Pounding the Pavement (32 page)

And see. That’s the problem. He is fine. Perfectly fine. I would love nothing more than to find something wrong with him, something I detest, any little quirk I could force myself to replay over and over again in my head that would make leaving him the easiest thing in the world. Instead, he’s been positively wonderful. When he eats, he chews his food thoughtfully, looking up from his dinner plate every now and then to check on me. To make sure my water is always full, to pass me the Parmesan, to grind more pepper for me. He frowns when he notices I’ve hardly touched my gnocchi at all.

“You don’t like it,” he says. He sounds dejected. Like he’s the one who failed me, not the pasta.

“I’m just not all that hungry.”

“Here.” He sets down his fork. “Have the rest of my chicken parmigiana. It’s really good.”

“Really, Jake. I’m okay.”

“Just try it,” he insists, thrusting the plate at me. I know it’s no use arguing with him. I take his plate and hand him mine, knowing full well he can’t stand gnocchi. I force myself to swallow a bite.

“Good, right?” he asks, smiling hopefully.

“Yeah, very good.” I hand him back the plate. He waves it away.

“Nah, I’ve had enough. You finish it.”

The waiter clears the table fifteen minutes later. And still the topic of Aspen has yet to come up. Not my fault. He just never asked.

“I take it you don’t want dessert?”

“No, thanks,” I say glumly.

I pick up the check—really, it’s the least I can do. And by the time we get outside, I’ve replayed the line, “Jake, there’s something I need to tell you,” so many times in my head, it’s a wonder I haven’t yet said it out loud. Not even by mistake.

Jake hails a taxi. “Your place?” he asks.

“Sure.”

As soon as we’re in the cab, I lunge at him. I grip him by the arms and draw him toward me. Pull him on top of me, actually. And while we kiss, I wiggle beneath him until all our body parts click and lock into place. And then I hug him to me even tighter, pull him even closer, and the heavier he presses into me, the harder he crushes me, the smaller and safer I feel.

“What’s gotten into you?” he pants. His face is so close I can feel the heat of his breath against my neck.

“Shut up,” I tell him. Because the cab ride won’t last long enough. This evening won’t last long enough. This moment couldn’t possibly last long enough.

“J
ake, there’s something I need to tell you.”

There. I’ve finally said it. Only by now the words seem ridiculously inadequate. He’s already walked through my living room, somewhat perturbed to spot bare walls and a few empty bookshelves. And he’s already wandered into my bedroom, where he stopped cold once he discovered the boxes on the floor, half of them already packed and sealed.

“You’re going somewhere?” he asks.

“Aspen.”

“Why?”

“I got a job there.” I’d tell him more, but I find I respond better to direct questions.

“When do you leave?”

“Saturday.”

He winces and shakes his head, the way people do after throwing back shots of Jägermeister.

“When were you going to tell me this?”

“Over dinner.”

“The dinner we just had?”

“Yeah.”

“Funny, I don’t remember you saying anything about Aspen.”

“No.” I hang my head sheepishly. “But I meant to.”

Jake lifts a foot and aims it at one of the sealed boxes. For a moment, I think he’s about to kick it and send it flying. The thought of such an unexpected act of rage actually excites me. Instead, he taps it gently with his toe.

“Books?”

“Mostly.” I study his face, trying to read his expression. It remains infuriatingly blank. “You’re angry?”

“No.”

“You’re hurt?”

“No.” He shrugs. “Okay, maybe a little. But it’s not like I’m going to force you to change your mind.”

I didn’t realize it until he said it—but that’s exactly what I want him to do.

I grab his wrist. It stays limp in my hand, but I can feel his racing pulse.

“Jake, I don’t
have
to go. I know it sounds crazy, but this whole thing happened so quickly. I can still turn it down. If you want me to stay, you have to tell me.”

If his expression has become any more readable, I can’t tell. He isn’t even looking at me anymore. I can still feel his pulse race, but his hand stays limp. I feel like an idiot clinging to him like this. I give him back his hand, which he promptly shoves in his pocket.

“So, you want me to beg you not to go?”

“You don’t have to beg.” I look down to study my own hand, which feels empty without his. “Just tell me you want me to stay.”

He shakes his head. “I can’t do that.”

“So that’s it? We’re just going to end it like this?”

And that’s when he looks up. He glares at me in a way I hadn’t expected at all. Those hard, unforgiving eyes are the weapon he’s been concealing all along.

“
We
didn’t end anything,” he says coldly. And with that, he turns, carefully sidestepping the boxes so that he doesn’t trip on his way out.

When the door slams closed behind him, I deal a swift kick to the box of mostly books.

    At 1 p.m., on an unusually balmy August afternoon, I take a seat on the bench outside my apartment building and pull a manuscript out of my bag. I open it on my lap but don’t bother reading it just yet. Instead I scan the crowd of pedestrians, searching the frowning masses for any sign of a familiar face. The deli owner next door waves to me through the window. I wave back. He reaches for a Snickers bar and presses it against the glass. I shake my head, no thanks.

A heavy black woman waddles past me and smiles. “Hi, sugar,” she says. It takes me a moment, but when I run her though my head several times—in different places, in various roles—I put her in a uniform and place her on duty at her post by the ATMs of my neighborhood bank. So long, Miss Security Guard. Bye, sugar.

