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Writer's pictureBrennan

Another day. Another dollar.

Updated: Jan 13, 2022

Wall Street Station (4/5). 9:04a.


A decision was made here, I thought.


The fake fingernails sparkled with glitter against the damp gray-brown concrete steps, smudged with the mud and detritus of the commuting masses. There were seven of them scattered on the top four or five steps coming out of the station, one of which appeared tinged with blood.


The stinging wind cut through my peacoat, scarf, and knit cap as though they had been torn away from my body by some unseen cable-and-pulley system rigged for precisely such a prank. I knew, of course, that no such practical joke was in the works, but I felt like a mark just the same. I mumbled frustrations to myself and shoved my hands deeper into my pockets, hoping against hope that the wind would die down. Nevertheless, such is New York City.


Wall Street is quiet. None of the tourists milling about, posing with the New York Stock Exchange in the background. I have always found this odd: smiling obsequiously as the synecdoche of an economy which incentivizes greed and the allocation of risk to those who can least afford to assume it forms the background and context of their self-image, they tend to ignore Kristen Visbal's bronze statue of the Fearless Girl whose fists, proudly clenched on her hips, convey the disdain properly reserved for such a monument to avarice. The photo-takers, the selfie-ists, the putative models, all seem unaware that they have much more in common with the Fearless Girl than with the money-changers in the Exchanges. To borrow from Ronald Wright's paraphrasing of Steinbeck, they love the Exchange because they prefer to think of themselves as temporarily embarrassed millionaires.


The wind slices around corners and makes its presence visible in the sashaying limbs of the Wall Street Christmas Tree, still lit and placed some nine days after the holiday. There is no music, no sound save for a stifled cough from a woman just trying to get to the office and the whir-hum of the city's machinery.


A dog on a leash barks at another. A food cart's generator kicks on. Someone yells at a cyclist riding down the sidewalk.


Another day, another dollar.

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