Crabb Town

Not Leaving

The weekend after 9-11 I worked at a French Bistro in lower Manhattan. On the 12th, I had called to check in on my friends and coworkers. I expected to find out that the restaurant, like almost every other business below 14th Street, would be indefinitely closed. Instead I was asked to work several 18-hour double shifts. The café was owned by a group of Israeli business partners who all took the WTC attacks very personally. Even though we couldn’t receive shipments and had a limited menu, my bosses insisted we not let the terrorists “keep us from serving the community!”

At the end of working several grueling shifts I had made 900 dollars. This was going to be the money I used to rent a moving truck and get out of New York. Most of my coworkers- totally rational people with jobs and homes and boyfriends and girlfriends- had just packed up and left the city they’d loved so much. And so would I.

As I took off my apron and counted my earnings, the bartender insisted I drink with him. His name was Yoni. We got drunk and discussed our lives with total strangers at the bar. Conversations the week after 9-11 weren’t about political topics. People didn’t discuss the looming war or national security. They talked about doubting their marriage or hating their career as a pastry chef or moving back to Ohio to have babies. They did this slurring over cocktails in candlelight with tears in their eyes. Osama Bin who?

At 3 in the morning as I left, Yoni handed me a huge magnum of red wine and said something in Hebrew I couldn’t understand. I leaned in and drunkenly asked “What?” He patted me on the shoulder and whispered, “Drink… to forget.”
That sounded good to me.

I was stumbling home through my dark, industrial wasteland of a neighborhood in Bushwick, Brooklyn in the same all-black waiter outfit I’d been wearing the last 5 days. I had forgotten to empty my pockets over the course of the last week and had all of my “Get-out-of-NYC” cash in my pocket. I could hear the nearby throbbing of music from the roof across the street. Someone was actual having a rooftop rave a few days after the attacks. So much for a dance party grace period I thought.

About ten feet from my door I hear “you got a cigarette?” I didn’t even question the request. The last few days had been such a communal time of people holding doors for each other and saying “please” and “thank you” that I instinctively looked down into my pocket without even thinking of my safety.

Suddenly this man was up against my back with his arm around my neck and something jabbing into my ribs. “You feel that?” he asked. “That’s a fucking gun. Gimme all your money.” I was terrified but numb at the same time.
What now? I thought.
I started digging through my bag beneath my giant magnum of red wine for something to appease my attacker. Then I quickly remembered that ALL of my money was in there- my “get out of town” fund. I peeked over my shoulder as the guy’s grip around my neck loosened and his arm dropped. His eyes darted around but he mainly kept them trained on the makeshift discotheque a mere 20 feet away. I could hear people laughing and hoped someone would leave the party and save me.

As I reached into my pockets and gripped my wad of cash I thought, “I am not letting this guy get my money. This is the money that can save me from a future of shit like this!” As he twitched and trembled I moved the cash from my pocket to my bag. He didn’t notice. He was nervous now and glistening with sweat. “Come on, man!” he grunted as I feigned the search for cash I knew I wouldn’t surrender to him. Seconds felt like minutes. He jammed the gun deep into my back and reached around into my left pocket, where I kept all my credit cards and ID. Right as he took his hand out, a group of 5 or 6 hipsters emerged from the building. He nudged me toward my front door, saying “Now go inside.”

And that was when I snapped. I turned around to see him casually strolling away towards Bushwisk Avenue, a busy street about 50 yards ahead. He was walking right at the same pace as the party group on the other side of the street. I started walking after him. I screamed across the street “hey! You see this guy right here? He’s got a gun and he just mugged me!” A girl yelped in fear as her friend started nervously laughing, as if I couldn’t possibly be serious.

As my attacker picked up his pace I dialed 911. I took out my huge magnum of wine and brandished over my head, like some urban caveman. “I’ve just been mugged!” I screamed to the 911 operator. She asked me what he was wearing. He was in this red and black striped sweater and all it once it struck me that he was dressed like Freddy Krueger from the “Nightmare On Elm Street” films. I yelled into the phone “He’s dressed like Freddy Krueger!”
“Excuse me?” said the operator as I broke into a full sprint.
“FREDDY KRUEGER! FREDDY KRUEGER!”
Later I imagined what someone must have thought seeing a drunk waiter running through the streets swinging a bottle of wine and screaming “FREDDY KRUEGER!” into the night.

We were in full chase mode now as the operator said, “Sir, please stop pursuing the perpetrator.” But I couldn’t. It was like all the fear and anger and rage of the last few days were spilling out of me and this guy was getting the brunt of all of it. If I caught him, I wanted to kill him. He looked over his shoulder at me with his massive junkie eyes and it was the first time in my life that someone looked at me and was truly scared of what they saw. And I liked it.
I was getting closer to him as we rounded the block. I was maybe 20 feet behind him when he disappeared into the darkness of a very dangerous park. Drunk as I was, I knew there were limits. And I couldn’t run into there. I stumbled home drunk. Going though my pockets, I realized that the only thing the guy got from me was my Texas driver’s license.

I didn’t end up using my getaway money to move back to Texas. I used it to get a new apartment in Spanish Harlem. I decided I wasn’t going to let 9-11 ruin my city for me. The same way I wasn’t going to let some junkie take my money. It might not have been the smartest thing to do, but I wouldn’t take it back.

A week later my mom called from Texas and said I’d received a letter. There was no return address on the envelope. I asked her to open the letter and in it, was my ID, scuffed and dirty. Attached to it was a post-it. Scrawled on the little yellow piece of paper was this:
Whoever you are. I hope you are okay. God bless you.

1. nomadabode reblogged this from crabbtown and added:

   ridiculously talented Mr. Crabb -

2. crabbtown posted this