Spike Lee Saw Me

I was standing at the corner of Broadway and McCullough waiting for the light to turn when a spotless black Escalade the size of a small elephant pulled up at the intersection and stopped not five feet from me. The windows were heavily tinted, but the late-afternoon sunlight slashed its way inside. I looked in the middle row of seats and made out chunky white glasses, a brown cheek, a swath of a Knicks jersey, the glow of a smartphone screen. I filled in the rest.

Spike Lee.

He was in San Antonio for Game Three of the NBA Finals between the Spurs and Knicks and staying at the Hotel Emma a mile or so up Broadway. Most of the recognizable people who come here stay at the Hotel Emma. The phantoms who run this city promote it heavily because it’s the one hotel in the region that shows rich, out-of-state meritocrats that Texas understands and cares about them, despite all their trepidations about the state’s rotten politics and backwardness.

Spike shifted like he was uncomfortable and suddenly his body was in a shaft of light that illuminated him fully. He glowed in fact. The moment the light turned green, he looked me in the eye, and it was like a movie camera moving through a closed screen door, bursting from interior to exterior.

The Escalade lurched away from me. Spike was gone but he had seen me. My mind was ablaze with the question of what the great Spike Lee would make of me.