Bluefish

So I’m walking up 5th Ave. on a crackling cold day in February.  It’s around 11thSt.  There’s a man standing on the sidewalk near the curb, looks to be kind of a blue-collar guy, and he’s talking to this older woman who’s wearing a fur coat.

She’s probably in her 70s, very upper crust.  I’m thinking he’s maybe the super in her building.  She’s friendly, and he is too.  She’s put together excellently – nice shoes, an elegant hat, and what look to me like diamond earrings.  Episcopalian.  She’s relaxed and smiling and wearing this full-length fur coat, I don’t know if it’s mink but it might be.  The truth is I don’t know much about fur coats and couldn’t tell mink from rat.  But whatever it is, it’s classy and looks warm.

Now I don’t have a lot of sympathy for the modern world and so I don’t really live in it, but I’m aware it exists; I’m not a complete troglodyte.  Working on it, but I’m not there yet.  So I know that people have problems with fur coats – fur in general as a fashion statement or whatever.  Chrissie Hynde, Steve-O, Cloris Leachman even.  (So what's up with Cloris Leachman?)  And I get it.  You’re killing an animal to get its fur to stay warm when you don’t really need to since there are synthetic ways to stay warm now.

So, this woman in a fur coat is standing talking to her super and then another, younger woman walks up and stops and says to the rich lady, “That’s disgusting.”

“What?”  The elegant 5th Avenue dame thinks this woman might have a screw loose.  It is, after all, New York.

“Do you have any idea how many animals you killed just so you could make sure everyone knows you got a lot of money?  To make a coat like that – 20 foxes at least!”

Okay, I say to myself, at least we know it’s fox now.  Meanwhile, I’m trying to look invisible.

“It’s not fox,” says the lady, still a little startled.  “It’s sable.”

“Even worse!” cries her accuser.

So I look at this angry woman, and I am pretty sure she would never wear a fur coat.  She’s dressed in Champion sweat pants, a fleece (the modern kind, not the kind Jason was looking for), and sneakers; she's carrying a Duane Reade bag.  She’s around 5 foot 4 and weighs in at like 250.  She’s no fashion plate.  In fact, I would say the contrast between the two specimens of female humanity could not be more stark.

The super takes this opportunity to chime in.  “What is your problem?” he says with a certain edge.  Now I know from his accent he's of Latino or Spanish origin, not a rarity among New York supers, at least in the neighborhood I grew up in.

“My problem,” says Fleece without looking at him, “is that this woman is killing innocent animals.”

“I didn’t kill any animals,” says Upper Crust.

“Well, you didn’t do it with your own hands …”

“I didn’t do it at all,” Upper Crust says. “This coat has been in my family for three generations.  I inherited it, and not wearing it wouldn’t bring back those 19th-century sables that gave their lives to make it.”

“It doesn’t matter,” says Fleece, sweating.

“Why doesn’t it matter,” the super wants to know.

Fleece has been waiting for this question.  She sees it coming like a sweet little floater drifting out over the plate.  Yum yum, she thinks.

“Because when you wear something like this,” she says with a wave of contempt at Upper Crust and her lovely coat, “you tell everyone else it’s okay to wear fur, to buy it, to commit these crimes against life.  You’re a walking advertisement.  People see it and suddenly it’s easier to for them rationalize buying this shit.  You legitimize it!”

As I say, Fleece sees the super’s question as a gimme, a nice round pellet sailing languidly home.  And it is.  But as so often happens in these circumstances, she gets greedy.   She swings for the stands when she could have smacked a solid single to left, maybe even worked a double out of it.  You don’t want to get greedy.  There are pitchers out there who make a living off this kind of thing, offering the fat, juicy one because they think the batter won’t be able to resist.  And Fleece does not resist.

Upper Crust’s eyes fill with sadness.  I'm not sure she's accustomed to people using the word "shit" with her.  But it's sadness not shock that spreads over her face.  If you want to call the look patronizing, you’re free to do so.  I won’t stop you.  It’s a perfectly reasonable gloss.

The super doesn't care whether the lady in the fine, fine sable is being patronizing.  Maybe yes, maybe no.  He’s enjoying the moment, because he knows what comes next.  That’s the thing about New York supers: they understand the dynamics of power.

“I’m sorry, miss,” says Upper Crust, drawing out the word just a hair longer than she has to.  “But I leave others’ moral decisions to them.  It’s all I can do to make my own.  If they take my choices as endorsements, that’s really their business.  We can’t live our lives as if we were role models for every impressionable …,” and here she laid her hand on her hip to show a little steel – “for every impressionable nincompoop and sap who happens to walk by.  If you want to live like that, you go ahead, my dear.  But it doesn't interest me.  And by the way --" (a sweet little break on the ball here) -- "neither do you.”  

And with that she turns her attention to the 5th Avenue traffic, gliding downtown like a bowling ball.  I believe she might be looking for a cab, but she doesn’t hail anything.  I think she's just enjoying the moment.

So the big swing has coughed out a dribbler to the pitcher.  Fleece doesn’t even bother legging it out.  She opens her mouth to say something, but the super beats her to it.

“Abi, you gonna take care of that bluefish tonight?

Fleece gives her father a fit-to-be-tied kind of stare.

“You know, papi, you’re really embarrassing me,” she says.

“It’s okay,” the super says, “I don’t think anyone’s listening anymore.”