The rain lets up for me just as its time to get out of rehearsal. I walk through Crown Heights to get to the shuttle train at Franklin Avenue. I’m dressed up from an afternoon at the theater; as a lanky white boy, I’m a sore thumb in the heavily Caribbean-and-African-American neighborhood. Many used to equate this place high crime and racial tension but a lot of the crime you read about is on Wall Street and the Upper East Side.
I sit on the platform bench, exhausted, scanning an article in the New York Times Magazine about the Dutch Welfare system. I’ve got my brown leather messenger bag and black camera case on either side, a pure example of inconsistency in this working class/ghetto culture last-stop station. I enter the train, which waits for a few minutes before reversing its path. I attempt to continue reading despite a young mother talking loudly on her cell phone. She’s pushing her young son around, not paying any attention to him and eventually chooses to leave the train, dragging him carelessly behind her.
I fume for a bit about her lack of attention and insensitive grip of his wrist. It’s late in the evening and the doors close. We’re halfway to the next stop when I realize—I forgot my camera bag. The bag holds a brand new $800 HD camcorder. My mind and heart begin to race and I calculate the possibilities while preparing to exit at the next stop:
The thief passed me, part of the swarm that crowds the platform at the last shuttle stop. I’m already up and waiting to board, so he sees that there is no potential owner next to the package. His swift actions have already been calculated in the numerous thefts he both succeeded and failed at. His billowy clothes have been streamlined to accommodate many items.
He knows that a seamless snatch would be barely noticed although it’s possible that the owner has run back to grab his/her bag and realize it’s been stolen. It’s unlikely, however, that the owner would be able to rush down the stairs at a quicker rate than the descending crowd. Finally, the theif calculates, it would be nearly impossible for the owner to get in front of the crowd and in a discernable position to scan for his/her stolen item.
I rush down the stairs and out of the station, beginning my damnable frantic stride back up Franklin Avenue. Still somewhat hopeless, I consider the irony of the skinny white guy practically running up through this neighborhood to prevent the potential crime made available by his own negligence. Picking up some sense, I begin to walk through the street in order to hail down a cab.
I figure that the probability of my camera being stolen, already at a high considering the mass of denizens already passing by it, is only increasing by the minute. So, to decrease that probability, I can cut a 7 minute walk into a 3 minute cab ride by the application of a mere $5 toll in the face of an $800 loss. The cabby charges me $7 for a four-block trip. Highway robbery…
I faultlessly glide through the turnstile (my 16-minute window between rides on my unlimited Metrocard ticking off with impeccably good timing) and rush up the escalator. The speed of my double-step jumping compounds with the upward motion of the escalator, but the blur of hyper speed gives way to an open-air subway platform—with no camera bag on any of the seats.
The next train in the station has been boarded, but has not yet departed. I dart onto it, using the highest possible scanning ability to look for my bag while moving quick enough to cover both cars before the doors close. It seems nobody on this train stole my bag without the deviousness to keep it out of sight of the owner.
I descend the stairs, dejected, with one final possibility before me. This possibility depends solely on the good of the common man. Someone, man or woman, saw my bag, saw that it was not in the vicinity of any other passenger, asked anyone close-by of it’s origin and came down to the station attendant to hand it over to the authorities (I put a marginal increase of probability in this scenario considering the “If you see something, say something” vigilance ads)
I ask the station attendant if anyone brought down a black bag,
“Around this big”, my hands cradling every last hope.
“What size?”
“Like this” I hold the phantom bag on all six sides as though I probably won’t touch it again.
He points towards a set of massive steel doors. I pull its heavy weariness open and see before me a bizarre stretch of an empty concrete hallway. At my feet is my little black bag, tilted and upside-down, as though it had been dropped in the favor of an arriving train. I pick it up, check it’s contents (all intact and untouched) and thank the station attendant with both hands clasped in each other.
The train has left, and I happily wait for the next one. They say the crime rate in New York City has dropped 90% in the past 18 years, but I can’t slap statistics on whoever had the sense to do the right thing tonight. I can’t exactly look at a karmic record either, with all my good and ill deeds wavering in complicated woven pattern, both invisible and opaque.
When I get out at my final destination, it has started raining again.
