Grand Central Pete was schmoozing with a well-dressed man for a while, had him laughing and feeling pretty good about himself, then he took his money and handed the poor guy some fancy looking paperwork that was supposed to be the deed for the terminal. Pete then sauntered over to the far corner of the rotunda, about a football field away from the first guy, still laughing and smiling, and sold the whole building again, right away, to another stranger in an expensive suit. And everyone laughed and felt real good as Grand Central Pete walked out of the building with his head held high, his hat set at a jaunty angle and all his pockets filled with hundred dollar bills. What a showman. What a crook.
Herschel turned right and headed up a long ramp between the two rows of ticket windows to the old waiting room. There used to be long wooden benches there, as if you were in church, lined up one in front of another. But as the railroads began to lose money and people started to forget about the old building, the poor and the homeless and the drug users turned this part of New York City into their own kingdom. The toilet was at one end of the hall and almost no one except the motley citizens of this unkempt kingdom would use those facilities. Herschel even remembered when the maintenance staff would sometime “forget” to go there. Then the mood shifted and the government spent more money than Herschel could imagine and fixed up the old station. They got rid of the benches, moved the toilet downstairs and cleaned up the old waiting room for the rich to use for parties and things like that. Even though the seats are gone, with a closer look, the outline of where the old wooden benches sat is still visible.
The floors here are made of the same marble found in the main rotunda, but running the full length of each ghost bench lies a shallow gully. Almost like the ridges of a washboard. After one hundred years of feet being crossed and uncrossed and toes tapped and shoes shuffled while waiting for a train, there is now a noticeable trough in the marble. The gullies are evenly spaced where the benches use to be located. Row after row. Much as water had eroded away the mountains to make the Grand Canyon, the leather shoes of countless travelers had done the same thing to the floors of Grand Central Terminal. Herschel loved the idea that an act as seemingly insignificant as sitting down and waiting, unnoticed by the same people who were worried about how the ceiling was painted, would have such a real and permanent physical impact. “Folks just don’t seem to appreciate that what is not seen is usually a lot more important than what is seen” was one of Herschel’s favorite observations.
As the night crept along, it was time for Herschel to take a little breather. Herschel leaned his broom on the wall and took out an old red bandana from his pocket. He wiped his forehead and brushed off the dust from his arms, tilted his large frame back against the wall, and took in the sights around him. The terminal was especially quiet tonight. Besides the Zamboni sliding around the rotunda and cleaning the floors, the only other thing he could see was a new guy climbing up a high ladder in the old waiting room.
Electricity was a new-fangled idea for a building back one hundred years ago when the terminal was built, so all of the fancy French-designed chandeliers purposely featured the light bulb. Like a newly engaged woman walking around holding her left hand out, just so everyone could see the diamond ring. Over the years the company introduced new super-efficient bulbs that lasted a lot longer than the old bulbs, so a regular light bulb crew was no longer needed. Nowadays the job of occasionally changing the bulbs fell on an unsuspecting new guy. So that is what Ryan – Herschel thought that was the new guy’s name – was doing way up on that ladder. There was a twinkle in Herschel’s eye as he watched Ryan struggle with the light bulbs. To prevent the public from being tempted to take any bulbs, it was an old railroad trick to use left handed bulbs. These bulbs were specially made and screwed in the opposite way from the light bulb in your house. It always took the new guys a while to figure that out and tonight was no different. It was like trying to tie your shoes while looking into a mirror and was a lot tougher than it sounded. The wooden step ladders were tall and Ryan had become all twisted around himself, twenty feet in the air, like a dangling ornament on a wobbly Christmas tree. Soon enough Ryan was cursing out loud as he fumbled with each bulb. “What the ‘fuh’ is the matter with these… damn… jeez… c’mon…”
Down the ramp in the main rotunda, Herschel turned and watched Vincent swing the floor cleaning machine around towards the ramp. The easiest way to get up the long incline with the Zamboni was to start in the middle of the hall and build up speed and race to the top of the ramp. If done right, the machine would slow down to almost a crawl by the time it got to the top. Without a good head of steam, the machine could stall out before making it all the way up to the waiting room. But since it was quiet tonight, Vincent was able to get an even longer run up the ramp. He looked like an old-time stock car driver behind the steering wheel with his perpetually slicked back hair and his blue work shirt open to show a skin-tight NY Rangers t-shirt below.
Vincent was fiddling with his cell phone and headphones as the machine started to pick up speed. He seemed more worried about playing a game on his phone then looking where he was going. The vehicle began its sprint up the ramp and the extra headway allowed the engine to rev up faster than anyone had ever seen it go before. To the right of Herschel, Ryan was still completely flummoxed by the light bulbs and was becoming more frustrated by the second. He was so confused and embarrassed that he had become oblivious to the world around him. The Zamboni continued to race as fast as the machine could go as it started up the ramp. Vincent was now completely lost in his phone and rushing along without ever looking up.
With the newfound power in its wheels, the Zamboni roared like an eight-year-old getting out of school for the summer break, and it refused to slow as it climbed up the incline. It was still racing when Vincent finally realized that he wasn’t in the slow crawl that he expected but was instead sprinting recklessly toward the old waiting room. In the too-little-too-late world that was common for Vincent, he finally put the phone down and grabbed the wheel and jerked the Zamboni to the left. Swerving harder than it ever was designed for, the machine bounded over the antique grooves in the floor. The Zamboni bounced like a baby carriage on a cobblestone street as Vincent completely lost control. His cell phone banged to the floor, a bead of sweat appeared on his forehead, and his hair lost its permanent cool for the first time in memory.
Hershel sized up the situation quickly and dropped his red bandana and ran toward the ladder and the light bulbs. Without slowing down for a step, Herschel leaped up the ladder as far as he could. Ryan was already stretched out and twisted around with the light bulbs and the two of them crashed to the floor. Ryan fell on top of Herschel while still looking up toward the chandelier. Both of them let out a groan as they hit the unforgiving marble floor.
An instant later the runaway Zamboni slammed into the ladder and snapped off the bottom half.
If Ryan were still on the ladder he would have been thrown into the air and crashed down headfirst to the floor. Vincent and the Zamboni finally came to a rest just before reaching the far wall. Ryan caught his breath, looked around and got up and started screaming at Vincent. The rest of the crew came running up the ramp from all corners of the terminal to see what had happened. The foreman was last to arrive and began yelling at anything with a heartbeat. Everyone was talking about how lucky it was that Ryan lost his balance and fell off the ladder at just the right moment. The general consensus was that it was a classic case of dumb luck.