It was a regretful week in New York. A 19-year-old arrested for the murder of a young actress on the Lower East Side was observed weeping noisily as detectives drove him away—perhaps from a pang of conscience, perhaps out of self-pity at being caught. A teenage cook in a Bronx McDonald’s was arrested for mixing shards of glass into a police officer’s Big Mac and declared that he wished to apologize to his victim, who suffered cuts to his mouth and throat. A 49-year-old woman who evidently regretted her entire existence tried to end it by leaping off the Queensboro Bridge; after falling a few dozen feet, however, she banged into scaffolding left over from an old paint job and was saved by a rescue team, thus obtaining a new lease on life. Some New Yorkers rued their New Year’s resolution to prepay twenty sessions with a personal trainer now that, laziness having reasserted itself, they have gone AWOL from their gyms. Others, examining their parched, aged-looking skin, were remorseful that they had not done more to protect it from the dry winter weather. Still others regretted that they had applied Preparation H under their eyes to make the puffiness go away, saying it made them feel rather like an asshole. Jeffrey Jah, one of the owners of Lotus, wished he hadn’t blabbed to a Brazilian magazine about celebrities who frequent his nightclub, like Paris Hilton, who had to be carried, drunk, from her own party; Naomi Campbell, who prefers not to pay her check; and David Blaine, who bridles at entering the VIP room if David Copperfield is there. (One magician in a VIP room is annoying; two merely absurd.) Transit Authority president Larry Reuter regretted having alarmed straphangers by telling them it might take five years to get the C train running again when it actually took nine days. Jerry Lewis regretted his decision to dine at Joe Allen when he saw Joan Rivers enter the restaurant, hurriedly asking for his check. And Björk regretted dancing with a gaggle of lesbians at 151 on Rivington Street—or did she? By week’s end, New Yorkers were more than willing to heed the sage’s advice to those consumed by regret: Do all you can to mitigate the harm caused by your behavior, and resolve not to be so foolish again.

Related:

• Archive: “It Happened Last Week”
• Articles by Jim Holt
• Table of Contents: Feb 14, 2005 issue of New York | Subscribe!