Today the most amazing thing happened. Amazing!
But it starts with yesterday...
I.
First thing in the morning I went all the way up to 103rd St & 5th Avenue to the Museum of the City of New York, armed with a signed, blank company check and $200 petty cash, all tucked neatly into a white 1-inch binder also containing some blank envelopes, stamps, and a bunch of photocopied pictures.
For the last week I've been doing some work for this documentary about Greek immigration to the U.S. My boss is currently in Greece finishing the edit for the film, so I am her point-woman in New York, wrapping up all the last minute rights and clearances for photographs and music and things like that. I met with her last Wednesday to go over all the details before she left -- I literally saw her into her cab to the airport -- and she left me with that white 1-inch binder and all its essential goodies.
My task on this lovely Monday was to pick up two photo reproductions that the museum made for us, give the check, with the appropriate amount filled in, to Margueurite, the apparently difficult but nice woman in the rights and reproductions department there, and then FedEx the photos to my boss, in Greece, so she could cut them into the film right away. Since the Museum of the City of New York (wouldn't the New York City Museum have been easier?) is closed to the public on Mondays, I called Marguerite to ask how to get inside. But she informed me that:
"The photographs won't be ready until the afternoon, dear. And then I'll have to put labels on them."
Oh yes, labels.
She said she would call me when they were ready but that it would be around 3pm. So it was my fault for assuming that pickup on Monday meant Monday morning, but it was only about 10AM, and I didn't want to wait around all day so I took the 6 train homeward. Ordinarily I would switch to the F at Bleecker Street, but by the time we got to Union Square I felt an irresistible urge to use "the facilities," as my husband would say. So I got off the subway, clutching my white 1-inch binder, and ran into Whole Foods to use their "For Customers Only" bathroom.
[Though I did not buy anything on that particular trip, I have bought things at Whole Foods in the past and I plan to do so in the future, so I think I qualify as a customer. And I think a decent manager would agree, don't you?]
After leaving Whole Foods, I didn't feel like going right home, so I wandered around shopping: Shoe Mania was having a sale so I looked around there for a while, but nothing called out to me; I strolled through the outdoor holiday market set up at Union Square and contemplated getting some hot apple cider and a ginger bread cookie, but didn't, and then thought about buying a gorgeous, fleece-lined (so as not to itch), wool Nepalese hooded sweater for my 3-year-old niece, but didn't. Then I started to walk home, but passing Trader Joe's I decided to step in, and I put my white 1-inch binder in the shopping basket, feeling so relieved to not be clutching it against my side as I'd been doing for the last few hours. To my basket I added some cereal, granola bars (why are they so much cheaper at Trader Joe's?), mozarella cheese, apples, and salad vegetables, and as I was checking out. I pulled my white 1-inch binder out of the basket and said, "That's mine," as if the cashier was going to get confused and ring it up along with my organic granola bars and bagged arugula.
I was now carrying a sizable bag of groceries and a sizable binder, plus a perishable dairy product, so I was on the fence about walking home. Instead I started walking the route of the M14 bus and caught it around 2nd Avenue, riding it to my stop, my parcels in the seat next to me. Before heading to my apartment I stopped in the 99 cent store on the corner. Then I settled in at home and eventually got back to work.
About 2:30 in the afternoon Marguerite called me. The photograph package would be ready and labeled and waiting at the museum's service entrace for me in about an hour. "Great, and I have a check for you," I said.
II.
But hanging up the phone I started thinking, wait a minute, where is that white 1-inch binder? With the check in it? I remembered putting the groceries away but couldn't recall doing anything in particular with that binder. I thought about where I might have put it and checked all those spots. Nothing. I even looked in the refrigerator, freezer and kitchen cabinets in case I had accidentally put the white 1-inch binder in with the groceries (don't laugh I saw it on an episode of The Cosby Show). Then I had a flash: The 99 cent store! It must be there.
I ran down and asked if they'd found a white 1-inch binder. No. I searched around by the rice cakes and the counter. It was nowhere to be found. Part of me thought perhaps the cashier had found the money inside it and didn't want to give it back. But that seemed doubtful considering how busy that store is. She wouldn't have had time to look that closely. The money was in an unmarked envelope amongst other unmarked envelopes.
I went back home and ransacked my apartment again. It obviously wasn't there. I called Trader Joe's. They hadn't found it either, and anyway, I distinctly remembered carrying the binder out of there. That left one other possbile location of loss:
THE NEW YORK CITY BUS....
FF*****&&&&&KKKKKK!!!!
If I could think of the worst place to lose something in New York, besides the sidewalk, it would be on public transportation. All those people, near anonymity, it could be picked uo by anyone, or just overlooked and forgotten.
