TROOPS

admitting it for the

Russians

We're in the same building as some United Nation commission, or maybe two; I get on the elevator and there are elegantly dressed people from all the corners of the globe, speaking their prim English as a second language, some wearing vaguely tribal clothes, carrying briefcases, badges hanging from their belts or necks.

This morning a slender black man with a mustache stepped on after me, then a dark-haired white man just as the doors began to close.

"Good weekend?" the first man asked. Obligatorially. Tediously.

"Hmm?"

"Good weekend?"

"Oh! Oh yeah. Yeah. Better than today."

"Really?"

"Yeah," he went on, sighing. "Russians."

"Ah!"

"You know how they—"

"Yeah. Yeah."

"They want things, you know."

"Yes."

"Everything has to be just—" Here he made a little gesture with his finger, drawing an imaginary line. He rolled his eyes.

"I know! I know." A knowing shake of the head.

"Yeah, so. Russians."

Just then the doors opened for me on the 16th floor.

TROOPS

He was right. They turned on us.

We were all trying to get on the train after work. A short, older woman, a little crazy looking, stood beside me in the throng. Neither of us made it.

"Fuck it!" she growled as she turned away.

I gave her a look, a little double take, like: Come on. It's just a fucking train.

"Fuck you!" she said.

TROOPS

farther afield, Colleen

TROOPS

"In Germany I am not that tall," Johanna said.

TROOPS

affectionately on the chin

Strange scenes in the subway. In a corridor at Bryant Park, a large black woman, with the bearing of a weightlifter, selling plastic knickknacks. On the other side, farther down: a beggar mother in rags, nursing. The vendor was working over her mark, a short, Hispanic man. “You want yo-yo? You want yo-yo? You want yo-yo?” she taunted, illustrating with brusque tosses of the toy. “You wanna jacka lan’ern?”

The baby spat out its mother’s nipple and cried. There it was: big, brown, glistening in the sick, fluorescent light.

A few days later I got on the 7 after work, found a corner seat where I hoped to rest my head against the glass. A woman walked up and politely asked if she could have the inside seat. Sure, I said. Of course. She sat down, turned away, and promptly began to sob. She’d sniffle and snort sometimes, like criers do—making funny sounds in the midst of grief. Then she’d start again. Finally around Broadway-Lafayette she stopped.

TROOPS

I won't blame Nick. I don't blame Nick.

TROOPS

and also, where available, rescue equipment