In the Cool of the Night

If there's a more euphoric way to spend a summer's night than experiencing Romeo and Juliet at Shakespeare in the Park, it's experiencing New York itself on any given night. Whereas two weeks ago I sat in the magnificent Delacorte Theatre to share in the plight of two star-crossed lovers, two nights ago I did something fairies and fireflies could only sprinkle into verse: I walked a block and a half to the new frozen yogurt store.

My best friend and I embarked on the journey as a whim: I love anything that resembles ice cream, it was steamy and humid, and we'd seen pretty much everything on Pay Per View (even, methinks, in a moment of dastardly misjudgment, the Hugh Grant/Drew Barrymore comic tragedy, Music and Lyrics). I snapped up the dog and we took flight.

Before we'd left the building's vestibule, a neighbor stopped us. I don't know him well - he lives in one of the higher, hoity-toity 20-something floors - but he was filled with heated revelry. Mr. D. had up and left his 16-year-old job at an ad agency to go it alone on a project he'd dreamed about for years. We heard the wondrous elation to leave a windowless office, the joy in better hours and three days a week at his Long Island home, and privileged building gossip we commoners snatch up like bread crumbs for pigeons. In between almost salivating bites of bliss, he kept looking up into the night where Manhattan skylines take your ambitions with you. I was just hearing his tale of Nazi Jewish ex-clients when my own-floor neighbors, their two kids, and their dog, Max, strolled in from their summer-night walk. Chloe, their youngest, had a new haircut, and she hid behind Dad as I told her how sophisticated she looked.

I've come to know these neighbors well because on most mornings I bring their Boston Terrier over, along with my other neighbors' Wheaton Terrier, for play dates with my pug, DJ. Everyone benefits, save maybe me, as the dogs morph into little children and tug at me when they need a referee, or bring their toys over should they decide to play fetch, or jump on my lap for protection if unfairly antagonized. I sip my coffee and read the paper and try and refrain from calling Nanny 911.

Chloe was still clinging on to Dad's jeans when Dan and Bella, his Golden Retriever, passed by on their way home in a nearby building. Dan and his wife have a new baby boy, and I usually see her walking the dog, infant in tow, hand glued to a cell phone. Bella and my dog were puppies together, so we share an unspoken connection of Wee-Wee Pads and kindling furniture. It's the kind of connection so cozy you don't mind it when you run into the wife on a winter's day and the first thing she does is tell you that your dog's wearing the same coat from last season. I would have mentioned that a friend custom-made DJ a wool coat for special occasions, but decided it was too much like something Lucy would have mentioned to Caroline Appleby.

Dan looked thin and overworked (as I started to point out), with no tan on his exposed arms, but S.'s hello almost drowned out Dan's goodbye. S. is the newest neighbor on the floor, who was, as is his usual evening custom, smoking near the doorway. I imagine that his own new baby and wife and good sense disallow such behavior indoors. I said hi back, and S. looked away and up, lost most likely in thoughts of parenthood and owner-hood and nicotine-hood. When I came home from Texas a few weeks ago with the wrong luggage and no keys or money on me, S. handed me 60 bucks to go back to the airport and fetch the correct bag - it was two in the morning and he was outside, smoking. Last week I fed their turtle while they went upstate to visit the folks. The morning after I returned from my trip, another floor friend, Claudia, called in late for work so she could help me to the drugstore, where I needed to get an emergency supply of lost medicine you risk seizure from if not taken. During the wait, she told me stories about the glory days of Chelsea's Danceteria, where she and Madonna were both regulars. We were both bummed when she finally left to get the subway.

Melanie interrupted everyone: She's the "other" pug in the building (apparently, there's been chatter over who's cuter), and when her owner, Larry, strolled by, the two dogs started making out like kids at a picture show. My best friend gave me a look of restlessness, so we hit pavement. I'm still bitter over the two-hour photo shoot of Melanie and DJ together, which ended up with the photographer hurling insults at the unprofessional "models" and calling it a day. Needless to say, the dogs weren't used for the photographer's new book. Bella, who'd been photographed a month previously, made the final cut.

