Black Wallet in the Big Apple

Yellow eyes are glowing like the neon lights…
Yellow eyes, the spotlights of the city lights
I am behind you, I’ll always find you / I am the tiger
ABBA

I had a black tri-fold leather wallet in the mid 1980’s. It was functional, and it served well for four or five years. Among other wallets I have owned, I remember this one because of two misadventures in New York City. My wallet was the star. I was only a supporting actor in the drama.

I grew up in the northeast U.S. and I know New York to a certain degree. I had friends who lived there and I visited them several times a year while in my late teens and twenties. I also passed through NYC en route to Boston and other points abroad. Back then, I thought the City was cool. I liked the urban over-stimulation it offered along with the depravity and chaos it promised at every turn. This was before Giuliani cleaned up the place. It really was a freakshow around Port Authority and 42nd St in those days. Like most young people bedazzled by Babylon, I had my head up my ass and didn’t know it.

I was visiting my aunt in Connecticut for Christmas vacation from my college out west. For some reason, I had traveler’s checks but no cash on me, this being 1982, and Visa™ not as ubiquitous as today. My plane had arrived in New York around five o’clock pm. I had taken the subway into Manhattan from La Guardia airport and I planned on taking the Amtrak train from Penn Station to New London later that night. As it turned out, the next train would not leave for Connecticut until almost midnight. I purchased my ticket and paid for a locker where I stashed the ticket with my duffel bag and backpack. I could now check out the city by night for a few hours. The subway brought me to Port Authority station, near Times Square. It was 7:30 at night, it was dark, I was hungry and had nothing to do until about 11:00. I decided to try to buy food with a traveler’s check. I wanted New York street food: pizza, or falafel, or Greek, but no place would accept the checks. Finally, I found a convenience store that would cash one for me with a purchase. I bought a beer and went on my hungry way with less than 20 dollars cash in the wallet. By now it was about 8:30. It was a weeknight; the streets were not super-crowded. I was looking for a place to grab some food and also just strolling. I turned down a street off of 8th Avenue. The block in front of me was dark with less pedestrians and less light. It may have been 45th or 46th Street, I don’t recall. No food there. I turned to go back to the lights of 8th Ave. when I passed a young woman in a dark entry way who spoke to me:

What’s up honey, you looking for company? Want a date tonight?

Nah, I murmured as I hurried away from her toward a Greek food place I had just seen. I didn’t pay anymore mind to her, I was hungry and fixated on a gyro or souvlaki.

It was cold but not icy deep-winter-cold. I reached the joint and bought a souvlaki pita. I was buzzed from the beer on an empty stomach and very hungry. I wolfed down the souvlaki as I wandered aimlessly north on 8th Avenue once again. I turned down a dark side street, finishing my sandwich. Still slightly intoxicated and thinking of ordering one more gyro, I heard the clatter of small footsteps behind me, echoing in the empty street off of 8th Ave. It was the same black woman I had passed earlier, walking quickly towards me. She was looking right at me.

Hey baby I seen you over there before. Let’s go on a date. Where you from? How’s that sandwich?

She was young, smiling, attractive . . . I told her:

Sorry no time to go on a date, I have to catch a train soon.

What you mean soon? How soon?

She got very close and began to touch my arms lightly. She was flirty and her smile was gleaming in the cold night shadows.

Soon—like in three hours I have to leave New York.

She began talking very fast and touching my collar. We got time, baby. We can go to a peep show. We can do a quick date—don’t you want to go out with me tonight?

Suddenly she was caressing my midsection and subtly pushing me toward the wall from the sidewalk.

Come on let’s go out. Let’s go to a peepshow.

My mind was starting to race and she was exciting me, pushing me against the wall with her hips. My thoughts were conflicted. After all, I DID have two hours to kill in the city and she was offering to . . . and—no. No. Bad idea. Well, wait, why not? It would be a cool urban experience, a real New York thing to do, plus I’m horny and she’s making me more horny. We could . . . but where? How? No. NO. I need to be firm and get out of here. This is not a safe situation. What am I thinking?

She was stroking my thighs and murmuring into my collar by now. I was tempted. But the situation was clear. I was alone with a whore on an abandoned street, I had to catch a train at 11:30 and this was not the time to mess around. I pulled her hands off me and stepped away. The whole exchange had been only about six or seven minutes. Suddenly I thought of my wallet. I reached for it frantically in my pocket. It was gone. She got a weird look in her eyes, backed off quickly and began to walk away toward some lights as I searched my pockets. She knew I knew.

