For a seemingly endless span of time I worked as a jazz musician by night and an underpaid, disgruntled bicycle salesman/mechanic by day. Metro Bicycles sat dankly on the corner of Forty-ninth Street and Seventh Avenue in the heart of Hell's Kitchen, a neighborhood that once had an abundance of sooty charm.

Its dingy bars were filled with washed up writers, jazz musicians and off-duty hookers always ready to enter into a conversation with the guy from the bike shop. Times had certainly changed and I was going to change with it. I could no longer stand the idea of going to that jail cell of a shop at eight in the morning in the frigid New York City winter air. I remember the glorious feeling I had on that one particularly cold morning when I told myself that it was going to be my last day in that jail.

I had arrived perfectly on time with a grand smile upon my face. The Buddha was waltzing along with me on this fine blustery blizzard-ridden morning. As I turned the corner with a fresh hot coffee in my hands, extra sweet like the smiling Pakistani store owner always insisted I have it, I saw Martha standing by the roll-up gate waiting for me to help her. She was the epitome of a mid-winter New Yorker, cold and pessimistic one moment, bright and cheerful the next. On that day she was the former, complete with frowned face and interrogatingly nasty voice.

"What are you smiling about?" she said with complete absence of emotion, except maybe jealousy.

I decided not to even answer her; she might get the hint that I was quitting and rattle something off to the boss when he called to make sure all of the mechanics and salesman showed up to work, on time. After shaking her off, we opened the store and I volunteered, as usual, to do the sweeping of the sidewalk. This was a job nobody else ever wanted to do, but I found solace in it, maybe because it presented the chance to be outside the shop doors.

Slowly and methodically sweeping every little speck of grime and funk into a line of neat little piles, I had only one thought in my mind I knew would help me get through the day, that it was going to be the last one at Metro Bicycles, but I needed more. So I focused on the fact that at six p.m., I would be leaving that dingy little pit of despair on my way to what was going to be my very last dreadful commute back to West Seventy-fifth Street from Hell's Kitchen in rush hour. I had been living for well over one year in a rent controlled apartment on West Seventy-fifth Street, which meant I had to walk from Forty-ninth and Seventh to the Times Square subway station and catch the Two train up to West Seventy-ninth Street. This was perhaps the worst part of my day, every day that I worked at Metro Bicycles. The thought of ending that vicious cycle and the one of selling bicycles both at the same time brought back that Buddha-like smile to my sad and tired face. In fact, that thought of the killing off of the Hell of the West Side rush hour commute got me through the rest of the day quite painlessly.

The day went by much faster than I had expected. The three shots of Johnny Walker I had during lunch must have affected my perception of the passing of time. There were also virtually no customers, save for a few distraught bike messengers that came in with flat tires and broken spokes, due to getting hit by irate cab drivers.

Finally, I did it. I told Martha I was not going to be coming back the next day or any day thereafter. She took pride in letting me know how irresponsible I was by not letting the company know earlier that I was leaving, but by this point nothing could get rid of the smile on my face, not even her accusatory scowl. I said goodbye to the mechanics, mostly illegal ex-patriots from Mexico, Argentina and Venezuela and joyously walked out of Metro Bicycles, sliding my arms through the sleeves of my winter coat along the way. Strolling back out onto the freshly dirtied sidewalk, I made no attempt to look back and get one last glance of the place I was hopefully never going to see again.

The light snow had turned into a full blizzard and the wind felt like ice cold sewing needles stabbing at my face. I leaned into it, quickening my pace as I fought my way across Forty-ninth over to Seventh where I began to walk down to Forty-second. My nose was running and simultaneously freezing on my upper lip, but I was not about to take my hands out of my pockets to try and wipe my face. My eyes were beginning to freeze in the sockets when I finally reached the entrance to the Times Square station. Like everybody else around me, I stood at the foot of the stairs while I wiped my face and shook the snow from my hair and clothes. The station was buzzing with people. It was hot, musty and completely ridden with hundreds of people running around obtusely, like ants in a frantic search for their army. That gleeful and confident feeling I had as I walked out of the shop ceased to exist as I was slapped across the face by the inevitable reality of being stuffed onto the Two train with hundreds of Yuppies. I tried to remember that this was going to be the last time, maybe ever, that I would have to relive this nightmare, but it was no use. I had been in New York too long to be able to fool myself into a pleasant mood during rush hour.