We passed the dry-cleaner whose owner waves to me each morning, the chicken take-out place that I swear I've kept in business these past nine years (two sisters used to run it, and so self-absorbed am I that I could never tell them apart until one quit the business to take care of her sick husband - they live in my building). Then we walked by the florist who just returned to work after chemotherapy treatments, and who cheerfully greets everyone in the morning with news of his progress as he sets out those year-round roses and tulips and every other flower that colors every other Manhattan street and wilts about an hour after every purchase.

There's a fire hydrant in front that Billy, the delivery guy, uses as his bench between orders. He drinks beer there and smokes, and DJ (or "TJ," as he's been calling him for two years) adores him and plops down next to him on afternoon walks. Billy talks to me about the Yankees. I know nothing about sports, and it took me a good six months to figure out he was making inquiries because of the Yankees baseball cap I wear. Now I just nod my head and agree with his theories about what's going to happen to the team this year. I do the same thing when people discuss Harry Potter's fate.

First avenue was tough crossing, half a block from the apartment, not because it's a major thoroughfare, with buses and trucks and police cars and crazy cabdrivers whizzing by a tiny dog - DJ's used to that - but because I stopped when I saw the lady with the pugs. The tiny middle-aged Asian woman who owns them used to have eight; I'd stare at the sight of her with eight dogs, each on separate leashes and tugging about like marionettes. By the time I got my pug she only had five, and she gave me endless advice on taking care of his eyes and his legs and breathing problems. Tonight there were three; each fourteen years old, and only one on a leash. The two in her stroller had gone blind, and she looked at DJ with memory and adoration and envy and fear. Whether it was my melancholia or his that her gaze foreshadowed, I don't know. My best friend took my arm and whisked me through the green light.

We passed Duane Reade and the bus stop on First, where DJ spotted a heavy-set black woman waiting for her ride, and couldn't help but run up to greet her from behind. The woman's long dress flew up under DJ, and she screamed. Thankfully, she laughed out loud when viewing the perpetrator, especially as a good ten other passersby were laughing too. I'd just taken a stab at guessing the breeds of the dog an arm-and-arm couple had just rescued from the ASPCA (boxer/beagle was my hunch), when my best friend tugged at my imaginary leash, desperate he was to get to the yogurt place before closing.

The brightly lit store had no line - a good thing, as I have serious issues with New Yorkers who queue up for hours to get a seven dollar demi-scoop of frozen yogurt, when they can haul it next door to any deli and get a pint of Ben & Jerry's for a few bucks and no wait. They didn't allow pets inside, so my best friend agreed to hold DJ while I got both of our orders. I came out of the store with two giant cups of Vanilla-Chocolate swirl sprinkled with M&Ms, and thought it the grandest night on earth. In its simplicity the city glowed. My best friend and dog were missing, and I had to turn a corner to find them. He was sitting on a stoop, DJ at his side, with the look of someone lost in polluted fog. Everything was wrong. The air was ugly and littered, the smells were rancid, the neighbor's earlier gloating only nailing into his head what had been another wasted workday. Even the yogurt tasted bad. If I was living in Woody's Manhattan, my best friend had ventured into Scorsese's. On any other night we could have reversed roles.

I also could have reversed this reel. There could have been something about the careless death of one of those eight pugs, and insinuations about a strange woman's unstable condition. Or addiction and homelessness, and unaccounted for labor on the Upper East Side. Maybe I should have added a few "cunt" expletives that pierced through one of the neighborly conversations. And I deliberately passed over the apartment building next to mine, where a 22-year-old woman's throat was sliced from ear to ear one winter's evening. Her ex-boyfriend confessed to the murder after my building's security cameras caught him standing outside her door. I never met her, as she worked nights at a strip joint and walked her Chihuahua either in the very late or very early hours of the day.

There are billions of star-crossed lovers, and strangers, on Shakespeare's earth. When we're lucky, our thoughts connect like the Milky Way and fly away on wings. Much of the time we seem telescopically removed. On even the brightest of Manhattan nights we can never see the stars. It's taken on certainty that they hover just above.