Note: I wrote this last summer, hence the sweltering setting.
I’m taking Max for his evening walk, and it’s not going well for either of us. It’s 8 PM, but it still feels just as hot as it did at noon. Max isn’t enjoying being outside as much as he normally does, and I’m equally unenthused; the heat seems like it might finally cure my annual wintertime longing for warmer weather. We’re in the home stretch, but I need to stop at the bodega on the corner and pick up a package. Up ahead, the three older black women I see every day are in their usual position, holding court on the sidewalk in their camping chairs.
There’s a white guy talking to them. I recognize him from a few days ago when he was speaking broken Spanish to the (English-speaking) proprietors of another deli a block away. I remember it because it bothered me; not in a “we’re in America, so talk American” way, but because something about it felt vaguely insulting. Transactional, even, like he was roping the bodega’s owners into his charade of cultural awareness, using his buying power to compel their participation in a show that was, ultimately, only about him. Or maybe it just bothered me that he was so bad at speaking Spanish.
I tie Max up outside and head into the bodega on the corner. I nod at Miguel, the guy behind the counter, and hand him the slip for the package. He asks for ID; I hand him my license. Miguel’s brow furrows: the package is addressed to my wife, and she didn’t take my last name after we got married. “It’s in my wife’s name,” I offer, to no avail. I say something like “She’s home, but she works really long hours, so I didn’t want her to have to come pick it up,” which I instantly realize sounds like the kind of thing someone would say if they were trying to steal a package.
I’m getting frustrated. Not so much with Miguel — he’s just doing his job — but with everything surrounding our interaction. For starters, it’s sweltering in here. They propped the door open, but it’s too muggy outside, too still, so there’s no breeze to speak of. The bachata is at full blast, each song indistinguishable from the next to the untrained ear. The odds of Max barking at someone rise with every passing minute he’s tied up outside, and given that he’s a 110-pound German Shepherd mix, a reputation as a mean dog wouldn’t do him any favors. Ordinarily, none of these things on their own would be particularly bothersome, but cumulatively, they’re fraying my patience.
I find a picture on my phone of my wife holding her passport, which is enough to convince Miguel that I’m authorized to collect the package. He nods and hands back my phone, then gives me a “one second” gesture as a carton of juice plunks down on the counter next to me. The soon-to-be-owner of the juice is a girl, and the look of utter disdain she gives me indicates that she’s a teenager.
I move aside so she can pay, slightly taken aback by her naked contempt for me. Miguel seems used to her attitude, and he regards her with the placid yet tense demeanor of a nightclub bouncer explaining to a drunk patron that yes, they really do have to leave. “Your friend who was in here earlier, the boy: did he put back that lemon?” Miguel asks the girl in his heavy Dominican accent.
The girl either doesn’t understand him or, like most teenagers, just resents being forced to engage in conversation with an adult. “What?” she snaps. Miguel meets her aggression with his own. “Don’t play with me. Your friend, the boy, he was playing with a lemon when you were in here. Did he put it back?” The girl insists she doesn’t know what he’s talking about, which only serves to further irritate Miguel. They go back and forth as I stand there silently, waiting for the argument to end. The girl’s mother comes in and asks what’s going on, and Miguel and the girl both respond at the same time like siblings yelling over each other, each trying to convince their parents that no, it’s the other one’s fault. And then a voice interjects from behind me, full of “somebody-has-to-be-an-adult-here” condescension and self-importance:
“Guys, guys. I’ll pay for the lemon.”
In an instant, I know who it is. It’s the tone of somebody who believes that the proprietor of a corner store in Bed Stuy must, of course, be so hard-up for money that he’s interrogating an insolent teenager regarding the whereabouts of some stray produce. I glance behind me, and sure enough, it’s that same white guy from before. He’s wearing the standard gentrifier-with-money uniform, expensive clothes assembled with a studied carelessness: Warby Parker glasses, a nice dress shirt, expensive Nikes designed to look like hand-me-downs. It’s a sartorial insistence that the wearer doesn’t care about money, a style that only people who have a lot of money can afford.
The teenager has gone silent while her mother talks to Miguel. Nobody takes our benevolent hero up on his offer, so he tries again. “Guys. I. Will. Pay. For The Lemon.” It’s more impatient now; he seems like someone well-versed in the practice of using money to avoid even the slightest inconvenience. I briefly consider turning around and telling him to mind his own business, that it’s not about the lemon, it’s about deterrence: Miguel is letting the grumpy teenager know, for future reference, that he has his eye on her and her friends. I want to tell him that this neighborhood existed before last month when he moved in and priced another family out of their rent. That it will still exist in a year when the L is fixed and he moves back to Williamsburg. That for the brief period that he’s here, the least he can do is not insult both Miguel and the girl by assuming that neither of them can afford the cost of a single goddamn lemon. And that no amount of glad-handing old ladies earns him the right to stick his nose into other people’s business.
I decide against it. There’s enough arguing going on as it is.
Miguel and the girl’s mother reach an understanding; she knows Miguel wouldn’t have said something unless it was justified. She turns to her daughter. “Now I get it,” she says. “You and your friends have been fuckin’ around in here.” The teen — so full of piss and vinegar moments ago — wilts, muttering a halfhearted protest as she collects her juice and trudges outside to wait. “But I didn’t do nothin’.” Finally, it’s my turn again. As I sign for the package, I hear that voice again. “That was really great,” he says to the teenager’s mother. On paper, the words might imply sarcasm, but the delivery is somehow worse than that: it’s sincerity.
Don’t get me wrong, it was great — insolent teens getting their comeuppance makes for fantastic entertainment — but that’s not what he means. He renders his unsolicited verdict with a tone-deaf earnestness that says “I, a complete stranger who believes that you can’t afford the cost of a piece of fruit and therefore need my charity, approve of your parenting methods.” It says “Hearing you tell your daughter to cut the shit so exceeds my expectations of your aptitude as a mother that I feel compelled to offer you something even more valuable than the cost of a lemon: my blessing.”
I collect my package (all this for a lousy desk fan) and head for the door. Before I leave I take a quick look back, curious as to whether his unctuous approach will work on her. The mother responds the way I wish everyone in the neighborhood would, not just to him, but to everyone like him laboring under the delusion that their very presence here is a gift: by ignoring him.