by Rachel Cohn
"Whoever invented Central Park ought to have won the Nobel Prize or something," I told Autumn at the end of our song.
"I love New York, but this city kinda overwhelms me," Autumn confessed. "Except for Central Park. Like it's not hard enough to adapt to dorm life, work-study job, a thousand pages a week of reading material, and being surrounded by strange, new people, this city lives up to its reputation as a place that never stops going, going, going. That's why I like to take sanctuary in Central Park. To stop. It's like Golden Gate Park, but without the fog, and a million times more interesting."
"Is that why you dragged me down five flights of stairs to come here today? To remind me that we're not in San Francisco anymore, Friend of Dorothy?"
"No, smart ass. And I think it's the bois who are Dorothy's friends, not the femmes, so get your stereotypes correct if you're going to drop them. Anyway, I wanted to come here today because it's the only place in this city that I can afford to be. Costs nothing to sit here and admire the view. Also, CC?"
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"Yeah?"
"Do you not remember calling me at three in the morning? Singing a song to me about 'Shrimp dumpling tra-la-la/Shrimp dumpling tra-la-la'?"
"No memory of it whatsoever."
Autumn reached into my handbag and took out the prescription bottle. "These are going down the toilet. No more pain medication for CC. I can't bust you out of that cast, but clearly it was time to bust you out of that apartment."
Two gawky high school age boys who'd been loitering by a nearby tree, earbuds dangling from their heads like jewels, approached us, probably drawn over by my new bust.
"Let's have fun with them," I whispered to Autumn. "Hold hands and make eyes at each other and totally play the girl action provocation card."
"Let's not and never say we did," Autumn whispered back. "Lame." Then, "Hi!" she said as they stood in front of us. "Did you know my friend here thinks there is no good cappuccino to be found in this whole city?"
"Dude," manchild number one said, "that's so wrong. You're working from bad information. There's gnarly caffeine to be found at this place not far from here, Seventy-third and Madison. If you don't mind the whole Madison Avenue whacked-out chi-chi vibe."
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"Dude," manchild number two said, "chi-chi Nazis charge like five bucks per drink. Outrageous!"
So many views had been offered up to me on this afternoon, I figured now was the time to offer one back up to the universe. I performed the arms-behind-my-head, I-love-Central-Park-in-fall, boobs-out, happy-stretch-yawn for the fellas. Premium view. Then I said, "Go get me one? I'll be here when you get back." I pulled the bag of mini-Nestlé Crunch bars from my purse. "With treats."
I didn't know boys that skinny could sprint so fast.
Autumn advised, "I see you talk the talk." She held up my crutches. "But next time, when a real live manbait approaches, I expect you to walk the walk."
I pointed at the pitcher girl. "Ditto," I told Autumn.
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***
FIVE
For a corporate executive chick with an undoubtedly bad throwing
arm, my sister lisBETH had some curve balls to pitch me on my first public outing free of the leg cast. As we sat side by side in the nail shop getting pedicures together, lisBETH laid out her customized Plan for my new life. She could barely acknowledge me when I first arrived in town two summers ago, yet now it would seem lisBETH had upgraded me from Farm Team Illegitimate Begrudging Biological Connection to Major League Sister Project.
Uh-oh. Beware the thirtysomething Wall Street managing director with too much time on her hands during a bear market.
First, lisBETH announced she had bought me a gym membership to help ease me off Danny's cupcakes and the extra poundage caused by the leg cast inertia. Second, no sister of hers should lounge around the apartment all day without a Meaningful Future.
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Hence (she actually used this word), lisBETH had taken the liberty of enrolling me in the Introduction to Baking Techniques and Ingredients class at the culinary school in Chelsea. Talk about a mixed message.
I'd like to know what is the big deal expectation that when a person finishes high school, they should automatically further their education in some purpose-driven academic type of way? I know I said I was moving to New York to possibly explore the idea of one day going to culinary school here, but what's the rush? Note the word "possibly." There's a massive city out there waiting to be explored. Why would I want to be confined inside the sterile walls of a classroom when I'd only just broken free of twelve years of such torture?
LisBETH thumbed through the school catalog while her feet were pumiced. She said, "The introductory course doesn't just cover baking basics. You'll also learn cost analysis, weights and measures, culinary math, food safety, sanitation, and equipment identification."
"I'm bored already." Somehow the fact that I got kicked out of boarding school and only made it out of the follow-up alternate school by way of a stellar record of mediocre grades does not seem to impede the adults in my life from holding out hope that I will survive yet another exercise in learning boredom. But it must have been the toxic nail shop fumes breaking my spirit, because I told
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lisBETH, "Okay, I'll give the class a try." I did not add, Thank you, sir, may I have another! She can forget about the gym part.
LisBETH had further educatin' to do me. "My dear, a word of unsolicited advice. You want to be in school if you hope to find an acceptable mate. You realize there are very few single straight men left in this city, don't you? You've got to find yours before they're all taken, and school is just the right environment for that. Trust me on this one."
Thanks, lisBETH, thanks a lot. And that was more than a word of unsolicited advice--it was a disaster stream. I mean, I was finally able to go out and about, start my new life, and this was the sisterly wisdom she chose to spring on me?
