Grace's City

 
Doors closing. Grace leapt out of the subway. The crowding people traded places with her and she was left alone on the platform. The subway cars screeched away and into the next tunnel.

Grace was a girl with shorts, a t-shirt and a small backpack.

She looked for directions pointing to the exit… There! She followed the signs, glancing at the advertisements along the walls. People had torn off and re-arranged the celebrity faces and text. Some of the jokes were pretty funny, “JOHNNY DEPP STARS IN ENGLISH SCHOOL”

As she started climbing up the stairs she began to feel the heat again, the cruel sun. It wouldn’t have been so bad if there had been a breeze, the baking cement sucked too.

Grace reached street level and felt the sun drench her body. She looked around to try to locate herself. Down at the corner she read 50 Street and 8 Ave. Okay, the West side.

She was already sweating through her t-shirt. She needed her breeze. She saw a pizza place called Mario’s Empire and walked towards it. Pushing the door open she felt the gust of A/C hit her face.

The pizzeria was pretty small with only three tables lined against one wall. There was an old man at the table beside the door. He was leaning against the window. Along the other side was a counter with tons of different spices to cover your pizza. She walked up to the cashier.

“What can I get you?” A man asked while pushing a pie around in the oven. His back was to Grace.

“Just a slice and a small Coke,” Grace said casually.

“Sure thing.” He flipped a slice on to a paper plate and got her Coke.

“That’s gonna be two fifty.” He was sweating a lot; the A/C didn’t help with the heat from the oven. He used his apron to mop the sweat off his face. There were some photographs of firefighters poking from the top of the cashier machine. Grace stared at the smiling faces.

She pulled a five-dollar bill from her pocket, got her change and carried her lunch over to the middle table. It felt good to sit down and think without any rush.

“You really gonna go to New York City, Grace?“ She remembered her little brothers asking her. They could not imagine the journey their sister must have taken to get here, but it really wasn’t that bad. The train was comfortable and, for her, this “journey” was long overdue.

Grace was from a town with about five stores. She had been saving money from work that whole year, and New York was at the top of her list. She paid for everything.

It had been pretty great so far. She found a cheap hotel and did something new each day. She walked all over Manhattan; the other boroughs didn’t interest her too much. It was Manhattan that was in the movies and T.V., who cares about the Bronx?

Grace had been in the city for about a week. She felt good wandering around by herself, there was no mystery back home. Her mom didn’t know where she was. Grace’s mom was pretty neurotic and always knew who she was hanging out with, but it was only a train ride after all, no big deal. She knew she couldn’t stay much longer though. She was running out of money quicker than she’d expected, a cheap hotel is not too cheap she realized.

Also the days had been getting hotter and hotter. This made her less motivated to walk around so much, so she started riding the subway. While thinking about all of this she suddenly remembered her pizza, it had cooled down. She had a bite of cheese pizza and washed it down with some Coke.

She looked to her left. The old man was still leaning against the window. He wasn’t sleeping but just stared out into the street. People who walked by would catch his gaze, but would immediately look away and walk on. He just stared on. Grace tried to look as comfortable as him.

During the trip she’d try to melt into each environment like any New York local. Oh sure, this was her favorite pizza place. She came here all the time, who the hell are you?

She took a few more bites and finished the small Coke, but she didn’t want to leave yet.

Soon a family walked into the pizza place. The father and son wore khaki shorts with button down shirts. The mother had a summer dress. They quietly conversed about what they wanted to order. They did not melt in. The sweaty pizza guy perked up.

He pulled out a glob of dough and started tossing it into the air. The family stopped whispering and stared at the show. Small smiles crept into their faces. Grace watched. The old man in the corner stood up.

“AH HELL, THAT AIN’T SHIT!” He hollered at the family.

All three spun around in horror. The pizza guy missed the falling dough and it slapped on the floor. Grace tried to act cool. The old man pushed past the table he was sitting at and marched to the door. When he had left there was an awkward silence in the pizza place.

“Hey well, uh, welcome to New York! Ha-ha!” The pizza guy was embarrassed. The family was still frozen, staring at the old man who stumbled across the street. They had heard about this. They would remember this.

“You all take your time with the menu, have a seat.” The pizza guy said cheerfully.

“Hey, kid.” He turned to Grace. “Get the hell outta here, you finish your slice? Now GO.”

Grace liked that. She tried to stagger out of the pizza place just like the old man had done. She could not stand tourists in the city.
           
The streets were still roasting.
 
INTERVIEW
Q: First of all, I just have to say I love the story.
A: Oh, thanks a lot.
Q: Why did you choose to have it set in New York City? That’s where you are currently living, correct?
A: Yeah, I chose the city because I’m still trying to get used to the shift myself, and I thought it’d be appropriate to use. I wanted to base this project on my own experiences, and not use Google Maps to try to make up a story, which I tried at first.
Q: I saw a similarity between your writing and Ian McEwan, specifically his novella The Comfort of Strangers. Is this coincidence?
  A: No, I was definitely thinking about that book while I was writing this story. I really liked the simple yet ambiguous narration of that story and tried to emulate it in a way. But I also looked at a lot of other travel fictions as well.
Q: Like what?
A: Oh, well the character Daisy Millerwas a sort of foundation for Grace. I wanted to take the challenge of using a young girl as the main character. I wanted Grace to have similar cockiness, but not to such an extreme degree. I was also interested in the idea of losing yourself in your travels. I was specifically thinking about Paul Theroux’s short story “The Gateway of India”. The main character, Dwight, genuinely feels at ease in the crowded streets of Mumbai. I tried to recreate that in Grace’s “melting” into the pizza scene. Also when I chose the name “Grace” I was sort of referencing the heavenly or just religious aspect of the name “Sal Paradise”.
Q: What was the idea behind describing the scenes in such close detail?
A: Well, I figured with a limit of a 1000 words I should try to focus on really describing the scenes I choose because I’ve only got so much to work with. I was also thinking about the main character in Xiao Lu Guo’s A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers. I really liked how Z would note every little event that happened, I thought this would be a good quality for a first time New York trip. I am constantly overwhelmed by the tiniest events that happen on the streets, so I tried to translate this into Grace’s character.
Q: There is an obvious theme of authenticity in this story. Are there any comments you have about the desire of authenticity?
A: It’s an essential part of any trip. Writers like Hemingway and Kerouac loved to write about the interaction between locals and travelers. It’s a really enigmatic and beautiful relationship, because there is always the ephemeral overtone. I tried to emulate the “shrouded traveler” in Kerouac’s On the Road as the angry man. Grace is inspired by this man’s raw and authentic New York spirit. Also she is aware that her trip will soon come to an end and so she tries to experience as much as possible in the time she has. What could be a better conclusion to a trip than getting being mistaken for a local?
Q: So that was a triumphant moment for Grace?
A: Definitely. It’s my own sort of take on “the abyss” of travel. Paul Bowles’ The Sheltering Sky had some influence on my understanding of this feeling of losing yourself in travel, but I like to think mine is a bit more up beat. Instead of having the abyss represent an existential loss of hope I had my character embrace and celebrate this loss of identity. Grace is happy to be considered just another face in the crowd.
Q: Could I have your autograph?