My wallet! I yelled.

Now she really walked away, gaining speed. I ran after her raising my voice: I know you took my wallet. Come on. You have it. Just give it back.

You crazy. I don’t have no wallet. Get away from me she said, almost running from me now.

Listen, I KNOW you stole my wallet while you had me against the wall. There is only like ten bucks in there, you can HAVE that—just give me the wallet. I need my driver license and my ID’s—my student card . . . come on.

You better get away from me, she snarled as I began patting her down, feeling on her body for my wallet, walking fast the whole time and periodically trying to cut in front to block her progress. Get your hands off of me. You crazy, she growled.

She turned into dimly-lit hotel lobby, with me in hot pursuit. Due to the beer along with the adrenaline, a sort of desperate aggression had kicked in. There were a lot of elderly pensioners sprawled out in the lobby on sofa and chairs. They looked like the barely living dead to me. I called to them:

Help me! This bitch just stole my wallet! She’s got it on her ! Help me, I know she has it. Is there a security guard here?

Barely a ripple in response. I remember a few wispy geriatric glances and some medicated murmurs. Now she was getting into the elevator. I followed, crowding in as the door closed on us. I harangued her all the way to the second floor, patting her down, trying to pull back her jacket to find my wallet.

Now you gonna be in trouble. Better get out of here. You crazy. You better leave me alone, she threatened as the elevator groaned to a halt.

The doors slid open to a battered flop-house hallway with a wooden railing on one side. A ray of sudden clarity illuminated my agitated mind. I remembered hearing in the news recently about some college kids murdered in New York City trying to buy drugs, middle-class students who got into a bad situation, just like I was in right now. I began to re-assess. As this thought raced through my mind, she reached a door at the end of the hall, about thirty feet away from the elevator. The door of the room opened.

I saw the silhouette of a tall male figure outlined in the frame of the entry. There was another man near him. In my mind’s eye he had some sort of bulky coat on, maybe a hat. He fixed a pimp-stare on me.

Sugar, is he LAYIN’ a HAND on you?  his voice boomed forth from the threshold. Time stalled suddenly to a death-crawl.

In that same moment I realized the only sane plan was to return to the street, away from this hall, away from this predatory woman and her protector. I glimpsed a door that looked like an exit. I calmly walked to it. As I turned my back to the man at the end of the hall, I felt very exposed, but I kept my eyes on the door ahead of me, as if by ignoring the menace behind me I could gain protection. I was not a believer at that time. Had I been, I would have prayed hard. Then again, had I been a believer I probably would never have gotten into the situation to begin with. I remember hoping no one would decide to shoot me. I reached the door and (yes!) it opened. Like an automaton I descended back down to the lobby of geriatric stupor, through the dingy doors and onto the chilly night street.

As the cold outside air hit me, so did a wave of delirious elation. The only things lost were a few ID cards and less than fifteen dollars. My train ticket had been purchased earlier and it was safe with my bag in a locker at Penn Station. The rest of the traveler’s checks were safe in my other pocket. I had not lost my life. No one had harmed me. I had walked out of a menacing situation on the second floor of an unknown hotel in mid-Manhattan at 10:30 pm and still had time to catch the train to the warmth and security of my aunt’s house. I felt like leaping for joy and singing in the street. I had regained a viable perspective. I turned away from the hotel and walked purposefully downtown to Penn Station filled with ridiculous Christmas joy.

 

Epilogue:
Three months later, at my university in Colorado, I received a small package in the mail. It was from the U.S. Postal Service. I opened it and out tumbled my black wallet, lost near 8th Avenue in New York that night of the previous December. There was a note with it, stating that it had been left in a postal box very near my misadventure with the streetwalker. All of my I.D.s were there, in fact everything was in the wallet except the less than twenty dollars cash. When I related this tale to my friend Manuel later on, he laughed at me as only a Bronx Dominican can:

Damn, you fell for the oldest trick of all. Everyone in New York knows not to let a streetwalker touch you and get you all excited because they’re only after your wallet when they start feeling you up. She knew you’d be easy, man. Happens all the time.

 

PART II:  Wallet on Broadway

Celestina: La llorona

Four years in Arizona yielded many gems,
including Fool’s Gold and Apache Tears.

