Baby Bottom Business

I see a lady changing diapers. She is young, slim and fashionably dressed, with long black spaghetti hair that hangs over the boy like a curtain, and privatizes one end of him. Not the end where the pants would be. She tilts him like a big bottle being emptied out onto the table, holding the little guy’s feet way high up in the air and wiping his bottom clean. And no, I don’t politely look away. Something about this domestic scene is... puzzling. His pudgy naked legs are the length of a toddler’s but that’s not it. Adult and child are behind glass, within some kind of business. I smell petrol. Wait, wait a minute: let me get my bearings. High-strung taxis honk-honk at snowflakes (check); shivering people brush me by (check); beneath my boots, gruesome-gray sidewalk slush (check). All evidence points to my being outdoors. The woman and child, they must be indoors. A place with tables and chairs and signs, at street level. I am out here and they are in there. Public, private. Out here a cannon-ball of a stranger nearly bowls me over. In there, those two, they are behind the floor-to-ceiling window of a... could that be a...? Inside, waitstaff stand at a pastry counter. Copper espresso machine. Soft naked baby butt flattened against a granite and glass table. Yes, yes that is a restaurant. The boy, a living centerpiece, lays spread-eagled on the commandeered table, the setting accented by a white, wrinkly vase. Except it’s not a vase. It’s a used diaper wad. Above the domestic childcare scene tall antiquey gold letters read, “Fine Specialities” and “Fresh Pasta.” I politely look away. One quick step and I’m swept away by the living sidewalk. New York City, I see through your white pampered underbelly.