When I casually glanced over my shoulder, the man was sprinting after me, murder in his eyes...

The year was 1982 and I was 24, an actress, living in Hell’s Kitchen, a midtown area on Manhattan’s west side. There, I rented a small one bedroom apartment on the second floor of a building between 9th and 10th Avenues, not a particularly safe neighborhood. One morning I came out of my building, groggy, on my way to work, when I literally ran into yellow crime scene tape protecting an area on the sidewalk across from my apartment. A man had been stabbed to death. I knew the area was dangerous but I had gotten cocky.

One lovely Wednesday afternoon near dusk I was preparing to leave my building on my way downtown when I was greeted by a pungent odor. The entrance to the four-story walkup had two sets of doors; the outer one to keep the weather out, and the inner locked one to keep intruders out. On and off during the past month or so, a vagrant had taken to sleeping between the inner and outer set of doors and sitting for hours on the stoop. He was at least six-feet tall, large and unwashed, and I always had to quash my fear as I stepped over or around him. The police had been called a few times and herded him away from my doorstep but he always seemed to return as if drawn by a magnet. Earlier in the week as I left the building, I trailed another woman on the stairs who was on her way out. As she reached the front doors, I noticed that our resident street person had once again draped himself across the entryway. I don’t know if this was her normal style, or if she was emboldened because there were now two of us, but she quickly whipped open the door and shouted, "Out! Get out! You don’t belong here! That’s right. Sit up. Move it! You aren’t supposed to be here. Get out!"

Like molasses on a cold day he slowly sat, then stood. He stepped outside and as my neighbor stood glowering, he shuffled down the stairs and moved off down the street, perhaps to haunt another doorway. Filled with indignation the woman watched until he was well on his way, then she turned the opposite direction and stomped off, still in a huff.

On this particular evening, when I saw that he was back, I paused on the step, frozen in indecision. Should I return to my apartment and call the police again? If I did that I would be late for an appointment. Should I open the door and simply step over him like I had in the past? This option made my skin crawl. I had done it, but I hadn’t liked it. Then I thought of my neighbor’s tactic for making the man move.

Well, why, not? I thought. Mentally I fortified myself, It’s my entrance, not his. The more I thought about it, the more justified I felt. I pay rent here – he does not.

Soon I was ready to battle the demon at my door, slay the dragon, fight for my rights as a tenant. Before you could say, "Whoa, wait a minute, here," I was filled with the righteousness of someone young and foolish, one who had never been subjected to truly devastating events in her own life. Sure, I had lost people I had loved, broken up with boyfriends, given a rotten audition or two, been homesick, been ill and yet, even though I had lived in New York City for years on my own, I was still immature and naive, untouched by true misery.

As I reached the front door, I stood tall and tried to look tough, a caricature of someone older, wiser and in charge. Swinging the door open I yelled in my best rendition of what I had seen my neighbor do. "Get up and get out! Move it. This isn’t a place to sleep!"

I continued to rant as he hoisted himself up from his cold, hard bed between the doors and made his way out to my stoop. But it wasn’t enough. I wanted him gone.

"Now, keep going! You know you aren’t supposed to be here. It is private property. Move down the street."

And so he moved – slowly, gingerly. When I think of it now, I am reminded of crocodiles that I have watched from the safety of a bridge over a river in Costa Rica. You know in your heart that they are dangerous but they seem so placid in the sun. The really large crocs, 20 feet long or more, draw your eye and you want to stare and prod them to action just to see what they will do. Although they can be deceptively still, the power in their massive bodies is unleashed when given cause to move. A frenzy of activity, frothy and violent, erupts when a chicken carcass is dropped their way.

Satisfied that I had moved the street person from my doorstep and into the street where he belonged, I sauntered down the sidewalk, heading for the bus stop. A few moments later, when I casually glanced over my shoulder, the man was sprinting after me. In a burst of adrenaline I ran. My high heels weren’t made for running, but I did it anyway. In a panic, I rounded the corner of 10th avenue and dashed into a little bodega where I knew the owner, a large Polish man who had been polite to me over the years. Hastily, I scurried to the back of his narrow store and darted behind him, just as the enraged vagrant slid into view and stood quivering at the entrance to the store. He lifted his big paw and pointed a finger right at me: "You, you, I’ll get you!"

I was shaking. I knew that if I had not found cover I would have been in serious trouble, beaten or dead. It had yet to set in that I still had to go home that night and face the man, if he was still there. I was safe for the moment.

