Teddy Glacier

 “I don’t believe you collect glaciers, young man, and you do a disservice to the very definition of the word truth,” a woman twice my age insisted with some urgency as she came up to me while I was at a frankfurter stand half a block south of Central Park in the City.

A very well-kept matron, classically styled top to bottom. Hair. Makeup. Nails. The works. My guess was Fifth Avenue or Park Avenue, old money type fierce with indignation and determination.

“You read the article in The Wall Street Journal yesterday on the acceleration of atmospheric warming in which I was quoted.”

“Such nonsense,” she protested. “Who collects glaciers?”

“I agree. I would be just as suspicious of him,” the husky Giovanni Leonetti grinned.

“Hey.”

“Would you like a frankfurter?” Giovanni asked.

“Yes. One of your finest, on me, my good man, for this charming woman.”

“They’re the only aged, handcrafted artisan frankfurters in the city,” Leonetti added with pride.

The woman was now flustered. “I know frankfurters, sir, and I doubt they are as good as you claim. My grandfather was the Frankfurter Critic for the New York Times Gazette. A brilliant chemist and nutritionist.”

“You’re David Foster Grant’s granddaughter?” I asked, impressed.

“In the flesh.”

“Remarkable. You’re very pretty.”

“It’s remarkable that I’m pretty?”

“I don’t think that’s what he meant,” Giovanni said in my defense.

“We all know what he meant,” she snapped back.

Jesus, David Foster Grant’s granddaughter. I imagined myself to be a very minor celebrity. In comparison to David Foster Grant, an incidental feather in the winds of time. And someone who should not have accepted the Wall Street Journal’s invitation to participate in the discussion on accelerating climate change. My ego got the best of me. It’s happened before.

“There, right there,” she answered, her voice approaching outrage. “A true gentleman would have apologized, which is not what you did. That was, at best, an inferred apology.”

A strange woman walks up to me and calls me a liar and wants an apology. For what? Two years from now her family fortune will pale in comparison to mine.

“Ma’am, I have no idea who you are, and an apology is what you owe me for your hostility. That said, if I’ve said anything to offend you, that was not my intention.”

Giovanni handed her a fully loaded frankfurter, which she ignored.

# # #

There are approximately 198,000 glaciers across the globe. Alaska has an estimated 100,000. There are outlet glaciers, valley glaciers, cirque glaciers, tidewater glaciers, and ice streams. Glaciers are usually divided into two groups: Alpine glaciers, which form on mountainsides and move downward through valleys, and Continental ice sheets, which spread out and cover larger areas. Earth’s two ice sheets cover most of Greenland and Antarctica and account for most of the world’s glacial ice.

In the last five years, I have collected “buy” options from different governmental officials to purchase about 15 percent of all the glaciers on earth. I’ll have another 11.5 percent in hand by the end of the year.

Where there are glaciers, there is fresh water. And where there is a growing water crisis in most of the African continent and South American countries, glaciers turn from crystal white to money green.

# # #

A pizza delivery boy skidded through a crowd of the curious and came to a screeching halt on his bike, stopping inches from the woman, who seemed indifferent to the distraction.

“If I may,” he said, “I heard most of the last few words of your conversation. I just wanted to mention, if this is helpful, according to my research as a teaching scholar of linguistics at Princeton, an apology is a voluntary expression of regret or remorse for actions that have caused someone else to feel hurt or disrespected. You should apologize when: You’ve hurt, insulted, or teased someone; you’ve broken or lost something that belongs to someone else; you’ve been unfair or harsh; you’ve done something you knew was wrong, like lying, spreading rumors, or breaking a rule; you’ve behaved in a disrespectful way; you’ve judged someone too harshly or unfairly.”

“Here, take this,” Giovanni said, handing the kid the rejected steaming frankfurter. It was wolfed down in seconds followed by a burp and a very sincere “thank you.”

While the young man was making a case in support of my disingenuous nature, my attention had shifted from the standoff to an impenetrable stretch of low-hanging clouds far to the north of Central Park. The color of the formation was peculiar. Not quite natural.

“So, you say,” the woman retorted, calmed and duly impressed with the young man.

“An apology is a form of accountability that acknowledges the pain you’ve caused and promises to do better in the future,” he continued. “The goal of an apology is to restore the relationship between the people involved, and forgiveness is usually the desired outcome.”

“We appreciate your help,” I said, interested in solving the minor conflict.

A crowd had slowly gathered around the frankfurter cart, a few dozen at most, and close enough to hear what was going on and remained respectfully still.

The young man was well-groomed and holstered the same CC9 Heckler Koch 9mm I carry. He glanced up at the cloud formation breaching the far northern reaches of the park, then down at his Patek Philippe watch, cursed himself, made his salutations, and biked away through the thicket of spectators.

