The Ring

The Ring

W. Maguire  copyright@2019

"NEW YORK — Just before midnight, a man standing on a sidewalk in Times Square decided that the spot was right.

He turned to his girlfriend, fell to a knee and nervously retrieved a diamond ring from his pocket.

The girl said yes, the New York Police Department reported, but the man fumbled the ring. It bounced once then rolled eight feet before disappearing down a subway grate."

The Ring

There is a stretch of Broadway just north of 42 St. in Times Square where the traffic slows. The hacks surrender twisting the wheel and curse under their breath about the clot of tourists and the pain in their spines from too many potholes and too many stiffs.

And tangled with its own crowds the speeding city limps for a few blocks.

The tourists look up into the lights and the New Yorkers look down at the cracks.

 The pick pockets and the three card monte dealers know the difference and, like sheep dogs, herd the tourists to the dimmer corners where they are relieved of their innocence.

Every night there is a collision between those that know and those that don't, between the innocent and the wised up, between the the lights and the cracks. 

And sometimes late, lovers and the unloved mix.

Lovers hold each others hands like it was the future and the lonely hold their own and make their way into the strip clubs...to pretend for an hour or two to some kind of close. 

One night last week just before midnight and just north of Times Square a couple of out of towners held hands. They had come to stare at the skyscrapers and go to forgettable Broadway shows, just to feel the unforgettable scale of this place. 

The young man, still with some much boy in his face, had made up his mind about her. He wanted some small corner of forever and the only sliver of it he ever knew was in her eyes and the way she looked at him. 

All he felt anymore was the ticking away of the hours and days. 

But when he looked at her he could feel something eternal, something unseen about her that had hurdled Time itself. 

And walking in the city late that night he felt  himself reaching for the forever in her hand.

That morning he had decided and gone alone to Chinatown. Lost and wide-eyed he walked Canal Street, past a dozen jewelers bunched together near Mott. Then taking a deep breath turned into one of them.

“Mister...Mister...welcome. You want diamond...we have very nice. You got a girl? Of course of course you do. We have what you need..."

"How much you have to spend?” the Chinese woman said.

She was short, braided hair, flinty eyes. She had seen the lookers come and go and knew the nervous of a buyer when she saw one.

The boy had $1200 cash in his pocket and in his eyes. It was all he had in the world. Saved it from that second summer job, sweeping streets in his small town that didn't really know what real dirt is.

But that 1200 was more than the tens and twenties bundled together with a rubber band. 

It was the hours he hadn't slept working nights. It was sweat stained tee shirts in August and shivering in January turning down the heat trying to save up.

It was tanks of gas he didn't buy and second hand tires patched and repatched till the steel thread shown through.

And it was hungry some nights after tv dinners or ramen noodles, waiting in the dark for the ache in his belly to bow down to sleep.

In short it was sacrifice...the everyday kind. That paying a little bit of the now trying to buy forever on layaway. 

The show it instead of tell it currency of love.

Not the sayer kind.  The doer kind.

So penny by penny he scraped at himself... saving up so that he might save himself. 

And standing there with every cent of that sweat and sacrifice balled up in his pocket he still figured it was cheap. Deal of the century...1200 for a piece of forever.

He took the cash from his pocket. “1200 ma'am.”

She clucked in mild disgust and shook her head slightly, then led him away to the far end of the storefront, away from the glass cases and the 2... 3... 4 carat rings that the Wall Street guys bought for the girlfriend or the wife or both. 

They would slide in Friday after the close, low riders pretending to be high rollers, always trying to skate their way past lonely, anteing up with a ring for some temporary kind of love. Always trying to buy their way in with some light and sparkle instead of  with the sweat and the pay each day on a layaway work at it love.

What difference they thought. It was always somebody else’s money in their billfolds and in their eyes. 

The old woman swept a dust cloth over the glass case, the 300 dollar rings, and tried not to look into the boy’s earnest eyes. 

“These..yes these...very nice.”

She grimaced slightly and hid it with a smile that was too wide. She muttered a little to herself and set a few boxes before him. 

The rings were gold plate of course and the diamonds small...1/4 carat at most, and cut to try to hide the yellowing. 

He didn’t care. Love doesn't have a weight, at least not the kind that can be measured in carats. 

But he did feel it some nights sitting on his chest, making his heart beat harder reaching up for it.

And here before him now was Forever peeking from behind the shape of each.

He inspected a few and tried to imagine looking at each one for fifty years. He asked himself which of these could a son of his someday  make a girl cry with as he slipped it on her hand. His mama’s ring.

