Sunday

I could likely devote an entire website to the subject of Sundays.

I ran four miles, down the Westside Highway to Battery Park where a lot of Europeans and Asians were shuttling between Ground Zero and the ferry to the Statue of Liberty. They walked with maps open, the angle of their collective forward leaning matched the weather, somewhere close to 75 degrees.

On the run down, I passed the parks that are slivered out of the highway like almonds and dressed in grass. A Manhattan microcosm: there is barely enough room to do anything between the Hudson and the highway but locals crowd the yards to make the most of them, girls tan beside the road in bras, men read the Journal shirtless.

Every ten blocks is a pier but everyone seems distrustful of them. They are fragments of recreation, mere cement garnishes where only the kids seem not to notice their lacking. The ferry is my turnaround point, a man is playing Louis Armstrong on a horn for money (we all know which song but it sounds like taps). I am drenched in not belonging, I start back.

Above the Century 21 department store there is a boldly fonted sign that says REMEMBER FATHER'S DAY; I would not have been able to see the sign from the pathway if the towers hadn't been knocked down. My running mix goes from Mystery Train to The Eraser, Elvis to England and I get home in time for brunch at the French cafe down the street where I am a regular.

The prix fixe comes with steak and oeufs, frites, salad, mimosa, cafe au lait, pain, fruit, and crepe, which for $20 seems like a deal. Business is slow my waiter confides, the Hamptons have called, the weather is good.

I am at a place called Le Petit Bistro and people pass it by and marvel to each other about how small it is. I am reading a haunting short story about abortion and the universe before my steak arrives and a man stops to tell me how wonderful the book is. I've said I've read it before and it's a favorite and he seems all ready to join me until I share that a old girlfriend had originally given it to me and then he leaves shortly after I give over this lie (the truth is that if a girl had actually given me this book I wouldn't have let her go).

That's Chelsea. It's driven by carnal motivations, it's like everywhere else in this country but simply more honest.

From my chair I can see two American flags on my block. One is blowing twisted at the top of the bank on west fifteen street and eighth avenue. The other is faded like Jasper John, hanging from a fire escape above a graffitied mailbox.

A man of letters with a garish hat grabs the other outside table. He has red shoes and a cane. I furtively take his picture and then erase it. I look down at find spots where the grease from my steak has Pollacked my white polo shirt.

Right away I know they are stains that are not going to wash out. Immediately I find this comforting. Whenever I wear the shirt I am going to remember what I did on the first day of June.