 

I met Tina Blackhorse in very intense Southwestern circumstances. Her story reveals layers of Arizona drama, like the eroded arroyos and canyons of Gila County that surrounded my dwelling in the copper town of Globe. I lived there for four years, after having fallen in love with the place while on a hitchhike through the Western U.S. It is a town of steep hills cut by deep gorges near the San Carlos Apache reservation. Working night-shift at a Circle K convenience store there, I got to know many of the locals by name and by face. A young man named Calvin Blackhorse used to come into the store early most mornings to fill up on gas and get coffee. He may have worked at the copper mine, I’m not sure. He was always polite and reserved. I learned his name from asking to see his license on the few rare occasions he bought some whiskey. I then realized he lived in an apartment several doors down from mine, on the same ridge overlooking rocky riverbeds with a view of the Pinal Mountains beyond the cypress-studded cemetery. Globe, AZ is a town that maintains traces of its wild-west character, lurking just below the dusty surface. Anglo, Mexican and Apache inhabitants live together and mix in the round of daily American life, yet maintain distinct cultures, customs and physiognomies. I learned to love them all—and they haunt me still.


Raven hair and ruby lips, sparks fly from her finger tips
Echoed voices in the night / She’s a restless spirit on an endless flight
EAGLES

The night I met her, I thought she was a manifestation of La llorona, wailing ghost of an Indian woman searching for her lost children who inhabits the realms of legend from the American West all the way to Tierra del Fuego. The same mists which shroud the origins of la llorona filled the streets that night. Having ended my day-shift in the store at 10 p.m, I returned to my apartment alone. I had listened to the radio until almost midnight. Glancing outside I noticed a mist beginning to blanket the streets, and I was struck by a sense of silence and isolation. It was weird, in the dry desert-foothills climate of that Arizona town, such a thick vapor obscuring the night streets. It was eerie. I decided to turn in for the night. As I extinguished the lights, I thought I heard a sound from somewhere down the street. The glow of the streetlamps was diffused by the fog when I opened the window to take a look outside. I still thought I was hearing things, but there was no mistaking it: a sorrowful sobbing wail was coming from the apartment row down the street. I stepped out the apartment door. Fright raised hackles on my neck as the wailing drew nearer:

My baby . . . he took my baby—

This was interspersed with desperate sobbing. A figure began to materialize from the mist in the dim yellow penumbra of the nearest streetlamp. There was no one else anywhere; as if the world had died. It was just me and this wailing apparition in the misty night. She was leaning against the stucco wall, coming my direction: a slender young woman with long black hair. She was beautiful in a drunken chaotic way, but full of crisis.

He took my baby away, I want my baby . . .

I recalled legends of the Indian woman eternally searching nocturnal riverbeds for the souls of her murdered children . . . but this was a real person, no ghost. I had to get a grip on my terrified mind. I walked closer to her and saw she was staggering and supporting herself on the wall. I asked: Are you OK ? Can I help you?

Help me, help me, he took my baby . . .

Who took your baby? I responded, but she stopped making sense and hesitated. I inquired if she lived nearby and she said yes, indicating a few rows of houses away. I suggested we return there and asked if she needed me to call the police for her.

Yes, call the police for me I want my baby back, she murmured.

We entered in the door of the apartment. The small dining table was full of empty Boone’s Farm wine bottles, maybe four or five. There were some baby supplies scattered around. I was realizing I had walked into a volatile situation trying to help this ghostly woman. I asked who had taken the child and she sobbed out: Calvin Blackhorse, his father. I recognized this as the name of the young man who regularly stopped by the convenience store on his way to work. I made the call to Globe police and described the situation with the distraught young mother whose name I still had not learned. While on the phone to the police station they inquired who she was. By now she was slouched on the sofa, but conscious enough to answer me with her name: Celestina Blackhorse. They asked me what had occurred and said they would be over soon.

I was afraid her husband/baby’s father might walk in at any moment and wonder what I was doing in his apartment with his intoxicated young wife. We waited a few seconds when suddenly, silently, Calvin appeared at the door. I sensed the night could go very wrong from here. He did not seem angry however, but calm.
He looked at me and asked: Did you call the police?

Yes, I stuttered, but she asked me to . . . I was at home and I heard her crying in the street—

It’s OK, he said. She’s been drinking a lot tonight.

He stepped out and returned instantly with a sleeping infant strapped into a car-seat. He carefully placed the child in the center of the small living room and slipped out into the night. I heard a car start and leave. After another few minutes the police cruiser pulled up. They asked for my version of events and whether I wanted to sign a statement, but since I declined they said I could go home so I departed.

