I wanted to ride this afternoon, but I wasn’t feeling adventurous. Perhaps it has to do with the year ending: Starting new journeys seems more appropriate for a new year.
So I rode to the Flushing Bay Promenade, recently renamed the Malcolm X Promenade. He lived in nearby East Elmhurst, along with other luminaries like Louis Armstrong, Dizzy Gillespie and Ella Fitzgerald.
The ride is pleasant enough, sort of like comfort food for me and my bikes. I rode up and down the promenade a few times, in part to get into a physical and mental “groove,” but also because of two men.
Short and squat but broad-shouldered and thick-fingered, they looked like the sort of Central American immigrants who wait at strategic but discreet intersections in residential neighborhoods where contractors, landscapers and other small business people hire people like them as day laborers.
Such people work and sleep hard, wherever they can. So it’s unusual to see men like them dozing on park benches.
But were they sleeping ?
Their faces, which probably would have been colored like terra cota or the earth from which they came, instead looked as if they’d been worn to reflect the gray sky and water. One man’s hand drooped in front of him, his fingers frozen in a grip of something no longer there.
The other man’s head was cocked to his side, as if he stopped himself from resting it on the other man’s shoulders—or a pillow he realized wasn’t there.
A mobile phone propped between them played bouncy conga drum and stringed music. But it could just as well have emitted “elevator music,” for all of the effect it had on them.
Finally, when I rode by them for the sixth time, I think, the man with the cocked head stirred.
“¿Estás bien?” I shouted. He nodded.
“¿Necesitas algo?” He moved his head slowly from side to side.
“¿Estás seguro?” Another nod.
“OK. Feliz año nuevo.” Even if they’re OK, I hope the path ahead is easier and clearer for them in the coming year.
At least the ride back was, for me.
