It rained all Tuesday on the Lower East Side, that warm grey August rain that doesn't cool anything down, just makes everything smell like wet pavement and possibility.
I ducked into my bodega on Ludlow to wait it out. This is my bodega. I've earned the possessive. The man behind the counter, Ahmed, knows I take my coffee light and sweet and he starts making it before I ask. There is no greater love language in this city.
And then there's the cat. Every good bodega has a cat, and mine has an orange one who sleeps on the shelf between the chips and the phone chargers like a small furious loaf. Ahmed calls him nothing in particular. I've privately named him Samosa, because he's golden and warm and a little bit of a scam.
Samosa let me pet him on Tuesday, which he does not always allow. He's got standards. I stood there dripping, eating a chopped cheese, scratching a bodega cat's head, watching the rain come down on Ludlow Street, and I thought: this is it. This is the whole thing.
People come to New York for the skyline and the parties and the museums. But the real New York is your bodega. It's the guy who knows your order. It's the cat with more attitude than you. It's a place that's open at 3AM when you're heartbroken and out of everything.
My bodega has held my worst days. Sick days when I only wanted saltines and Gatorade. Broke days when I counted change for eggs. Good days when I bought flowers from the bucket outside just because.
The rain finally thinned. Ahmed told me to take an umbrella from the broken box by the door, keep it. Samosa had already gone back to sleep.
Find your bodega. Name the cat. That's how you become a New Yorker.
Love,