The Ghost of Broad Street

An oceanic smile. Her friends giggle. Almost five percent of the city’s population is Asian, or 70,000 people, according to the last census. Many of the newly arrived have landed in Olney or South Philly, coming from Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos — countries we napalmed to smithereens before and during the Nixon years, openly and secretly.

Behind the counter, an attractive woman with high blonde hair and an extra unbuttoned button on her blouse looks up and asks, “What can I get ya, honey?”

You like being called honey.

“Chicken cheesesteak, please with the works.”

“Is that all sweetie?”

You like being called sweetie. You sit down at the Talk of the Town, a hole-in-the-wall hoagie joint near the sports stadia named for banks and right under the Route 76 overpass to a bridge named for a poet. It is dusk. Truck drivers are pulling up. On the radio is “Hello It’s Me.” You miss Philly music, and Philly foods, and Philly women speaking Philly smack. You wonder why you ever left.

“Chicken cheese with the works. Here you go, sweetheart.”

You like being called sweetheart. You begin to flirt with the idea that it’s somewhat personal until you hear blondie address the next guy in line, a huge, slobbering trucker, with a quasi-pornographic: “What’ll it be, sweetie?”

Your sandwich suddenly goes limp and tastes half as good as it should. New York hasn’t been such a bad place after all. Heroes are okay.

The old Navy Yard looks more like a business park than anything else. It’d be a great place to teach a kid how to drive a car; more planes pass overhead, to and from the nearby airport, than cars do on the ground. Somebody will turn thesee twelve hundred acres into a gated community soon enough. On the water, close to Center City.