In desperation, I waited for the M14A bus, hoping that miraculously it would be the same bus I had taken and the driver would have it. The bus stopped and the driver, a friendly looking, middle-aged man with a bushy mustache, opened the door, but I had no idea if it was the same one, how often does one actually look at the bus driver? I told him what happened, asking what the protocol was in such a situation. He didn't have my white 1-inch binder, but offered, "Well, you could ride to the end of the line with me and see if anyone turned it in." That wasn't an option, and I must have looked pitiful, becaude he tried to be reassuring. "If they turned it in, it should be in the lost and found tomorrow. And they usually turn it in... 100% they turn it in. Don't give up!"
Even though they were just words, they made me feel a little better.
But I still wasn't going to get that binder, or that check, back until the next day, if at all, and I had to pick up those photographs. So I went uptown and picked them up and just didn't leave the check with the security guard as I was supposed to do. And I put out my own money for the $45 FedEx, hoping I would be able to reimburse myself. When I got home I sent Marguerite a quick email saying thanking her for the photographs and claoming that I had stupidly "forgotten" to bring the check but would put it in the mail tomorrow, hoping that I would, and prepared to send a check of my own if necessary.
I went to bed forlorn, but not without the spark of hope that the bus driver had given me.
III.
This morning I woke up and called the MTA's Lost and Found. 212-712-4500. Busy. I called again. Busy. I called again. Busy.
I waited a while. I called again. Busy.
I missed a call on my cell phone. Checked my message. Margeurite. Angry. "Rebecca, you picked up the photographs but you didn't leave the check as we discussed?!?!"
I called right back. "I'm sorry it was so stupid of me, I forgot the check, I sent you an email." She had just gotten my email. "So you'll send it quickly in the mail?" "Yes, right away."
Shit. I called the Lost and Found again. This time it actually rang!
"Lost and Found."
"Yes, I lost a white 1-inch binder on the M14A. I'm wondering if it has been found?"
"Call the West Side Bust Depot, 212-675-7353."
"Thanks." Click.
I called the number. "West Side Bust Depot."
"Yes, I lost something on the M14A bus, a white 1-inch binder?"
"Hmm, hold on, let me see..." Holding, holding. "What's in it?"
"Some photocopies of pictures, and some blank envelopes."
"Hmm, hold on... uh, yeah, yeah, we've got it."
You've got it?
HALLELUJAH! HALLELUJAH! HALLELUHAH, HALLELUJAH, HALLEY-LUJA!!!!!
I am the luckiest girl in the world. The luckiest.
"Oh my God, you've saved my life," I said.
"You can come pick it up. We're on W. 40th St, between 11th and 12th Avenue. Only building on the block, you can't miss it."
"Great, thank you so much, you've saved my life," I couldn't help saying again, hyperbolic though it was.
"Ok," he replied, nonchalantly, as though he was in the business of saving lives regularly. Maybe he is.
And so I set off for the West Side Bus Depot. It's a trek along 40th Street from the closest subway, several avenue blocks of massive, old buildings and ugly, industrial lots filled with buses and trucks, and stretches of highway exit ramps. Approaching the corner of 11th Avenue, I knew I was in the right place because there were several men in bus driver attire, a uniform I never quite realized consists of a crisp dress shirt, jacket and tie, and of course a dark cap. They're very professional looking, those NYC bus drivers.
Inside the depot was like a big, dark parking lot. I knocked on the door of the security booth and the guard let me in. He, too, was clad in dress shirt and tie, with the addition of an orange security vest, I guess so he could be easily seen by drivers in the dark? I explained my business, and he got up to escort me to the Lost and Found, putting on the jacket that hung on the back of his chair. I must have given him a strange look because he said, "I don't need the jacket to escort you, I'm just a bit chilly."
He took me a few doors down and lead me through a hallway with a seventies, bureaucratic office feel, like the DMV, and through a door, and suddenly before me lay what I can only describe as a bus driver's paradise! Turns out the depot is not only for buses but for drivers, too. It make sense, of course, they need somewhere to hang out on breaks, but it never occurred to me that such a place would exist, or that I would get to see it! There was a snack bar/cafe with long tables laid out school-cafeteria style. Uniformed drivers sat around drinking coffees and playing cards, just shooting the shit, and playing pool on the two (two!) pool tables that sat behind the cafeteria. It was delightful!
I didn't have much time to survey the place, though, because the security guard lead me straight past all of this driverly fun, directly to the back of the room and the Lost and Found, where the man who had saved my life on the phone had my white 1-inch binder waiting for me. "You know there's some blank checks in there, too," he said. To which I replied, "I know!" He didn't mention the cash, though. He made me sign a claim ticket, and handed me my beautiful, shiny, white 1-inch binder. I held it to my breast with glee, and had to restrain myself from kissing it.
"All good?" the security guard asked as he hurried me out of the secret drivers' den, but not before I glimpsed what looked to be a TV lounge for drivers to the left of the Lost and Found station. Sweet. I rifled through the binder, making sure the check and the cash were still there. Miraculously, oh so miraculously, they were! Saying goodbye to the security guard, and the dark bus depot, I headed out into the sunshine, the light glinting off of my sweet, wonderful, white 1-inch binder.
I made sure to hold it tightly all the way home.
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