Urban adventures

A piece in the New Yorker about urban cons reminded me of what felt at the time like a near-mugging I experienced a few months back. It may in fact have just been a micro-comedy of error, who knows. I was walking down 125th st at around midnight or later, fast. I was ten feet behind another guy who was also walking fast, I guess I was drafting on him. Abruptly, he turned left and stopped on a dime, in front of the tattoo parlor/medical equipment retailer/gift shop that doubles (quadruples?) as a neighborhood tough hangout, home to flamboyant and elaborate hand signs and smoldering glowers. I slammed into him, nearly full speed. I walk really fast. Though he was a big guy he was shaken enough that a big brown bag slipped out of his hand and fell to the sidewalk with a big glassy clang... and no shattering tinkle nor blub of escaping fluid. All that I experienced and recorded in a half a second or less.



He turned to me, I began to apologize, as is my habit when I run into someone, whether they are partly to blame or not. Own up to the fact that you are genuinely sorry that the thing happened, is my attitude, whether you are accepting responsiblity or not. Did I want that to happen? No, indeed, I was sorry it had occurred. Anyway, he indignantly told me to watch where I was going and when I agreed and added that his sudden stop was a contributing factor he began claiming I'd broken his bottle of rum. He'd retrieved his bag from the sidewalk and was looking in, saying his forty was busted. I didn't see any wetness at the bottom of the bag so I indicated my skepticism.


It was at this point that another, smaller guy came walking up to us, demanding to know what the problem was and simultaneously claming that the collidee was his cousin. That was the moment I got the "is this a setup?" vibe. The collidee told his cousin to chill, no problem, we were just dealing with the matter of the broken rum bottle. Now he pulled the massive 40 ounce bottle of white Bacardi rum from the bag and pointed at a seam in the glass - "see?" he demanded, "see how it's cracked on the inside?" His cousin contributed moral support for collidee's claim of interior cracking, and out of the corner of my eye I could see two or three other associates of collidee and his cousin at the building's entrance, watching us closely.


I think I may have allowed my incredulity and impatience to be apparent at this point - how a giant glass bottle could be cracked on this inside, invisible to the eye, and not be a pile of damp shards in a bag was beyond belief. Why were we debating this in the wee hours of the morning when I'd rather be settling into bed? I indicated as much to my new companions. The location of the liqour store directly across the street was raised at that point, and the idea that I'd buy him a new forty of rum. My memory gets fuzzy from this point on. The interchange involved me saying a) it's not broken, b) I have no money on me and c) it wasn't entirely my fault, in various combinations, phrasing and with increasing insistence. I do remember taking out my wallet and showing him the Canadian $5 bill that was there to convince him I had no money. Nothing says "broke" like foreign currency to the average American - they can't seem to conceive that these weirdly colored slips of paper with total strangers' faces on them can be used for anything, anywhere. Just whipping out a Canadian $20 has garnered considerable sympathy for me in the past.


Collidee didn't muster sympathy for my pathetic foreign $5 but it did seem to soften his indignation and insistence that I was going to replace the non-broken forty. Spotting my opening, I remembered a couple US dollars in my pants pocket, retrieved them, said "how about I give you my last $2, for your trouble?" He sullenly acquiesed, I slapped the two wrinkled bills in his hand, and, before he could reconsider or get reinforcements, I turned on my heel and stode off as confidently as I could, not looking back. About a half block later I felt a wash of elation - I had stood my ground, been polite but insistent, hadn't displayed weakness and got out of there with my wallet and person intact. There was the matter of the $2, but I felt like that had been a very inexpensive lubrication for my exit - it gave him a reason to let the matter and me go, for just the price of a subway fare.


After I tried to figure out if collidee was as surprised by our sudden meeting as I or whether it was part of a pre-existing plan. His cousin appeared sort of quickly to be just a happy coincidence. And the location - directly in front of the creepiest place I pass on 125th on the way home from the 4,5,6 line. Maybe the only surprise was that the bottle didn't shatter, and that improbability messed up the script, pacing and outcome of what was supposed to be a quick $30 profit. I also fantasized about how collidee would regard me if we met on the street again - as an annoying broke foreigner deserving of revenge, or as a worthy adversary who'd stood his ground and deserved respect? In either event, I felt lucky and proud of how I'd conducted myself, and it was with that I went to sleep that night.