A bit after 3:30 am the three of us, the three remaining members of the editorial team in New York, closed up our New York office and headed home. As I was walking up 6th Avenue a man with an iPhone and a headset came up to me asking me, pointing at his iPhone, asking some question. I was bewildered enough by the events of the evening that I had a hard time making sense of anything. He was an immigrant from some African country, not a native English speaker and speaking broken but mainly understandable English.
After several failed starts communicating, I understood that he wanted to know how to listen to the news on his iPhone. He had his browser open to the CNN website. I truly had no idea. He poked around. I suggested a few things. It was hard to understand each other and I had no answer anyway.
I was tired, half numb, out of every kind of energy. Eventually I gave up. I said I was sorry. I didn’t know. And then I said, “But I can tell you what happened.”
“Who won?”
“Trump won.”
“Fini?” Hand gestures.
“Yeah, all done. It’s over. Trump won.”
We looked at each other for an awkward moment, some mix of genial smiles, a bit of recognition or uncertainty. I wasn’t sure. I wanted to know what he thought. But I realized that he didn’t know what I thought. We smiled at each other for a moment and then kept walking our separate ways.
