CENTRAL PARK ZOO

Recently I have started writing a few vignettes


It was a Sunday, and we had just been to the Zoo. When we came out it was suddenly dusk; what film directors call magic time. Alex was in charge of Mace and me for the afternoon, and we’d had hot dogs and ice cream earlier, but this didn’t stop me from lobbying for a soda when I saw the Sabrett’s cart. Mace wanted candy. We had eaten enough junk food said Alex, and he would be in big trouble with our mother if we’d ruined our appetites.
Just then two black kids who looked a few years older than me walked up and said to Alex, ‘Yo mister, can you spare a quarter?’ The kid who asked had a sneering smile on his face and a small afro, with a red and green pick sticking out of the back. His green T-shirt said Kung Fu Fighter in Olde English style lettering. His partner was wearing a brand new jean jacket, pressed khakis and a pair of maroon suede Pumas with black laces.
Alex brushed past them saying, ‘No, sorry guys’ and the kid with the Pumas said,‘What’s up with that?’ Then the kid with the afro pick said, ‘Yeah mister, what’s up with that?’ I turned to Alex shyly and said, ‘Why don’t you give them a quarter?’ But Alex just kept walking and tugging Mace along with him by the hood of his sweatshirt, so I had no choice but to follow. Looking back I saw the two kids make faces at us and then move on to some other people. I turned the phrase over in my mind a few times, ‘What’s up with that?’ It was like magic.
I couldn’t understand why Alex, a lawyer, couldn’t give them a quarter when they were clearly poorer than him.
‘You can’t just go around giving money to everybody who asks you for a quarter…nobody gets a free lunch’. He said.
We came up the steps in front of the Armory, and I was trying to understand the part about the free lunch when suddenly Alex became Alex again and said, ‘Let’s stage a fight, ok guys?’ I started to say that nobody had asked him for lunch, and it was only a lousy quarter they wanted, when he started the old routine again. ‘C’mon guys, you know what to do…Jimmy, you and Mace start fighting and I’ll break it up…wait until we get in front of that lady first…’
And it was funny. Mace ran ahead saying, ‘He’s bigger than me…lay off’ and I pushed him into the lady, and then we were both pushing and had each other by our sweatshirts, when Alex jumped in and said, ‘OK now boys, break it up! I’m sorry ma’am…I don’t know what to do with them, they’re like cats and dogs’. The lady had full red lips and was very pretty; she wore black sun glasses and little Chinese slippers. She put her hand on Mace’s head and said, ‘You boys are brothers aren’t you? You shouldn’t be fighting, now should you?’ She looked at Alex and smiled. I said, ‘Well he started it! ’And I gave Mace a shove, and then she said ‘Well you’re his big brother, so you should set the example’. Alex said ‘I’m sorry to bother you, I don’t know what to do with them anymore’ and then he started scolding us as we walked away.
Then we were running up Fifth Avenue along the park and laughing, and we didn’t stop until we got to the big steps in front of the Met. Alex said ‘C’mon now let’s get across the park before it gets dark’ and we started hustling our way across to his place on Central park West.