Susan Scutti

Susan Scutti is a poet and one of the Unbearables.

THE STRANGER

On the night of 9-11 I met a carny. I turned down Mulberry Street and saw him sitting there on a ledge in front of an exorbitant though impressively understated boutique. When he called to me, I paused and for a moment looked at him doubtfully. (Is it necessary for me to tell you that normally I do not stop for men calling to me from the ledges of impressively understated boutiques?)

Before I could walk away, he began to speak. He told me he had arrived last night to work the San Gennaro festival. But now they canceled the festival, and he was stuck in town what with the roadblocks and all. Down from Maine, where he lived in a trailer... (I sort of spaced out on the next part of what he said). Slowly, he stood and I watched as his face floated up within inches of my own. I held my breath. In the streetlight I could discern wavy hair, a single small hoop earring, blue eyes both fearful and frightening at once, and a star-shaped fleck of dirt splattered on his right cheekbone.

"I'm Tom."

I spoke my own name. When he shook my hand, I felt calluses. He offered me a margarita then bent down to the ledge and lifted a plastic cup filled with a nacreous green fluid. "I mixed up a batch in the truck," he told me, "Go on, have some." The truck, his intended shelter for the duration of the festival, was parked a stones throw down the street. He pointed it out and I craned my neck to see around a similar vehicle. "Everybody here for the festival lives in their trucks."

For a moment, neither of us said anything. My mouth felt oddly dry, my shopping bag suddenly heavy, so I pulled a beer from the six-pack inside, then gestured towards him. He shook his head. After a moment's thought he added, "I'm sticking with lady Margarita."

Frowning at the beer bottle top, I must have looked bereft or something. "I've got it," he said. I handed it to him and he did something quick with his hands, the bottle and the ledge, then presented me with a foaming-headed beer. The foam just sat there, on top, like cream. He probably knew enough French to say "voila" or something similar but mercifully he restrained himself. He plucked a pack of cigarettes from his breast pocket, and offered one to me.

He made room for me on the ledge and as I sat down, I casually glanced up the street as if someone I knew was waiting there for me. I cleared my throat. We went back and forth with me evading many of his questions while he freely answered all of mine. He said he'd try to leave town tonight but by now the cops probably wouldn't let anyone through. He told me he had expected to make a thousand dollars during the festival. He wondered how long he'd be stuck in New York. He figured another festival he worked at every October might also be cancelled. He didn't know how he would get through the winter without the money from the two jobs. He asked me if I thought the festival in Pennsylvania would be canceled.

I didn't shrug but I didn't say no either. He offered me another cigarette. For many minutes we sat silently side by side, the smoke curling in sleepy patterns around our faces, and we considered what was to come. When I stood and said it was time I got home, his eyes looked genuinely grateful for the time I'd visited with him there. The following day I saw him coming out of the all-night Korean deli sipping from a brown-bagged can of beer. He smiled, waved, and for a moment I mistook him for someone else who had lived in the neighborhood years ago. A day later, all the trucks parked on Mulberry Street had disappeared. I assume Tom had left then, too.

While I was writing down this brief memory (or more correctly while I was not writing) I turned on the TV and clicked around till I landed on a talk show. I listened as an expensive celebrity recommended that Americans purchase hybrid cars that run on electricity and gas in order to shake this country's unhealthy dependence on foreign oil.

For a moment I counted up all the people I knew who had lost their jobs in the past couple of years. I wondered, then, if these new cars we would buy should come in red or in blue?