PART 2: Months after the apparition of La llorona in the mist, my manager at Circle K store #884 introduced us to a new worker. I was told that I would do several afternoon swing shifts with her as she learned the duties of the job. My new co-worker was Tina Blackhorse. She was neither wailing nor intoxicated. She was now my coworker. I had the chance to get to know her better during several 8-hour shifts. She liked old-school reggae as I did, and I lent her some of my cassettes. She told me about her baby boy, her pride and joy, and I realized this was the infant deposited on the living-room floor in his car-seat many months before on that crazy night. She was lively and quick-minded, but there was also a nervous energy about her. She could verge on being controlling in conversations. She seemed distracted or tuned into some strange frequency. I felt that she would not let me know her beyond a certain point.

On a certain day I was alone during an afternoon shift and there was a sudden rush of customers lined up to cash out. One goes into a sort of trance in such moments, and I was on automatic pilot as I rung up transaction after transaction waiting for the line to diminish. In the midst of the crowd of customers, Tina entered the store, together with a younger guy who looked Apache. She began to chat with me and joke around near the register as I rung up customers. During a momentary lull, she suddenly said Come back here I want to give you the tape you lent me. Do you have any more ? As she said this she was half-pushing me behind the partition that separated the manager’s desk and staff area from the cashiers’ counter. I was a bit off put by her strange smile and restlessness. Suddenly she put her arms around me and smiling said Give me a hug. There were people lining up again just beyond my register. The whole scene was so bizarre. I wriggled out of her clinging arms as I told her: hey Tina I’m not comfortable with this and I have to get back to the customers but thanks for the returning the music tape. Something was off but I could not be sure what. I had to return to the register to keep ringing up customers.

After the customer rush died down, an older lady who had just paid said to me:

That young Apache woman talking to you at the register— did you know she was signaling with her hands to that guy she was with and he walked right out the door with two cases of beer while you were ringing up customers?

No I was was not aware of it, I answered. She is actually a co-worker at this store but she was acting a bit strange . . .

Well, he walked out the door with the beer after she signaled to him like this: (the woman gestured, pointing frenetically behind her back).

I thanked her and decided to tell the manager who recommended I contact the police. When Officer J. arrived, he asked how it had happened. He told me the cops knew who she was from previous dramas. He asked to see the security footage—so I showed him the monitor camera control panel. He came back to the register a few minutes later saying: Come take a look at this. It’s all on the video.

The angle of the camera was perfect. Due to the protective barrier between the cash register and the counter, I had not been able to see from Tina’s chest down, only her shoulders and face as she chatted with me during the customer cash-out line. But on the film she could be seen pointing furiously below her waist toward the door. Her companion sauntered through the camera frame not once, but twice, each time with a 24-back of Budweiser. The theft of the beer happened just before she detained me briefly behind the staff area partition.

Officer J. told me: I know exactly where she and her friends party. I’ll be there in 15 minutes to question her.

The next time I saw Tina she was in the back of a police car in the Circle K parking area. Through the dark glass I could see a pained expression on her face.

PART 3: Tina, needless to say, did not resume her job at the convenience store and I lost touch with her. I decided to enroll in a computer class at the local community college. The small campus was built right next to the ruins of a Salado Indian town from the 1300s, partially restored, with walls and several large houses built of stone visible from the windows of the classroom. It is a beautiful jewel of a campus with fish pools and Southwest flora adorning the lawns.

One day, several months later, finishing an assignment at the computer lab after class, I saw Tina in the hallway. I greeted her. I told her I had missed her and had wondered what happened after her criminal misadventure at the store. She was candid with me:

I was really out of control then, to be honest, I was doing a lot of cocaine and partying too much. But Calvin and I are doing marriage counseling and I want to get back to the Christian life . . . we are going to church, trying to live for God. I am a different person than I was then. I was really making a lot of bad decisions and messing up my life for a while there . . .

I told her she looked good, a lot calmer, that I was glad for her. I invited her to visit my church and she invited me to hers. I went. This story has a happy ending. But it gets better. Remember, this is a real tale of the American West; the only thing I have altered are the names of the protagonists.

While writing this, I tracked her down on Social Media and found out she is now an avid runner. She trains and runs in road-races in and around Arizona.  She looks as lovely as always. She has a beautiful family. Her son, the one placed on the floor the night of La Llorona, is now a strong young man in his twenties, quite a bit taller than his mother.

I look forward to catching up on life that day in Heaven when I find Celestina Blackhorse again. I can never forget her name. She is my sister in Christ.