Four Hours In Boston, by Jenny Bahn

The bus arrives and we take a cab to the hotel, a beautiful five-star on the Boston Harbor.  A bellhop in a red coat opens the doors for us.  “Let me guess, you’re all from New York,” he says after assessing the lack of brushed hair and the excessive amount of black in my wardrobe.  He opens the brass doors and another person opens the next pair of brass doors.  Considering I have become accustomed to various insect infestations and questionable bedspreads in my work-related travels, this is a glorious break from the shitty norm.  When the girl in charge of the shoot checks us in, I half expect for her to turn to me and say, “And next we’ll be checking you in … down the street …” and accompany me to a HoJo adjacent to a meat packing plant.  But she hands me a key.  The room is mine.  All mine.  No sharing.  No continental breakfast cornucopias spilling forth four-day-old croissants and neon yellow OJ.  No over-starched poly-cotton blend bed sheets.  I resist the urge to squeal out loud.

The room is ornately decorated and nearly as big as my entire New York apartment.  There is a king bed for me to take up one eighth of later that night when I sleep as quietly as a mouse.  The window looks out over the bay.  I watch small boats balance on the water, anchored in place until their wealthy owners return for a jaunts across the pond.  Planes ascend and descend out of Logan International.  Not a bad view.  I could get used to this.

It’s only 5 p.m., which means I still have plenty of daylight to walk around and see this place.  This type of free time is the only way you maintain some semblance of sanity when traveling for work.  This free time never really happens.  Technically, I’ve been to Boston three times.  This is the first occasion in which I’ve had an afternoon to see Boston.

I walk out of the same brass doors I came in through and head due north in my quest for culture absorption and a Starbucks.

Boston feels warm and sleepy and less humid than New York was when we left it a few hours ago.  The streets are unmarred by excessive trash or smells or humanity’s cluster f&*k.  People still walk everywhere, but you’re not negotiating your way through a family of eight Oakley-wearing German tourists squinting at bus signs at any point during the day.

I find a Starbucks buried in a decidedly charming, cobblestone-paved arcade: the Quincy Market.  On account of a massive water main break that occurred a few days ago, the quality of Boston’s water rivals that of Mexico.  Everywhere you look there are homemade signs reading “We Apologize for the Inconvenience but we Cannot Serve Water or Ice Today.”  At the train station, the water fountain is covered with tape and paper and a sign reading “DO NOT DRINK THIS WATER.”  Next to the sinks are more signs that say, “Do Not Drink or Brush Your Teeth with this Water.”  Despite the severity of water-borne illnesses, it is interesting to see how a civilized city deals with a temporary crisis affecting millions of people every day.  In Africa, people die from dysentery.  In America, people complain that they can’t get their latte iced.

The Starbucks baristas look exhausted from explaining to people they cannot make any espresso or iced drinks or really coffee for that matter.  The only thing on the menu is their new product, “Via,” which is a fancy, foreign word for “Instant Coffee.”  I don’t care what form my caffeine comes in, be it intravenously or with little crystallized granules.  Just give it to me, already!

Via proves to be more labor-intensive than your run-of-the-mill cup of joe.  It takes them about four minutes to whip my freeze-dried coffee bits into a frenzy, time enough so that when I take a sip the whole mess has already dissolved into my soy milk.  It’s something I appreciate later on when the next Starbucks-Boston-Water-Crisis-Cold- Via-Soymilk-Drink (formally known as an “Iced Soy Latte”) is served nearly done and looking more like an Oreo milkshake.

With my caffeine in hand, I take to the streets.

I continue north in the direction of older buildings that look like they have nothing to do with finance or the 20^th century.  On a bronze placard is a sign reading “Paul Revere lived here…”  Jackpot.

What I have accidentally and fortuitously fallen upon is an area of Boston known as the North End – - the city’s oldest neighborhood, established in the early 1600s.  The uneven brick streets wind around with a whimsical inefficiency.  Despite all of its ruddy, worn old bricks, it reminds me of Paris, and just as Paris does, it takes my breath away.

The neighborhood is quiet and I don’t have to fight for space on the narrow sidewalks.  I cross streets without looking.  I stand for minutes on end just to stare at a garden of burned-up tulips, indicating that spring is prematurely giving way to summer.  There is a lack of urgency here that feels as comfortable as tepid bathwater.  I want to live in a place like this forever … or at least for a few months until its charm gets lost on me.

Wind blows through rows of metal dog tags hanging from strings in a church’s memorial garden.  They clink against each other gently and their silver surfaces bounce shards of light around the garden.  On leaves.  On cobblestone.  There are many of them.  They stack up next to each other like a child’s soda can tab collection.

The sun begins to dip lower in the sky and I know I need to start making my way across town to dinner – - a 1.3-mile trek that will take about thirty minutes by foot.  Begrudgingly, I leave the North End, walking past swathes of business types on their way home from work.  Men with messenger bags slung over their crisp button-ups and women in sensible flats.  The people of Boston err on the side of boring visually conservative, save for a handful of adorable old men wearing suits and pink bowties, with walking canes and the faces of old presidents.

On my way, I pass a used and rare bookstore with a glass storefront and fluorescent lights.  I turn on my heel and walk inside.  The books are many and my attention span is small.  I retire from aimlessly scanning the hundreds of books and begin reading the paper clippings adhered to wooden dividing posts with generous helpings of clear tape.  The clippings feature quotes about books and reading and there are mini-stories about different authors accompanied by photographs.  I say thank you to the shopkeeper and leave without buying anything.

The sun is nearly setting by the time I reach the periphery of Boston’s largest park.  People jog past.  Students walk by.  Homeless people sit on benches.  The sun glares amber through the leaves of trees being shuddered by intermittent gusts of wind.  Leaf-like seeds rattle along the pavement, making a collective sound akin to a didgeridoo.  The same seeds litter the whole city.  They swirl through the air like a summer snowstorm, catching light on their way down.

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