There's a reason I break out into hives when I think about going into Manhattan, and today was not remotely an exception. It was an auspicious enough beginning. It was 1 p.m., and I had Lily’s babysitter until 4:45. I pulled out not one but two working MetroCards when I arrived at the turnstile. The Q train was pulling into the station as my foot hit the platform. It wasn’t raining anymore when I emerged at Union Square.
The gaiety stops there. Last month I spent about three… no, really it was closer to two million dollars at a store whose name shall remain unspoken. Let's call it Barney's Coop. I had decided to return a dress I must have been on crack to think I was ever going to wear with a 13-month-old baby, and since it was a few days past the requisite 30 days for a full refund, one day last week I had politely (and mistakenly) called the Wooster Street store and spoken to a fine young gentleman named Zach (or perhaps Zack, or Zak, or maybe even Zaq), who told me that it wasn't a problem, they would handle the return for me and credit my card at full price.
Since I had another errand in Chelsea, afterward I went over to the 18th Street Barney’s to make my return and leave my previously purchased jeans to be altered. It is now two o’clock. Here I meet with snotty Girl Cashier. I smile and say hopefully, I spoke to someone named Zach at the Wooster Street store. Girl Cashier, with no apparent irony, informs me that this is the EIGHTEENTH STREET store, as though I'd made a wrong turn at Houston Street. I stare at her. We are at an impasse. Boy Cashier, who is standing next to her, picks up the phone and says he will gladly call and straighten it out.
Naturally, as the thin outer layer of cashmere has already started to fray and expose the polyester double-knit, there is no Zach. Never heard of him. Reddening and pretending not to notice the smirk on Girl Cashier's face, I say well, it was a short, one-syllable name. What other men work there? Let's see, Boy Cashier says, Ronald, Jamone, Henderson...
He might as well have shouted, Rumpelstiltskin! Triumphant Girl Cashier offers to refund the sale price of the dress (the difference would have been a fine initial investment for Lily's college fund), but suggests I go to the Wooster Street store instead to talk to a manager. So I pack away the dress and ask for the tailor. Ed the tailor. Ed the tailor is on break. Come back at four.
I give them my best withering glance-over-the-shoulder (lifted directly from Parisian shopgirls) and stalk out of the store. It is raining. It is two-thirty. I catch a C train fairly quickly to Spring Street and walk over to Wooster. At the register I ask if someone named Zach works there. The sympathetic young woman says, Were you just at 18th Street? and directs me to a manager. My reputation precedes me. The manager is over me before I even open my mouth. She says she can’t possibly refund the full amount on a dress I bought in September. End of October, I say. She never once looks at me. Do you have your receipt?
She ends up giving me a store credit for the full eighty thousand, for which I am grateful. Then I go downstairs to find the tailor. The tailor looks past me and says, "Are the clothes clean?" Well, actually... I explain to her that the problem is that the jeans fit when they've been washed, then the butt hangs down around my knees after I've worn them for an hour. She tells me without hesitation to wash them and come back. But, I say, if I wash them and come back, they'll fit and you won't be able to see where they sag. She then launches earnestly into a story about breathing the air from dirty clothes and perhaps getting sick little by little, and she hopes I will understand. I say I've been wearing the damned jeans for two hours, just enough time to get to the damned store, and furthermore the incubation period for Bubonic Plague is more like three hours.
On the C train home, it’s crowded, and two men with boobs are standing over my seat, arguing with a woman (also with boobs) about who jostled whom. Then the train stops. There's an announcement about a sick passenger. The trains into Brooklyn are delayed. The two men with boobs stop arguing. I ask the woman on my right for the time. It’s ten after four. It is quiet. I breathe.
LET THEE NOT BE LED ASTRAY BY FALSE PROPHETS! CHRISTIANS! MUSLIMS! JEWS! DO YOU HAVE THE TRUTH? I THINK NOT! The eye-rolling is audible. This guy came out of nowhere. My fellow passengers are cross. The grandmotherly woman on my left starts swearing.
I make it home with five minutes to spare and my sweet little girl waiting for me, a big kiss and a delicious stroke of my cheek. I am also carrying the spoils of a quick detour into a Chelsea junk shop (photo above). I am none the wealthier, perhaps a little wiser, but delighted to be back in my borough.
