Elizabeth takes it in stride. “So how long have you lived here?” she asks.
Mercifully, an easy question to answer.
“All my life,” I say. “Same apartment. Same building. Same city.”
“Really?”
“For as long as I can remember, and back even further to when I can’t remember. Since the day I was born, really. Where are you from?”
“Minnesota.”
I love how she says it. Minn-uh-soh-tah.
“This must be quite a change,” I say, gesturing to the speeding cabs, the endless line of buildings, the barrage of people around us.
“It is.”
“Why did you leave?” I ask.
She looks away. “It’s a long story.”
I’m sure there’s a short version of the long story, but it doesn’t feel right for me to ask for it.
She asks, “Where do you go to school?”
I realize that she’s starting to get stares when she talks to me. Because nobody else can see who she’s talking to. And even in a city where it’s commonplace to find people talking on microscopic cell phones or mumbling dialogue to themselves, it’s still strange to see someone conversing with the air.
I quicken the pace. “Kellogg,” I say, making up a school name. She’s from Minnesota—she won’t know all the private schools in Manhattan. “It’s across town. Really small. You?”
“I’m going to Stuyvesant in the fall.”
“Oh, Stuy. That’s cool.”
“Stuy?”
“Yeah. That’s what everyone calls it.”
“Good to know.”
We’re at the park now. There are more people, and she’s getting more stares. I don’t think she sees them, though. Or she’s figured this is just the way city people are, rude and glaring. But that obliviousness isn’t going to last long.
In order for this to work, I’m going to have to do most of the talking. At least now, when other people are around. I keep my voice low, so it will blend in with all of the other voices.
“So, you want to know about the city?” I ask as we start on one of the paths. “It’s hard to tell you with any kind of perspective, because it’s not like I’ve ever lived anywhere else.” (In truth, I’ve never even been anywhere else. But I don’t tell her that.) “I think it has a slightly different language than the rest of the world. When you live in New York, you can’t help but know things only New Yorkers know. Most of it has to do with getting used to things. Like the subway. In most parts of the world, the idea that there are hundreds of miles of underground tubes with electrified rails careening cars back and forth—that would be science fiction. But here it’s just life. Every day you head down there. You know exactly where to stand on the platform. If you do it long enough, you start to recognize some faces. Even with millions of people, you start to gather a neighborhood around you. New Yorkers love the bigness—the skyscrapers, the freedom, the lights. But they also love it when they can carve out some smallness for themselves. When the guy at the corner store knows which newspaper you want. When the barista has your order ready before you open your mouth. When you start to recognize the people in your orbit, and you know that, say, if you’re waiting for the subway at eight fifteen on the dot, odds are the redhead with the red umbrella is going to be there too.”
Elizabeth arches her eyebrow. “Tell me more about this redhead with a red umbrella.”
I shrug. “It’s not like I know all that much about her. She just tries to be at the subway at eight fifteen on the dot. She’s probably thirty—maybe a little older. She’s always reading magazines—The New Yorker, Harper’s, that kind. Smart. One day it was pouring and she had this bright red umbrella. I probably only saw it once, but it made an impression, so now I always associate her with this bright red umbrella. You know how you do that? Create talismans for strangers, or for people you’ve just met? Like, he’s the one with the gap in his teeth. Or she’s the one who carries that purple bag. She’s the redhead with the red umbrella. Everything else is just speculation.”
“And do you speculate often?”
It’s like she’s asking me if I breathe often. “All the time!” I say, perhaps a little too emphatically. “I mean, there are so many lives around us. How can you not speculate?”
I can tell she’s into this game. She points to a portly man on a bench, eating a donut. “How about him?”
“Gastroenterologist. His second wife just left him. He snores.”
“Her?” She indicates a skanky teen girl listening to blaring headphones as she scowls at her phone.
“Russian spy. Deep, deep, deep cover. She looks up CIA agents’ favorite bands on Facebook and reports back to the Mother Country.”
“That frat boy over there?”
“Poet laureate of the state of Wyoming, best known for his paeans to love between cowboys and their horses.”
“The love that dare not speak its mane?”
“You know his work!”
She nods her head to gesture a little to the left. “That woman with four children?”
“Broadway actress. Researching the role of a woman with four children. Discovering a lot because her lesbian lover won’t even let her have a pet.”
“What about that girl?”
Tricky. She’s pointing at herself.
“That girl? She looks like she’s new to town. But it doesn’t scare her. It excites her. She wants to see it all. And, yeah, she’s also part of the Minnesota mafia. They get into gang wars over cheese.”
“That’s Wisconsin.”
“I mean, they get into gang wars over which of the twin cities was born first.”
“Wow. Hearing you is like looking in a mirror.”
The woman with four children is glaring at us now, as if her mommy radar is tuned in to girls who talk too loudly to themselves in public places.
“Here, I have something to show you,” I say, and run ahead.
We’ve hit the path that leads past the band shell, right to Bethesda Terrace. Trees that have lived for hundreds of years guard our steps, point us forward. It is one of my favorite places in the city, where nature draws a canopy over all the city thoughts, leaving you with a deep sense of leaves and light, people passing through and the world staying still. I run, and she follows. I jump down the steps to Bethesda Fountain, and she is right beside me. The angel statue greets us, magnificent in her peace, stately on her perch. The water of the fountain bows to her as musicians ring her with melodies. Behind her, lovers row their boats. Beyond them, trees run wild.