The other day at the store, I was straightening up books on the carts. The carts sit outside the doors. They feature our clearance books. Just outside the door is a bus stop on the third street line, so there's often a crowd out by the carts, browsing and reading. The books are $0.50 for paperback and $1.00 for hardcover, so management (that is, Eric Papenfuse, owner of the store) is not that upset if some of them end up on the third street bus without us having seen any money. But Eric still likes us to keep the carts looking presentable, so I was out there when I heard a bike roll up behind me.
"Fi'ty cent, fi'ty cent, book for my girlfrien', fi'ty cent."
The guy on the bike laid down that little vocal line in a tone of voice that was so soft as to be menacing. I knew he was asking for money, and I knew I wasn't going to give him any. He hadn't directly addressed me, so I kept straightening, my back to him. His song trailed off into muttering, and then he said, "'scuse me sir, you got fifty cents?"
"Sorry," I said, "I'm working, and I don't have any cash."
The first part was true. The second part was not.
"Oh, you work here," he said, "Cool."
He biked on by. I see him out by the carts and biking up and down third street a lot now. I'm glad I didn't give him cash. I feel like if I had given him fifty cents then, I'd be unable to look him in the eye and have a conversation now. Sometimes he comes into the store to buy a soda, and I give him the nod that is standard parlance for "hello" around here. I still have his surprisingly catchy little ditty stuck in my head.
"Fi'ty cent, fi'ty cent / book for my girlfrien' / fi'ty cent."
2 comments:
This is always the dilemma whenever anyone asks me for fifty cents, which happens a lot in NYC. The other night, I was on the subway, and this one guy playing guitar managed to get the entire subway car singing Michael Jackson songs along with him. He asked for money after that, and must have gotten a good ten bucks.
Is that why a little book arrived in the mail today? :)
Remember the man who asked us for 35 cents on our way to "Preparations for Departure"? The amount made it easy to find the coins in my pocket with its commissioning exactness.
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