ROY EDROSO

B61 bus, Brooklyn/Lower Broadway and East 14th Street, Manhattan/Grand Central Station, Manhattan

The B61 bus was nearly empty in the early hours of December 24. A man in his 60s, hands deep in the pockets of his dark blue cloth bomber jacket, sat up front chatting with the driver, a middle-aged black woman with enormous glasses and gold hoop earrings.

"So she's doing all right?" said the driver.

"She's not that old, y'know," the man said, "so..."

"I see what you're saying..."

They were silent as the bus made its long, slow turn onto Atlantic Avenue.

"Somehow it don't seem like the holidays," the man sighed.

"It's been a very bad year," said the driver.

"Oh yes."

"A lot of people died."

"Oh yes."

It seemed more like the holidays on and around Lower Broadway that evening. The streets were thick with shoppers, some gripping several bags in each hand, faces weary but alert, eyes carefully surveying store windows for their last gift purchases. Store sound systems played Christmas songs, but strange ones: obscure Sinatra and Bing Crosby numbers, Eartha Kitt, the Supremes--the sort of things one would once hear only at goofy boutiques, now playing at K-Mart. John Lennon's "Happy Christmas (War is Over)," lilting and dour, was widely programmed. "And so this is Christmas," sang John to the bargain hunters. "And what have you done?"

True to recent economic reports, it was a buyer's market. Stores were open late. Prices were marked down, often twice, sometimes three times. I got my sister a leather jacket from the Gap for one-quarter of its original price.

"I hate to ask," I told a Gap saleswoman, "but could you try this jacket on for me? You're about my sister's size."

The saleswoman, eyes and smile large and bright, motioned me to the back, where she grabbed the sleeve of a gangly, goateed salesman, and pointed to me.

He approached and I explained my need. He chuckled sympathetically, turned to the saleswoman and said, "He wants you to try it on to check the size."

She emitted a loud, backwards-sounding "Oh," pulled on the jacket, and presented herself to me, arms out. She looked down at herself, plucked at her shoulders, pursed her lips a little and looked at the salesman.

"You maybe want a size smaller," he said to me. "It's supposed to fit cute, y'know?"

I took the train to see my family the next morning, came back to Grand Central that evening. I carried shopping bags filled with presents up to the Vanderbilt entrance, but found the taxi waiting area just outside the doors sealed off from traffic by three-foot-high concrete dividers. A little way down the street, men in army fatigues, boxy caps pulled down low to protect their crewcut skulls from the cold, chatted beside a Jeep and shuffled their boots. On the curb nearby, a dreadlocked man wearing several layers of clothing sat quietly, staring impassively into the concrete dividers. He had several shopping bags, too, filled with paper and cloth and piled close around him. He didn't seem to want a cab, though.

I walked around to 42nd Street. A huge line had formed. A cab pulled up across the street, flipped on its rooftop light. I crossed against traffic and climbed in.

The driver's name was Vladimir. His hair was curly and thin and graced with aromatic gel. I asked him how business had been that day.

"Terrible," he said. "Last year was very busy. This year, nothing. And I pay rent for this cab. Next year, though, will be better. I take FDR Drive to the bridge, okay?"

Vladimir lives near Ocean Parkway. I asked him how he liked it. "Too far away," he said. "My wife works on 49th Street, it take her one hour and a half get to work. But I am ten minutes from the beach. Next year it goes co-op." (He pronounced it "coop," with a pause in the middle.) "Fourteen thousand now, 14 thousand next year. So, the train was crowded when you come back?"

I said it was very crowded, and that I perceived that more people were coming back on Christmas Day than in previous years.

"Oh, of course," he said. "Tomorrow they must work."

He got off the FDR at Madison Street, a few clicks of the meter further from the bridge entrance than I had anticipated. I pointed this out to Vladimir.

"Used to be at Pitt Street," Vladimir said. "They change it. Maybe for security." I wasn't sure about that, but let it go.

A military roadblock forced us to stop a few blocks from my apartment building. The ride had been more expensive than usual, but in the spirit of the season I tipped Vladimir well. In the spirit of the season, he gave me a whole roll of taxi receipts.

As I climbed out, a soldier approached Vladimir. "You want a fare?" he said. "Look." He pointed to three people standing across the street, at the entrance to the bridge. "Hurry, you can make it."

The next day the streets of downtown Manhattan were busy. Among the workers, the holiday movie-goers, the students enjoying their break, I noticed more indigents than usual. They asked for money at subway entrances, shambled along sidewalks, or moved from trashpile to trashpile, digging through the toy boxes and wrapping paper for something they could use.

The Garden of Eden produce market on West 14th Street was crowded that night. Traditional holiday fare was giving way to arugula and Porcini mushrooms. The sound system still featured Christmas songs. "Happy Christmas (War is Over)" was played. And so, for some reason, was another Lennon song. "And you think you're so clever and classless and free," sang the murdered Beatle in the Garden of Eden. "But you're still fucking peasants as far as I can see."