poets Review.” Her art and book reviews have appeared in “A Gathering of the Tribes,” “Downtown Magazine” and “The Women’s Review of Books.” She lives in the East Village.