This Just Happened And I Am Pissed

An unusually quiet evening on my block in the Fort Greene section of Brooklyn turned upside down when I heard the terrifying screams of the girl who lives one floor above me shortly after midnight.

I hate to say it, but the first seemed like nothing more than one of those neighborhood sounds that blend in with the kids and cats and car alarms on a nightly basis. The tenants who were in for the night probably just chalked it up, as I did, to living in Brooklyn.

But there have been three previous attacks on my small block in the last year, and by the time I'd thought of that a moment later, take a wild guess what happened.

Sure enough, that second scream sent me flying down my nearly 20-yard hallway into the kitchen. I grabbed the biggest knife I could find, then ran shirtless and shoeless back to my front door and down the steps. By the time I got out in front of the building, though, the damage was done. My neighbor emerged from the side of the building with blood all over her face. She said the guy went "that way."

I'd never met the neighbor before, but this wasn't the night for introductions. I've also never been at a woman's side 60 seconds after her life was changed forever, so the right words — often easy for me — betrayed my intentions. I just wanted my neighbor to be OK, but I know it will be a little while before that happens again.

Once she took a seat on the step and waited for the cops to arrive — a gal said through a second-floor window that she'd already called 911 — a few more neighbors streamed outside to find out what happened. I liked that most of them stayed out there with our new survivor-friend for the hour or so it took before she gave in to the officers' urges that she get in the ambulance and hustle to the hospital.

I honestly have no idea what I would have done with that gigantic knife had I come face-to-face with the scumbag who got away with my neigbor's wallet. It's been more than 20 years since my last fist-fight, and that wasn't exactly a display in skilled combat.

But now that 90 minutes have passed and I'm back in the safety of my quiet apartment, wondering what I would have done is irrelevant. I've got a neighbor to pray for.

This Just Happened

Not that my Fort Greene neighborhood that I've called home for 13 months is Brooklyn's answer to Gross Pointe, but I figured if I was going to encounter any unsavories on my journey home Monday night, it would have been closer to Bedford-Stuyvesant.

Because the MTA is the most disorganized government-run agency in America, I never know if I should hop on an A train (typically express) after the evening commute because sometimes -- not never, but not always -- it makes local stops in place of the normally local C train on the same blue line. C trains run far less frequently than the A, so I hopped on the latter when it pulled up moments after I strolled into the High Street/Brooklyn Bridge station.

What's odd is that the A train's first three express stops in Brooklyn are the same three local stops the C makes, and because you can never hear the conductor's announcements, you really never know that you've stepped onto the wrong train until you see the Lafayette signs flying by.

So the A train finally stopped three stations after Lafayette, and I figured I'd allow myself an interesting 30-minute, after-dark walk home from the Nostrand Avenue stop in Bed-Stuy.

But it wasn't until after I'd walked a mile and gotten just a couple blocks from my home that I was asked by the most cracked-out-looking excuse for a grown man if I wanted to buy a pet taxi for $5.