STRANGER IN PARADISE

The following is from the February 18 edition of the New York Times' Metropolitan Diary:

Dear Diary:

After hours of pecking away at her laptop and conversing on her cellphone, the attractive woman at an Upper East Side Starbucks was packing up at closing time.

As we braced for the late January freeze, she told me she was in a jam: She had left her wallet, cash, ID, credit cards and key to her boyfriend’s flat at her home in Boston, and was weak with hunger.

I invited her for a late sandwich in a diner. She shared her story: Drama major, aspiring screenwriter. She was in New York to discuss a screenplay and to try to make her roller-coaster relationship with her boyfriend work. In Boston, she was in rehearsal for a Tennessee Williams play.

Soon enough, I was passing ten $20 bills across the table, along with my address. She thanked me profusely and assured me that the loan would be repaid. I had my doubts.

At 7 the next morning, she called. She was again at the local Starbucks and wanted to repay the loan.

I joined her. “I was glad to be helpful,” I said. “I guess things worked out with your boyfriend.”

“Not really,” she replied. “We actually broke up yesterday afternoon, but before I left him, I locked up my wallet, cash and credit cards at his apartment so that I could do that exercise last night.”

“What exercise was that?” I asked.

“Oh, the one in which I was trying to understand what it was like to be Blanche DuBois and rely on the kindness of strangers.”

This would only happen in New York City.

Oh man, I love that town!