New York Stories: Space Market

Space Market was buzzing. Students circled the buffet scooping food into their dishes. It was 12:30pm, time for lunch. There were at least 10 customers just at the buffet alone.

The little old guy was rutting into the vegetables with his bare fingers, scraping to get one or two more pieces into his hand. He clenched his hand into a fist to hide them, but I caught the white edge of a piece of cauliflower peeking out between his thumb and forefinger. He held his fist to down his side, and when he thought nobody was looking, popped a vegetable into his mouth, chewing it with as little motion as possible. Then he shuffled down a few feet and started the same process with another one of the food trays that had been displayed in the buffet.

The man was short with a bushy grey beard framing his pink lips. He was obviously homeless, by the clothing his was wearing. But I have seen much worse, and by New York standards, he was actually in pretty good shape. Most likely he was one of the many homeless hanging out in Washington Square Park, just across the street, and had made his way over for his lunchtime routine. As he was rutting around, he had a blank expression on his face, which I now believe was part of his way of hiding his activities. The other odd detail was that he did not carry a food tray in his circuit around the buffet. So if you were willing to put two and two together, it was pretty obvious what he was up to.

At the time I was trying to fill my disposable food dish, carefully selecting my proteins, fats, fibers and carbohydrates into a well-balanced meal, which I would take to the front of the store and pay 20 dollars for. When I realized what he was up to, a great wave of nausea passed through me. I felt like I was going to throw up. But I had already filled half of the food dish, so I could not really abandon my task. Instead, I started staring at the old guy trying to get his attention.

When he looked up, our eyes locked. He did not look away, but rather stared back at me, once again with no expression on his face. I was hoping that just by staring at him, he would become dissuaded and leave, but no such luck. He seemed to be saying to me “What are you going to do about it?” The nausea just got worse and worse.

I packed my little meal, putting on a plastic lid, and bending the tinfoil to clamp down on the lid. Then I went to the front of the store to pay. As I left, I said to the cashier, with whom I had a friendly relationship, “There is a little old guy digging into the food with his fingers and eating it.” She looked exasperated and glanced to the back of the store, but did not make any move to call the manager or any other worker at the store. Because I left as quickly as possible, I am not sure how the situation played out. The typical New York response would definitely be to ignore it, hoping it would go away.

I am pretty sure that is the last time I will eat at Space Market.