# # #

In the last few years, so much of humanity was on edge or feeling vulnerable and uncertain that whenever a street argument broke out, someone stepped forward to take bets on the outcome. Those who made street bets were most often souls who could no longer manage their own uncertainties and were eager for the distraction of strangers.

I couldn’t hear what the odds were, but I knew we were surrounded by sporadic wagering.

“Well,” she said in calm resolve, “I’m calling the police.”

“Oh, please don’t do that.”

“Why? You don’t look like you collect glaciers, and I’ll bet you have a lifelong list of felonies from theft, to bank robbery, to smuggling drugs to God knows a host of the nefarious.”

Giovanni turned to me. “You’re busted.”

“Yeah.”

“I agree. A horrible, foul fellow,” Giovanni said, laughing at me.

Giovanni made a handsome living from his 142 Frankfurter carts scattered around every park in the City. From my contacts at City Hall, I knew he was a highly regarded source of local street intelligence. No one in the city had a better sense of potential criminality than Giovanni Leonetti.

“Maybe I can offer you some kind of compensation in return for your forgiveness.”

“He deserves to go to jail,” Giovanni added. “I know him. Go ahead. Make the call.”

She held off. “What did you have in mind?”

“A one-time offer. You understand.”

The woman shifted in place, uncertain of what to expect. “I’m listening,” her fingers hovering over her cell phone.

“I have five dollars in my pocket. All singles. I can give them to you if you put your phone down and promise you will not call the police or authorities of any kind. That’s five dollars cash in unmarked, non-sequential, small bills that will never be counted by the IRS as income.”

“You think you can trust her?” Giovanni asked.

“In a strange way, I do,” I said, pulling the bills from my pants pocket.

Besides being angry, I think she was having other, more deeply personal issues and my claim to be collecting glaciers was a bridge too far. But the more her breath settled, and her indignation eased, there was a sweet charm about her. With all she renounced, I felt she was a genuine, caring person.

She reached into her purse and pulled out a wallet overflowing with photos. She selected one of the beautiful young women. Stunning, soft, and radiant. “My niece,” she said, scooping up the five bills from my hand.

“You must be very proud,” I said, unable to take my eyes off the girl, who was probably three or four years younger.

“There is a clock, the Tiffany Street Clock over there,” she said, pointing toward the corner of Fifth Ave and 59th Street. “My niece will be there at noon tomorrow. If you’re not, I will call the police, the FBI, CIA, MI6, DEVGRU, and the ASPCA. I will claim I recognized you as a wanted murderer, drug dealer, gun runner, and womanizing leader of the black market in halvah. You wouldn’t last a day.”

“Halvah? Really?” Giovanni said to me, barely holding back a grin. “Who keeps secrets like that from a friend?”

I extended my hand, and the woman reached out in exchange. “Thanks for your kindness. Have a wonderful day.”

“And you as well,” she replied with the beginning of a smile.

# # #

 “The girl is beautiful.”

“Yeah,” I said in somewhat of a distracted daze.

The cloud bank that first caught my attention had drifted closer. More distinct in its unnaturalness. From a distance, it blazed with chameleon determination and finally revealed itself as plaid.

There had been suggestions, though not a recognized theory that any scientist would put their name to, running back to Galileo Galilei to Kepler, Hubble, to Caroline Payne-Gaposchkin, and as recently as Miriam Rubin, that something was amiss in our lower atmosphere.

“You going to come back tomorrow at noon?”

Why hadn’t I made the connection first? I’m Teddy Glacier, and I missed what had to be an interaction between an alien pizza delivery boy and an alien cloud formation?

That’s why he was around. That’s how he overheard the conversation.

In the last decade, maybe earlier, there had been increased credible sightings of UFOs. Expert witnesses from fighter pilots to birdwatchers with powerful binoculars. “Aliens were coming. Aliens were here among us,” blazed in small to big city headlines with increasing regularity.

“No.”

“Are you nuts? That woman was serious. You want to get ass fucked by DEVGRU?”

“I’ll be camping out all night under that damn clock, so I don’t miss her tomorrow.”

“Then you’re going to need at least a dozen fully loaded frankfurters.”

“Anyone ever tell you that you’re a scoundrel?”

“You, my wife, my kids. Most of my friends and family,” Giovanni chuckled.

We fist bumped each other, and I walked away five dollars lighter. I crossed Fifth Avenue and slumped down against the tall stanchion supporting the Tiffany Street Clock. I glanced north toward the alien formation, trying to imagine a name that would sufficiently describe the beauty of a certain niece.