The bus stop at Lincoln Center is always crowded. The construction from The Juilliard school makes things messy and it doesn’t help that a coffee shop is right in-front of the stop. Waiting makes you feel like buying a Cafe Latte and cheese croissant. Of course worst things can be done like yesterday’s Cellphone Borrower. A lady in her late thirties or early forties, who really knows these days, was moving her mouth as she stared at me. Of course I had no idea what she was saying and stupidly paused my iPod.
“Can I borrow your cellphone.” she asked.
“What?” I replied a little confused since moments ago “Garbage” was blasting “Paranoid” in my head.
“I need to make an urgent phone call, Its local.” She insisted and was only a foot from me. A true New Yorker who seemed to go over her caffeine intact for the day. The confusion out weighed my paranoia and my cellphone was in the hands of a complete stranger. The bus pulled up, unusually quick and the droves of patient people hogged the entryway.
I made sure she walked in front of me, since my head was thinking of a story about Kevin Spacey who lent a kid in London his cellphone and after the kid started dialing numbers he ran off with it. She entered and sat down in the handicap/elderly area as I slide my metro card in the slot and stood above her. She yapped along for a good five minutes, as I heard her converse with someone about their day. As we got to the next stop, she finally handed me my phone back since I was hanging over her like a trained monkey. By time I got a seat she had already borrowed the cellphone from a young guy sitting across from her.
Her white, rather large, hat and loud voice as she yelled on the phone to the poor soul at the other end made her the center of bus-attention. The old blind man sitting next to her laughed at loud as the Cellphone Borrower snipped at another lady who told the young guy he should get his phone back before she runs off with it.
On the other side of the park she returned the guys phone and raced off the bus. As we passed her barely moving cross town I watched as she stopped yet another man random man on the street. He took out his phone and she started dialing again. I call her the Cellphone Borrower but it was more like Tarzan swinging from branch to another. The bus turned up Madison and I sat back in my seat smiling. The city that never sleeps, never stops surprising me neither.