There’s a parking lot next to my office in Brooklyn where I’ve taken some terrible phone calls. The sharp edges and growing silences of an unravelling relationship, the panicked receipt of information regarding a friend’s medical crisis: a parking-lot phone call is one of immediacy or obligation, something you have to tend to when there’s nowhere else to go.
New York is a city of communal anonymity, where we often treat public spaces like private ones, trusting that no one will pay us any mind. When I walk through the city, I find myself peering into parking lots and down alleyways, watching and overhearing others engaged in exchanges similar to the ones I’ve had, their shoulders drooping or hands extended to punctuate their staccato speech.
These are some of the things I’ve seen and heard.
