The nervous tick of my watch beats symphatically with the race of my heart. I lift my head from the newspaper that covers my face, and peer around the busy coffee shop. It is a murky Tuesday midmorning and the hustle and bustle of people rushing to get to the office on time, racing in and out the door calling for “double shots” and “no that’s not my order” along with the clamor of hectic business people making and taking calls. No one notices me tucked away in the corner, and that’s the way I’d like to keep it. Nervously I glance at my watch again, ten till eleven. Hurriedly I toss my paper into the waste basket, not even quite sure what I had just read, and rush out the door leaving the noisy coffee shop din behind me. Outside my face is met with the hard lashes of New York’s ongoing downpour. A taxi races by in a yellow blur splashing water up onto the curbside. A girl carrying a coffee cask hardly pauses as she jumps out of the wave’s path and continues her frantic conversation with the blackberry pressed up under her chin. I pull out my umbrella and join the bustling crowd of midmorning commuters rushing up 5th and Broadway. I hear the obnoxious exclaims of a woman, as she shouts a few choice words to the unfortunate soul on the other end of her telephone, meanwhile a man absorbed in a fresh copy of the New York Times while struggling to hold onto his Great Dane huff and puff past me on my right. I glance down at my watch again, six till eleven. My brain lurches into a panic, and my heart beats a little quicker. The loud sounds of angry horns and cussing drivers clutter in my ears mixing with shuffle of thousands of patent leather shoes and clicking Manolo Blanicks along the gritty New York cement. Each of the street goers completely oblivious to any of the other thousand people all living the same routine. A couple stop dead in the street to pour over a tourist map and snap a few photos of the soaring skyline above while the irate business class makes it audibly clear what they think of tourists. To meet the tourist’s cliental a man in a scruffy coat and Hawaiian tee-shirt calls out “souvenirs, tee shirts, mugs, and tours right here!” Most of the black clad work force hardly pay a second glance as they type out a few business plans on their iphones or score a last second business deal on their Blutooth. The day has just begun.