In no hurry to get to the train I took my time walking through the station, stopping to listen to a few of the musicians who took advantage of the large crowds at times like these. There was the young woman who was a spitting image of Big Mamma Thornton, singing her heart out to a boom box, playing tapes of Whitney Houston and Aretha Franklin. Of course, there was the Ecuadorian Indian band that always had a crowd completely engrossed in the soothing sound of the many wooden pan flutes and percussion instruments. Occasionally a person in a business suit would stop and stare at the musicians like an android who had just had its first humanistic emotion before returning to an almost running speed toward a train platform. I was finally beginning to thaw out when I started walking through the tunnel to the northbound platforms. I found myself looking around as though to take a mental photograph of the strangely organized manner that people traverse the tunnel. There was the regular bump on the elbow by someone who was running to meet a train, but for the most part there were two lanes of traffic, coming and going. Once at the end of the tunnel all order ceased and I was on my own to maneuver within the mess. Like a robot with freshly replaced batteries I began to walk to the number Two train with little or no emotion left in my body.

As usual, there were hundreds of people standing impatiently along the platform, some leaning far over the edge in desperate hope of seeing the train barreling toward them. I caught myself looking as well - a watched pot never boils. Standing on the edge, sliding my foot across the surface of those wretched yellow traction bumps, I found myself, once again, staring ponderously down upon the murky surface of the tracks. Looking at those tracks has always brought with it a feeling of utter darkness. They are the symbol of the slimy, smelly, bile ridden stomach lining of the bottom of all that is New York City. Cat sized rats, black water, cigarette buts, an occasional odd piece of clothing and batteries, batteries, batteries. Batteries and that black, festering bile juice that is the river of life for the big hairy mutant rats occupying the depths of the subway. Staring down at this underworld within a world had become a bit of a hobby for me during these hateful commutes. While others paced, peered down the tunnel, listened to music, talked to themselves or read the paper, I quietly scrutinized the bum of the subway in an absurd attempt at communing with the bedraggled reality of a New York City subway station during rush hour.

My scrutiny was quickly abolished as the light at the end of the tunnel became clearer and the screech of the iron horse neared. Soon I was being shoved and thwarted at every angle until finally I was placed in my slot within the sardine can. I sucked in my gut in an attempt to make more room for the doors to close. It was clear that this was going to be one of the worst rides ever. After all, it was Friday and everybody wanted to get home as quick as possible, especially the East Side Yuppies trying desperately to get to one of the many over priced restaurants along Broadway. People were pressed up against me in every direction. Had I been claustrophobic, I most certainly would have had a fit.

The rustle of newspapers was close to deafening and I couldn't imagine how anyone could manage to read one when I didn't even have room to move my arms. People will stop at nothing to distract themselves from their unfavorable surroundings.

As I looked around, the same old images pounced upon my perceptions; the dull shine of smudged metal walls, the old and defiled adverts along the ceiling edges, the sweat-covered bars and scraped-up windows and people crammed into every conceivable place.

Nearing the end of the tunnel, coming into Seventy-ninth Street, the lights flickered, as if to tell us that it was time to break for coffee on the set. Most every passenger, including myself, was standing in utter silence. Emerging back into the frigid air, free of the commute and my job I saw a man walk by with a sweatshirt that read, 'New York, where the weak are killed and eaten.'

There are times when I find myself in situations similar to that day, but now I have that memory to bring back the Buddha smile to my face.

Born and raised in the artistically fertile region of the San Francisco Bay Area, Christopher Robin Cox moved to New York City in 1991 to study music at one of its many prestigious institutions. Cox currently resides in Budapest, Hungary where he is busy working on his first novel.