I was walking Ray in the rain this morning.

As I came around the corner of 59th and Third I noticed a beautiful young girl on crutches standing under an eave. She had a broken foot or something, nothing permanent.

I looked at her and put my bottom lip out as if to say “Awww, you poor thing”

She half laughed and said “And do you believe I can’t even get a fuckin’ cab?”

I laughed with her and went on my way.

It wasn’t until I got upstairs that I realized what an insensitive shit I was.

Why didn’t I get her a cab?

She was even standing on the wrong side of the street to hail one because that was a ‘right turn only’ lane. She’d be waiting there for a long time.

I gave a great deal of thought to this whole incident.

That was a true New York story because New Yorkers make short extremely close contact with strangers and then go back to their own lives. So I was behaving true to form.

Or I would have if what I wrote above was exactly true.

In fact I was only about 20 feet past her when I asked myself why I hadn’t offered to get her a cab and I just shrugged and said to myself

“Who am I Mother Teresa? It’s pouring’ out here. Let’er get her own fuckin’ cab”