The subway station on the corner spits up its most recent wave of exiting commuters. Among them, Laurie, elbowing her way past the horde on the stairwell and jostling an elderly woman with her oversized messenger bag. She marches down the street to the beat of her own New York staccato, pausing for a stroller, veering right for a dog, leaping over a puddle beneath an air-conditioning unit.

A taxi screeches to a halt. The back door flies open, but Amanda waits patiently inside until her driver coughs up the exact
change and a receipt. She’ll offer him a buck and a smile to make the whole ride worthwhile.

Across the street, Princess shimmies past the storefronts, gazing into the windows to admire her voluptuous reflection. She’ll pause to examine the new season fashion displays and spy a scarf she simply must have. She’ll check her watch. Yes, she has another fifteen minutes to spare.

And directly below me, in the tunnels that meander underground, my headhunter, Mr. Mark Shapiro, is whizzing by in a number 2 express train, reading the
Wall Street Journal
. The market is still down, the unemployment rate is still high. He’s thrilled.

One of the New York City tour buses pulls off to the curb beside me. My mother and father step down, tightly gripping their wallets because they know this town is notorious for pickpockets. With the rest of their tour group, they’ll huddle in the middle of the sidewalk, mindlessly blocking pedestrian traffic, subject to rude shoves and evil glares. From what they see on this nondescript strip of Broadway—the Gap, Starbucks, identical apartment buildings—they won’t be impressed. They shuffle back onto the bus, wondering why on earth New York is such a big deal.

When the bus pulls away, there he is, across the street. Jake. He looks a little worse for wear, his hair disheveled, his clothes a mess, but there is light in his eyes and an enormous grin on his face, and he’s waving his arms in the air and shouting above traffic. And he’s saying—

“Hey, 4B!”

I blink. In front of me stands the postman, in his dapper blue shorts and knee-high black socks, digging into his mail cart. I check my watch. It is 1:23. He’s early.

“You expecting something good?” he asks.

“Not really.” I shrug. “But maybe I’ll be surprised.”

He chuckles. “One can always hope.” He hands me a small stack of envelopes.

“Actually, I was wondering if you had any change of address forms. My roommate told me I might be able to get them from you.”

“You’re moving? After all this time? That’s a damn shame.”

I offer him a helpless smile. “I got a job in Aspen.”

“Oh, yeah? Colorado, huh? I hear it’s nice out there.” He pulls a sheet from out of his bag and hands it to me.

“So, I just fill this out and take it to the post office?”

“If you know your new address, you can fill it out right here and I’ll take it with me.”

“You don’t mind?”

“It’s not a problem.”

“Thanks.” I put the form down on the bench. Until I procure a permanent residence in Aspen, I plan on having my mail temporarily forwarded to my parents’ home in Denver. As I jot down my childhood address, I feel a stab of nostalgia. How pathetic, how defeatist, to have ended up exactly where I started.

“You take care,” says the mailman, taking the form from me.

“You too.”

He heaves his mail cart onward and I take a seat back on the bench, wrapping my arms around myself to shield my bare arms from the unexpected chill in the air. Summer in New York is officially coming to a close, and the city no longer feels like an oppressive, sweaty palm crushing me facedown onto the pavement. New Yorkers walk taller when they sense autumn approaching, and I see they’ve already traded in their sluggish footfalls for a lighter, carefree bounce.

A small gust of wind stirs up the debris on the sidewalk and makes it dance. I lower my head against the breeze and study the
small stack of mail in my lap. Only two letters have been addressed to me—and, curiously, they’ve both been sent from the WCA offices. I select the longer envelope, with my name and address typed and neatly centered on the front, and rip it open.

Of course, I don’t intend to take the time to review anything. I shove the letter back into the envelope and seal it up. It occurs to me, however, that as much as I find my official termination letter highly depressing, I still feel strangely flattered someone bothered to send me one at all.

The second letter intrigues me far more than the first, anyway. On the envelope, my name has been delicately scrawled in loopy black ink. The return address bears the stamp of Marianne Langold’s personal suite number. I cautiously pull out the slender square of pink-stained notepaper inside and try to decipher the elaborate cursive.

I
wish there were a scientific approach to judging traffic in New York. I wish it could really be as easy as avoiding the early-morning and late-afternoon rush hour or the big holiday weekends. But traffic in the city is a crapshoot, a guessing game, and today I’ve drawn the short stick of the lot.

As suggested by the 1010 WINS radio traffic report, I decide to avoid the George Washington Bridge because I’m told congestion is heavy on both the upper and lower levels. But the line for the Lincoln Tunnel seems equally unappealing, so I maneuver my way back onto the West Side Highway, much to the dismay of my fellow drivers. I wave politely to a man in a Porsche who lets me slide back into the steady stream. He doesn’t slow down so much as he careens his car to the side on two wheels and flips me the bird as he speeds by.

I miss the turn for the Holland Tunnel too when, after half an hour sitting in standstill traffic, I discover too late I’m in the lane that doesn’t even exit the highway. To my left, an entire fleet of Atlantic
City casino buses veers off and ducks into the tunnel. And not even the Mini Cooper driver in front of me can spot a large enough break to try to wiggle into their tight formation.

Then I pull to a stop at the traffic light just as the cabdriver beside me decides he likes my lane better and positions himself diagonally in front of me. When the light turns green, he remains motionless, biding his time before he makes his turn.

“Goddamnit!” I slam my hand against the steering wheel, missing the car horn entirely. Although I haven’t caused even a minor stir outside of the car, inside I am wreaking havoc amid the flimsy upholstering, screaming obscenities at my windshield.