The bodega cat knows me now. This is, I have decided, the true marker of belonging in New York. Not the job, not the apartment. The cat.
My 6 train morning routine is sacred and boring and I love it with my whole chest. I leave my place, walk to the corner bodega on Lexington, and Mr. Guerrero has my order half-made before I say a word. Coffee, extra milk. He calls it chai to make me laugh. It is not chai. I let him have it.
The cat — orange, enormous, emotionally unavailable — sits on the stack of newspapers by the door. For eight months he ignored me completely. Last Tuesday he let me scratch his head. I nearly texted my whole family group chat.
Then I walk to the 6 train and go down into the warm underground rush of it. My 6 train morning routine has a soundtrack: the turnstile beep, the express rumbling past, the same saxophone guy at 59th who only ever plays half of "My Heart Will Go On."
When I first moved here everything was a decision. Which train. Which exit. Which coffee. Now my body just knows. My feet find the spot on the platform where the doors will open. I've become fluent in a place that once felt like a language I'd never learn.
There's a specific loneliness to being new in a city, and there's a specific medicine in the day it stops. Nobody hands you that day. You just look up one morning and the bodega cat is headbutting your palm and Mr. Guerrero is calling you by name and you realize — oh. This is mine now.
I grew up in Ahmedabad where everyone knew everyone. I thought New York would be the opposite forever. Cold, fast, anonymous.
Turns out you just build your village one regular stop at a time.
The cat looked up at me today. I'm counting it as love.
Love,