New York: Meeting People - Part I

What's a holiday without meeting a few interesting people?

The Dodgy

After many a tray of airplane meals, 2 in-flight movies and having crossed a dozen time zones, I finally landed in Los Angeles. This business of travelling in a time capsule that finds you departing on a Sunday afternoon and arriving 14 hours later, still a Sunday afternoon of the same day, certainly leaves you more than a little disorientated.

It’s interesting that being armed with a couple of hundred dollar US notes don’t get you anywhere outside airport grounds if you don’t have even two quarters to make a local phone call. The 5-hour flight delay had left me with under 3 hours to get to Hollywood, and my only focus was to get to Les Miserables on time! I must have paced back and forth one too many rounds with my big blue bag that I caught the attention of a seemingly kind elderly man in his late 50s/early 60s.

Moments like these he’s God-sent, because he offers you his cellphone to make your call & helps you get your NY-sector luggage into storage. He assures you that he’s an airport ground staff (offering you a business card for proof), his wife works for American Airlines and he was waiting to pick her up. He asks you some general questions and you show him your itinerary quickly. And before you whisk off, he tells you that he lives really close to the airport and if you ran into any problems that night you should call him. You thank him gratefully, and just about forget all of this whilst you applaud with shameless tears the cast of Les Mis in a spectacular standing ovation.

The next morning, my head up in the air looking at the signs for my boarding gate, I bumped into Bill again. Actually, it looked awfully a lot like he had been waiting for me. There couldn’t be that many QANTAS flights, flying outbound to New York, departing in the morning. So there he was, equally surprised to see me but unable to adequately satisfy my question of why he was there. Then he reiterated the same facts he should have known I already knew: he lived near the airport, his wife was a flight attendant (who apparently kicked him for not inviting me to dinner last night) and in that moment whilst still listening and smiling attentively at him, he wouldn’t even realise that I was already processing the loopholes. Something was amiss. I then remembered to forget when I was returning to L.A, not even whether it was an A.M or P.M arrival, what my real name was, and suddenly “dying for a chocolate croissant, so I’ll see you later. Yea, sure I’ll email you when I come back to L.A”.

Just as I was queuing up to board, Bill returns again with a box of chocolates. He says he only does this for “special people”. Well, I guess we’d never really know how ‘special’ he thought I was. I know I could have just been a paranoid pessimist who mistook kindness for deception, but whether my photo ends up a statistical face on the ‘Missing Persons’ board throughout LA, or whether I live to tell the next story, was a decision I faced just hours into my holiday. Curiosity killed the cat, but not THIS cat. She’s going on holiday!!

The Married

On the packed shuttle bus from JFK International Airport to Midtown Manhattan, I took an empty seat next to someone who would later introduce himself as Eric. Finally, two days and 19 hours of flying later, I was in New York! I was completely fixated at the rolling scenery, but he said hi and we engaged in a conversation about 20 minutes into the 45-minute journey. He was Israeli, in New York for two days on business, a record producer at heart but his main business was sourcing American clothing and importing them to his home country. He spoke fluent English, so I don’t know why he said: “I don’t know how to say this in English, but umm…would you like to have dinner with me tomorrow night? I get bored in New York.” The polite chit-chat came to a halt. Seeing his wife gave him that wedding band, and between us we shared a 20 year age gap and an unimpressive conversation so far, it helped my excuses flow oh so naturally. They were half-truths, not lies entirely. Apparently I was meeting a friend and didn’t have a phone to be contacted on, so it was goodbye and good luck.

The African Prince

Yes, bizarre as it was for a tour bus ticket seller to be an African Prince who abdicated the throne to be King, and for him to tell me this within 1 minute of stepping in my path, I might just have to take his word for it. TJ’s theory is that if 10 women walked by and he yelled out only to get the attention of one woman, that woman was destined to be his wife. I looked at him in that ‘you befuddled fool’ look (which channels through as a forced smile) and just entertained his theories. Heck, I’m on holiday – I’ll listen to anything! Big mistake because now he says we HAVE TO meet again. “It’s my day off tomorrow, I can take you on the tour bus for free and we can go sightseeing together.” “I really like you, I think you are really friendly. You must must call me”. I don’t have a phone, but yes, I’ll take your number. Let me talk to my friend first and see what she wants to do tomorrow. But sure I’ll call you. Yup, definitely. I actually thought of calling him just to say I couldn’t make it, but then decided there was nothing more I wanted to add to this story.