The Polish storeowner, Mr. Nijinsky, clearly wasn’t pleased. "You can’t run in here to get away from trouble. I don’t want trouble on my doorstep."

After a bit of breathing space, when I got my trembling under control, I apologized to Mr. Nijinsky and promised it would never happen again. Privately, I wished he had been more sympathetic. He could have at least called the police or something. Hesitantly, I went to the doorway and looked down the street in both directions and saw that the coast was clear.

I was too shaken to take a bus. I hailed a taxi and rode downtown to meet Shya, whom I was dating at the time, and to do some volunteer work, which had been my evening plans before I had been so rudely and almost violently interrupted. When I sat next to Shya’s desk at work, I began to cry. My breath came in gulps, my eyes spurting hot tears as I gasped out my story. Shya took my hand, sat back in his chair and became very still.

I began to relax, my sobs quieted and I became calmer. Yet my mind kept flicking back to thoughts of what might have been had I not glanced back, of what would have happened if the man had caught up to me. Images of him flashed, framed by the store’s doorway, quivering and barely able to control his rage.

Shya leaned forward, looking intently at me. "Ariel, we have to go back there and you have to apologize to that man. You forgot. He’s a human being and you just treated him like dirt."

This was certainly not what I had expected to hear. I expected sympathy, outrage, and fear on my behalf. But in an instant I, too, became still. Shya was right. I could feel it in my heart. I could feel it in my skin and muscles and my shoulders as they dropped. As I sat there, I realized it had been a mistake to emulate my neighbor. Just because I had seen another person act that way did not make it the right thing to do, and it certainly didn’t make it true for me. I started to remember things about the vagrants I had seen in Portland, Oregon when I was a child. Their desolation had touched me so much that in my childhood innocence I often had daydreams of bringing them home with us and making them feel better. My sisters and I had frequently remembered them in our prayers. I began to cry again as I found myself wondering what had happened to my innocence. Shya sat back and let me weep.

I did my volunteer work that evening but my mind kept roving between what had just happened and what was to be. I kept bringing my scattered thoughts back to what I was doing but it was a challenge. Soon it was 11pm and time to go home.

This was when Shya still rode his motorcycle, a blue Yamaha 650 Special affectionately called, "Old Blue." We got on and rode back to Hell’s Kitchen to meet the devil that had been in front of my door. Truthfully the devil was my pride and it was time I swallowed some, but I didn’t know if the man would be there. If he were, what I would say?

We cruised down West 49th street to my home, number 454, a brownstone on the left side. The man was not on my steps, nor in front of my entryway. He had moved one doorway further down to a vacant building. There he lay, at the top of the steps, reeking and still, but I knew the potential for danger was simply slumbering and could awake in an instant. Shya slowly glided the bike past my building and coasted to a stop at the bottom of the steps where the vagrant slept. As we approached, the fellow eased himself into a sitting position and glared down at me from above. I swung my leg over, stepped off the bike and approached alone.

I could tell the man was preparing for more abuse. His shoulders hunched. He gripped the step.

"Sir," I said in a quavering voice. "I am here to apologize. I spoke badly to you today and it was wrong of me. I’m sorry."

Now, suddenly, I realized what I needed to let this individual know. "You see, the truth is, I’m afraid of you. You are a lot bigger than me and when I come down the steps and you are on my stoop or in front of the doors I get scared. I just tried to get you to move because I was afraid. But I was mean. I hope you will forgive me because it wasn’t right. I am really, truly sorry."

I stood looking up and he sat there looking down. But I knew that I had spoken to him, person-to-person, equal-to-equal, admitting my fear and asking for his compassion for my situation. And in so doing I found my compassion for his situation, too.

I never spoke with him again. But then, he never sat in front of my door again either. I was careful coming and going from my home for a while, but on those days when he was sitting on the steps next door he was not moved to bother me. I would cautiously nod my head in passing as I went about my day.

I later learned that the man’s name was Mr. Fitzgerald. He had once owned the brownstone across the street from my apartment before he fell on hard times. This was before, as street legend had it, his wife had died tragically at a young age from some condition that no one in the neighborhood seemed to remember.

He was drawn to my doorstep as if by a magnet. He used to stare at the home where his beloved wife had died. I don’t know what ever became of Mr. Fitzgerald. He drifted away in time and I went on with my life. But I do know that he taught a foolish young woman a simple yet poignant lesson about compassion.

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