New York in June

I leave my stuffy smoking room at the Renaissance hotel (the only descent room available in New York under 600 bucks per night) and walk out onto the Times Square, which is already packed with tourists, and maneuver between numerous taxicabs towards Avenue of the Americas. 


The sun is beating through my sunglasses as I blindly make my way through the crowd of businessmen clad in smart black pinstriped suits talking or frantically typing on their phones.  A sea of stylish briefcases, designer purses, sunglasses, ties and shoes floods out surrounding architecture, mixing the air with the sweet smell of pastries, warm bus exhaust and loud taxi horns.  


Ah the Big Apple, clad in gray high scrapers  perversely covered with colorful billboards, flyers and giant advertisements, vast vestibules with strenuous security and metal detectors, gold leafed elevators, receptionists clad in a stylish dresses and matching Jimmy Choos, colorful art deco chairs,  attorneys, bankers, Oliver Peoples spectacles, cream colored business cards with raised lettering - all of this gives me a feeling of deja vu a la American Psycho.

To ward off boredom, I e-mail friends on my blackberry and make lunch plans with one of my transplanted New Yorker buddies.  Leaving skyscrapers behind, I track towards the Rockefeller Center, thinking about how much I miss walking in the big city.  I meet my friend among the group of tourists taking pictures of the fountains. Despite his protests, I make him sit on the bench in front of the fountains and snap my own picture.

We stop to look at the menus of two outdoorsy restaurants and decide to proceed downstairs to the hopping Rink Bar. We pick a small table under a shady umbrella right in front of the waterfall and order ice teas, vegetarian wrap and crab cakes. 


I watch New Yorkers as they eat their food. Other tourists look at me and mistake me for a native New Yorker. One woman even asks me where I bought my pinstriped suit. I tell her. She sighs "Oh!"

I breathe in the dry New York air and relax in a lounge chair, lulled by the sound of the waterfall. I cannot get enough of sitting outside and catching up with my friend and stay too long. I then run back to the Avenue of the Americas and walk into the deposition late, with my jacket slung across my shoulder and slight perspiration on my forehead. New York lawyers do not approve.  They raise their eyebrows. I smile and apologize. Then smile again.

Sitting at the long pinewood conference table, surrounded by stuffy lawyers rotating in thier comfy contemporary leather chairs, I start thinking about how much I enjoy visiting New York, taking in its grungy air, loud noise, old buildings, and stylish but smile-less people, and wonder if I could live here.

No, I could not. I am too spoiled by comfortable Houston living, cruising around in my air conditioned SUV right up to my air conditioned office building and house, being able to enroll my child in an affordable private school, swimming with her in my own private pool and relaxing in our huge backyard right in the heart of the city, just minutes away from work, shopping, restaurants, parents, friends. 

No, I definitely could not trade my lifestyle for busy New York. Yet, I love taking a small bite of the Big Apple without the inconvenience of actually living here.