Rob Schwartz
On Line
‘Is this the end of the line?’ I ask.
A chad up front nods, eyes on his phone.
‘I heard the cream cheese here is on another level,’ Marla says.
‘Well, Ess-A-Bagel is the bar,’ I reply.
‘This place is better,’ a girl behind us in a Knicks baseball hat says this with some authority. Seven people have now joined the line behind us in the last two minutes.
An elderly woman walking a white terrier approaches.
‘Are they giving something away?’ she asks.
‘No, ma’am,’ someone says.
‘Just overcharging for bagels.’
‘I don’t understand this obsession with waiting on line,’ the elderly woman says.
‘Good things come to those who wait.’
‘Yes, but who waits for a bagel?’
She points at the bodega across the sidewalk. Empty doorway. No line.
‘They have nice bagels.’
‘That’s different.’
‘How?’
Nobody has an answer. The terrier pulls. She’s gone before anyone thinks of one.
The line moves forward a step, the whole length of it at once, like a centipede.
‘Are you getting a plain bagel?’ Marla asks me.
‘How long have you known me?’
‘Thought you might want to branch out.’
‘You thought wrong.’
A man and a woman walk up from the wrong direction and slip in near the front, no apology, no hurry. Two guys step out. Seems they have been there for hours. There clearly has been some kind of arrangement.
‘Excuse me…’ someone starts.
‘They’ve been here since six,’ one of the two says, not turning around, eyes on his phone.
One of the guys pulls out his phone. A notification chimes, quiet, ordinary.
A few people back, someone leans toward the guy who took the payment.
‘Are you guys line-waiters?’
‘Yeah.”
‘Can you do the Kith drop tonight? In SoHo?’
‘Already booked.’
She looks vaguely let down, like she’d asked someone famous to do a selfie with her and gotten a no.
Three people up, a girl has her phone out at arm’s length, hair straightened perfectly, big sunglasses, mouth already moving.
‘Okay so POV—you’ve waited forty minutes and you don’t even know why yet.’ She turns the camera on the storefront, then back on her own face, which doesn’t change. ‘This is literally New York’s most exclusive bagel. Smash follow if you’ve never heard of this place before today.’
‘She’s never heard of this place before today,’ the girl in the Knicks hat behind us mutters.
I look over at Marla. Her brown curly hair is organized with a retro white head band. Her nose, which would be too big for someone else’s face, looks beautiful in profile as she peers into her phone. I stare at her and she feels it. A smile emerges.
Two kids come tearing down the sidewalk on scooters, almost clipping a few of us. Their dad jogs behind them.
‘Sloane! Liam!—slow down…’
Sloane doesn’t slow down. Neither does Liam. They go around the corner and out of sight. The dad keeps jogging. I pray he doesn’t turn to me and say the word: ‘Kids.’
Down the block, past the bodega, past the dry cleaner, an ambulance pulls up outside a brownstone. No siren, just lights. A man in a robe stands in the doorway, waving like he’s hailing a cab.
‘Someone’s having a baby,’ somebody says, like a weather report.
‘Here?’
‘Apparently.’
Nobody leaves the line. A few people turn to watch. The crew goes in the lobby of the building. A few minutes later they are carrying something small and loud. They take the mother on a stretcher and the man in the robe follows in slippers. The doors to the vehicle close. The red lights keep swirling. Now there’s a siren. They blast off towards Houston Street.
‘Can you imagine having a baby in the street?’ says Marla.
‘I can’t imagine having a baby at all.’ I respond.
Marla looks at me like I’m a moron. She’s not wrong.
The line moves up. Now I take out my phone.
Forty minutes in, we’re slightly closer to the entrance than we were at the start.
More people arrive behind us. We can now actually see people leaving the bagel place. Their heads looking squarely at the inside of their paper bags.
It’s worth it. Apparently.