Miracle On 42nd St.
An incident which renews my faith in the innate goodness of mankind: I step into the peep show at the corner of 42nd and 8th Ave, and lay out the wad of ones I have in my pocket on the ledge of the cash acceptor. I feed the machine a bill, and, before that bill's time runs out, I hit paydirt. Jump started by the rapid victory, I pull up my pants, and jolt out of the booth, down the mirror-lined hallway, looking approvingly at my pale face, and step out onto the busy street again. I walk down 42nd st., through Times Square, and am strolling through Bryant Park, about to head into the Research Library, when I realize that I left the wad of ones on the cash acceptor at the peep show. At first I think that I won't bother going back, as the cum-mopper must have gotten to it, already, or the next occupant of the stall. Tehn I decide that, well, it's only two avenues away, I might as well go back. I walk quickly through the bitingly cold wind, back past the Madame Tussaud's wax statues, the movie theaters, into the 'show, where I see the mopper at work, sweeping out a stall. "Did you find any money in that stall?" pointing to the open one, near where I thought I had been. "I haven't found any money today," he says, as if offended, already. "Come on, man, I had a stack of ones on the grille, there." "I tell you, I haven't found any money today!" The accent places him as an African. I look at the numbered covers of porn videos on the wall outside the booths, and find the pair of Asian breasts that corresponded to my stall. "No, it was that one", I said, and, just as he was telling me I'd have to wait till it's present occupant was finished, the door to the stall swung open, and a young black man, with wide, and deep reservoirs under his eyes, smiled, and thrust the ( I later found out ) untouched pile of ones at me. "That is an honest man!" I said, "THAT IS AN HONEST MAN!" ( "and so am I," proudly emphasized the African ).