Insomniac City: New York, Oliver, and Me

by Bill Hayes

But taking wrong trains, encountering unexpected delays, and suffering occasional mechanical breakdowns are inevitable to any journey really worth taking. One learns to get oneself turned around and headed the right way.

“Sometimes, Billy, you have to go down to go up.” Just then a train came and we rode together to Forty-Second Street, where Harold got off and disappeared into a crowd. It was only then that I understood he hadn’t been dispensing sage advice about weathering the ups and downs of life in New York. The uptown station at Fiftieth Street had merely been closed.

“Beauty stops traffic,” I texted. Jimmy’s lived in New York a lot longer than I have; I love how he responded: “I know,” he texted back.

“I want everything from you that I don’t have,” he said.