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Sunday
Go to Brooklyn and look up at the traffic lights. You may see shoes thrown up there. People have been throwing shoes up to the sky since there were telegraph lines criss-crossing the entire street. Oh, I remember all right. People didn't throw their shoes away so lightly in those days. Not when a pair of shoes was a month's wages. People threw the shoes up to send messages. Ask a sorceror, they will tell you the secret meaning of the shoes. I will tell you. A pair of polished dress shoes near the pole means that Old Jack has come up from the pipe and seeks tribute. A pair of dirty dress shoes means that Jack is gone. A pair of ballet slippers with white laces in the center of the bar means that a Thing is happening. If it's close to the light it means that a Moot is happening. If there's one slipper up there, it means that Central Park is hosting a big pow-wow. A pair of sneakers is just some dumb kid having fun. And if it's a pair of spray-painted hiking boots...something about the sidewalk trees. I have told you as much as I remember. Ask a sorceror for the rest if you have the coin to pay for it, else they make you an apprentice. I didn't raise your mother to let her children become sorcerors. There's more money to be made in medicine.
The animal skulls hanging from the lines, I know nothing about them. I have nothing to do with it. You think I would put up an omen like that? You think I have the money to buy an entire goat just so I could use its head to put the fear of God into the entire city? Hah!
Monday
Now, you listen to me. There's layers to this city. It goes utility lines, subway, sewer, Water Pipe. The Water Pipe is one big pipe where all the water comes from. And in the pipe is Old Jake.
Now, I've seen Jake once on a moonlit night, and I could have sworn he was a catfish, but Maria (rest her soul) told me that he was a slug. Who knows. He has to be pliable to get out of the water pipe, right? Like an octopus oozing through a cleft in a rock. Maybe he's an octopus.
Or maybe he's pure moonlight, 'caue I saw him glowing with moonlight, and Rosie told me she saw the glow of the moon from down the street on a moonless night. Although I'd take her words with a few grains of salt, because getting caught outside with him around is usually fatal.
Anyway. You always ask me, Nonna, why does the Mafia never come to this part of Brooklyn? Why do the Russian gangsters not come? Why do the Japanese gangsters not come? Why do we not pay protection money?
You ask me, why are we poor? Well, now I tell you. Where do you think all our money goes? We have to buy eels for Old Jake. He eats them, and he is satisfied, and he protects these neighborhoods. We failed to pay him his eels, one year, and Mr. Hong's Three Jolly Luck Fish Shop vanished in the night, along with Mr. Hong.
That is not where the shoes go when they are thrown onto traffic lights. The traffic lights eat them.
Wednesday
Watch out for the Squoils.
Not the Squirrels. Those are grey and boring. They are stuck in Central Park and have nothing to offer. No, I'm talking about the Squoils. Little bit darker, little bit more ragged, and they've got this look in their eyes. You know, the look someone has when they've been outside on the street too long. Go out onto the street and look up at one of the trees. Have you ever seen a ragged little squirrel there? Hard luck. They've got their eyes on you now, and they know...
They actually know a lot of things, if you ask them, for the right price. NO, not a coin. You need an acorn from Central Park. What do you mean you don't keep acorns handy? You are unprepared to live in this city. This is why I talk to you. I want you to survive. Now, the Squoils will appear if you shake a handful of acorns like this. Remember that. Then they'll ask you a few questions about yourself. Not because they want to know, but because they already know the answers. Bloomberg's police surveilance cameras are a feint! A fake! He's in cahoots with the squoils!
Go with your acorns and ask them all the questions i can't answer for you. Ask them how close Coyote is. Ask them why the road caves in sometimes. Ask them if they know how to get to Sesame Street.
Ask them if they know how to get to Back New York. I never figured that one out.
Thursday
There are days and nights I want you to watch out for. The feast day of St. Francis, for example, when St. Patrick's Cathedral will nab any Italian it can find and make them attend Mass. Then there's the two solstices, when the brickwork hums to lead you astray. But the one I really want you to watch out for is not marked by any holiday.
It occurrs on July 31, when the summer is highest and each day feels no different than the last. Go out that night to the Joe Dimaggio Parkway and watch for the cars coming into the city. Notice how you can't see the car behind the bright lights? You could swear there was no car there.
On that night, you would be right. The lights come roaring down the Parkway, disembodied. All in a long line.
The procession does not slow, nor turn to a side street, but continues until the road becomes the Roosevelt Parkway heading up the East River. My spotters tell me they follow this road all the way up the island, until Roosevelt splits into 10th Ave and Dyckman. They turn onto Dyckman and then onto Riverside, and then they get back on the highway and do it all over again. They do this nine times before taking 10th Ave into The Bronx and vanishing.
Big Chief tells me he thinks it's Coyote trying to get into the city. I tell him, Ha! He'd get bored after 2 years. No, I think it's phantom drivers, those that died in their cars on lonely, rainy nights and never made it home. They can't ever make it home. Car-spirits are repelled by Manhattan's pedestrian life.
Don't drive at night on July 31. Stay home. Safe. For once.
Friday
Ever since Manhattan built the Erie canal and became the bustling business center that we know, there has been one figure in the city who manages to be faster than anyone else. And he doesn’t lead by a nose, either – he’s always an order of magnitude faster. In the days of cart and horse, you could spot him coming down the street and clock him at 30 miles per hour. Now he’s on a bike, and here he comes, and there he goes. He’d smoke every damn bike messenger in the city –
– if anyone could figure out what deliveries he was making. Nobody has ever seen him stop. Nobody has ever caught him. Ask the police. They’ve tried. He never, ever, ever stops. One bicycle cop swears that she almost had him at a traffic jam, but the guy popped a wheelie and jumped his bike onto the trunk of a sedan, and hopped over the mess of cars. The APB for the guy simply says “bike messenger moving faster than humanly possible, you’ll know when you see him, whoops, there he goes.”
If someone catches him, everything in the city will stop --
Saturday
Your bag will never be first in line at the baggage claim. I don't care how important you are, it's never gonna be the first one.
You will occasionally hear cries at night from the street. Don't look out the window. Your uncle vanished when he looked.
You will occasionally see people on the street that are hollow. Step into them for a while and control their lives. It's fun.
You're never going to avoid being stopped and questioned by police when you visit Harlem. They see your dark skin. They peg you. Empty your hands and breathe deeply. Your goal is to come back home alive to me.
You will never fully understand your neighbors. Sometimes it's better the less you know. Invest in earplugs.
You're never going to make it into the audience of the Daily Show. The line never moves. There are people in that line who have been there since 2003.
You will occasionally get into the audience for Al Roker's weather show. Avoid this if at all possible.
You will feel lonely in this massive city full of people, at least once.
Then you will find the Big Apple, and you will feel proud, and everyone will love you for five minutes, and then someone will steal it and the hunt will begin again. Do not despair. The city needs this ritual.
Someday, you will not need me. Someday, you will not have me. it may be soon. Remember all I have told you, and be ready. The City awaits you.