Or maybe some estate sale ad when he was dust and a name no one could recall. 

"Wedding ring...worn once...for fifty years."

But which one? They were all yellowed and fogged up and jagged. Bad cuts and throw aways. Tourist rings.

There off in the corner was a small gold one. Just 1/4 carat but clean. Marquise, sharp edge set high like it was stretching up for something, like it knew love was mostly reaching. And it needed something sharp to cut away the doubt and worry.

“Can I see that one ma'am?”

“Yes that one...very special..very special ring. Yes.”

She held it out to him and he took the case and held it close to his face. He tried to look through the center and imagined his girl saying yes and heard forever singing some hymn around her finger.

'How much will I have to pay...for love?' he thought to himself. 

Then he whispered to the old woman "How much?"

She was embarrassed for just a moment. 

She had forgotten what real love, the scared kind... scared to death of living without it looked like. 

And she had forgotten what real hope felt like. The weight of it...that five carat kind of hope.

She had misplaced it in herself, shoved back in the 300 dollar case of her heart.

But as she looked into the boy's eyes she felt it in herself...unbroken, no jagged edges or ginned up value. 

And feeling that in him filled her with shame. 

She looked away and shook herself and choked down the moment, then smiled her too wide smile and said -

“It beautiful ring mister. Any girl would love to have that. Any girl...”

The boy took the ring and held it in his palm like a compass. 

Then he looked up and out onto Canal Street, trying once again to see Forever.

Canal Street was full of its merchants and tiny storefronts. It was full of tourists looking up at the lights and New Yorkers looking down at the cracks. 

There were steerers and the buyers each wanting something from each other. 

There were hopers and the hopeless, the lovers, the lonely and the leavers colliding on cracked sidewalks.

There were souls rolling up the hill and away toward Brooklyn and souls rolling  down onto the island of dreams. Believers all each wrestling with their disbelief.

He closed his eyes and whispered “I don’t know if she’ll say yes.”

The old woman looked up into his face and for the first time felt the truth in her mouth. 

“Yes...yes...of course she will mister. Yes...she will say Yes”

The truth has a sound to it. And they both heard it pealing in that lonely hopeful space between them.  

It sounds like a bell. It has a ring.

"I’ll take it." he said and handed her the money. His 1200 for that 300 dollar ring. 

“1200 is cheap" he thought. "I’m buying decades. I’m taking a mortgage on Forever.”

And he felt proud, and scared and changed somehow.

She looked down and counted the sweat stained twenties and felt a small pang. She had felt it before and knew it would pass.  It was the price of being too clever...the blindness that comes from seeing all the angles. 

The boy carefully put the ring in his pocket and stepped back out into the lights and onto the cracks, back among the believers of Canal Street. 

And the old woman watched him disappear into the crowd, sighed to herself and whispered -

“Next. Who’s next?”

That midnight just north of 42 Street he fell to a knee. He felt the cracks in the sidewalk and himself. Then he looked up into her worried eyes and reached for the ring.

He wanted to say he would love her with every breath, that he would build something holy between them, that he was just a man and full of flaws... but maybe that might be enough...

But all he could whisper was just one word.

"Please."

She looked into his face and saw the saving...of both her and him. She saw all the doing without, all the sacrifice he was offering.

And she said yes..

His hand trembled and the ring slipped through to the pavement. It bounced once then rolled eight feet to the lip of a subway grate then wavering leaned over and disappeared into the black.

Love is made and lost everyday in Manhattan.

It is made in the high rises and the alleyways, in the backseats of hacks and late night buses. 

It is made in locked after hours bars and bus station pews. It is made and lost and remade again. It is whispered like a vow in ears and shouted like a hallelujah prayer.

It is an an idiot boy stuttering some same phrase endlessly... again and again, trying just once to get it right.

But love has been lost on every corner of Manhattan too. It has slipped through countless fingers. It has rolled away in cabs down the avenues, never to be seen again.

It has evaporated like steam from street pipes and disappeared into the potholes. It has been thrown away with careful contempt and careless words. 

It gets tired and lays down in the gutters and is swept away each dawn in Times Square.

And sometimes it rolls away and falls between the cracks into the black far beneath the lights of Broadway.

The young man pleaded with the dark and when it refused to answer he pleaded with the crowd, with the knowers and the conmen, with the shadow people and the lonely and anyone that cannot sleep and walks the city streets at night looking for some kind of peace that moved to the suburbs long ago.

Then he laid down on the concrete and listened for the sound of Forever falling onto the roar of the F train tracks.

Love sounds like a bell...and lost love like the echo of a bell.

It rings. It rings.

WLM