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34. ALSO BETRAYED BY A DRY CLEANER (Dec. 2003)

          This here is a story of friendship and betrayal in New York City, and it's a shallow story.
          For years I'd gone to this Asian dry cleaning shop. I and the owner-- and of course, being a true New Yorker, I never learned her name-- did our friendly chitchat, and we developed a store friendship.
          So one day I brought her a zippered sweater for cleaning. A few days later I picked it up and brought it home. I looked at it there-- the zipper was totally busted! Instead of telling me she'd broken it she'd closed the sweater with a safety pin and handed it to me as if everything was okay!
          I returned immediately.
          I asked her why she hadn't told me what she did.
          For the first time in all our years-- her smile of friendship faded.
          She refused to fix it. No way. And she refused to reimburse me.
          This was the first time in all our years together that I'd asked for anything beyond the routine. I started to get angry-- then turned on my heels and walked out. I have never been back. I do not even look into the window of her store when I pass.
          You see, New York City is this humanity-filled but lonely place where millions of people form..."relationships" with their storekeepers. We hesitate to admit, to ourselves or others, how important these relationships are, even though we may never learn names or ask one personal question or share one personal secret. The extent to which these store relationships substitute for real friendship, love and family-- to answer that is pathetic.
          How...deeply...our storekeepers can hurt us.

 

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