The (Not So) Long Ride Home

The car came at 9:48. The driver was young. Midway through the ride, he introduced himself as Raj, asked my name, and told me I was pretty. Very pretty.
I told him I was married. Very happily married. But thanks for the compliment.
We passed Barney's, where three underweight mannequins posed in white and gold dresses in front of a wall covered with china plates and saucers. A garbage truck pulled up beside us at the light and a middle-aged man in a thick green jacket, Timberland boots, and a New York Mets cap tossed a pile of giant trash bags into the back of the truck like they were pillows. A red-and-white sign advertised a sale on suits: 50 percent off.
A bouncer in a black suit guarded the entrance to Fredericks, while a Hispanic woman bent down to clean a spot off the glass doors of the Paris Theater, where the last showing of "Bride and Prejudice" had just begun.
Raj turned up the radio, a radio show called "Chill With Chris Botti" on New York's "smooth-jazz" radio station WQCD (101.9 FM). Botti was playing a remix of Hall & Oates, "I Can't Go For That."
Piles of snow buried a bench and rimmed the leafless trees in the park across from the Queensborough Bridge. From the bridge I looked back at the Manhattan skyline. The Empire State Building was lit up in white, red, and green (from top to bottom) in honor, I later learned, of a Welsh(!) holiday, St. David's Day, which celebrates Wales' patron saint, thought to have died on this date 1416 years ago.
(The BBC online asks: how you will be marking the anniversary? Will you be supping leek soup, laver bread and Welsh cakes for a special St David's supper in Sydney? Um, no. But I could go for some cake right now.)
In Queens, a North Fork Bank sign said it was "37 degrees." The Mega Millions jackpot had reached $112 million, according to the billboard. We passed PS1, an old public school that's been converted into a Contemporary Art Center. The sign out front said it's closed until March 13th. We crossed the Kosciusko Bridge into Brooklyn, a route my husband and I had walked in reverse (from our apartment to PS1) one sunny afternoon two summers ago. Past the Pit Stop Bar. And a Polish restaurant. And then one turn and we were on my street. It was 10:07. A new record.