I looked up from the alternate toe blue-green-blue-green polish coats being applied to my toenails, searching for the closest EXIT sign. If lisBETH followed up our talk by directing me to the nearest sex toy pleasure shop for sad-sack single females, sister bonding time would be so over, even if that meant ruining the fresh polish by not letting it dry long enough.
No. I was just not hearing it.
I told lisBETH, "Wrong. You obviously need to spend more time scamming the baseball fields and basketball courts in Central Park. And remember about George, the hot ambulance driver? He finally called me and asked me out. We made plans to get together once my cast came off. And lookee here ..."I swung my healed
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castless leg in the air, the one with the set of toes not currently being polished. "Me all fixed up and ready for a fix-up."
Before lisBETH's proclamation, I'd considered canceling the date with George. He happened to call when I was coming down off the last painkiller left in my dresser drawer after Autumn tossed my stash. In that moment I was so groggy and happy I would have accepted a date with Oscar the Grouch--and planned to do some serious feeling up on the green furry beast too. Yeah, stooping to pharmaceutical-inspired sex fantasies about garbage-can Sesame Street characters--that had to be the best Just Say No drug lecture a girl in a leg cast could ever receive to make her go cold turkey off the meds.
The sober truth is, I may have new curves to flaunt, and hormones yearning for action, but in outright defiance of my Plan, my heart is not over Shrimp. Autumn's right. I talk a big talk, but I am not ready to walk the walk. I don't know if I ever will be. Ready. Or over Shrimp.
That didn't stop me from refuting lisBETH. I'd only spent years developing this skill with my mother. It's like a sport, one of the few I excel at. I said, "George and I made plans to go see some apocalyptic action movie--his choice not mine, by the way--not some sensitive art-house flick about a complicated trio of sexually confused Brazilian petty thief street urchins. So not only am I confident George has the all clear on the heterosexual r
adar, but further,
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he might think he's getting death and destruction in stereo surround sound on this date, but what he'll really be getting is a seat at the top corner of the theater and acts two and three drowned out by some serious making out. Count on it."
The nail shop girl paused from applying the blue coat on my pinky toe to smile up at me. "That's what I'm talkin' about," she said.
My new best friend. "What's your name?" I asked her. I wanted to kidnap her to the nearest coffee shop and tell her all about Shrimp, and my big mistake in letting my true love get away, like over one mega-whopper-mocha oozing with whipped cream. Hopefully nail shop girl would have a similar tale of woe to share that would convert us into instant compadres without us ever having to bother with the getting-to-know-you grace period for new friendships.
"Constanza Guadalupe Lourdes Maria," she said. Constanza Guadalupe Lourdes Maria had long black hair like mine, but way curlier and separated into two ponytail bunches tied at the nape of her neck. Her beautiful collection of names was highlighted by her lovely olive-of-indiscriminate-extraction skin tone--she could easily have passed for Hispanic, Middle Eastern, or South Asian, although her tight-white belly T-shirt announced DR: DAMN RIGHT I'M FROM DOMINICAN REPUBLIC! over a picture of the red, white, and blue DR flag. She added, "But you can call me Chucky. Everyone does."
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"Why's that?"
She shrugged. "A couple bad hair days in fourth grade and some mean mofo kids on the playground, and here I am. Chucky, like the crazy doll. Gotta tell you, though. I feel more like a Chucky than a Constanza."
"Good enough for me, Chucky," I said. I understand about spiritual affiliations with dolls. "You have a boyfriend?"
"Yup." She took a laminated photograph out of her rear jeans pocket. "That's Tyrell." Despite the true love sigh that escaped her mouth as she handed over the picture, I felt sure Chucky had a past littered with boy heartache, so I could forgive her the Tyrell happiness.
Not only was Tyrell a stone-faced, crew-cut babe of a Marine, he also looked large enough to beautifully serve my just-now-thought-up master plan. I asked Chucky, "You two want to meet up with me and George after the movie next week? Maybe go to some diner and save me from having to break it to George that making out in the theater is as much as he's getting on the first date?"
"We're there for you," Chucky said. "Give me your cell and we'll text up later about when and where to meet up."
LisBETH groaned. She leaned down, placing her head of frizzy-wild-beautiful black tresses prematurely streaked with gray onto her lap, as if to wonder, What just happened here? And how exactly did my Meaningful Future talk get so far out of my reach? From
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underneath all that hair my sister grumbled, "George better pay for your movie ticket. If he's a gentleman."
I don't want a gentleman. I want a cute guy to kiss. I can pay my own damn way.
"By the way," Chucky interjected. She motioned her head backward, in the direction of the row of manicure tables at the opposite end of the shop. "That bald dude getting the manly manicure at the center table?" LisBETH leaned back up. Chucky looked directly at lisBETH. "Notice how he always comes here the same time as you, noon on Saturdays, after the gym? Let me be the first to break it to you, chica. There are plenty of straight men left in this city, and that one, he's got an eye on you."
I almost jumped our of the chair to get a look at the guy, but all I could see was the back of a bald head, and some unfortunate neck hair poking through his shirt. I couldn't see his face, but his hunter green polo-shirt was totally uptight Ivy League, which was a promising sign, especially since Alexei the Horrible, my polo shirt-wearing Ivy League friend from back home, whom I had all cued up to matchmake into lisBETH's prospective boy toy, had decided to transfer to Stanford and thereby become a geographic undesirable.
Make that Uh-oh an Uh-huh: possibility for lisBETH.
As we tried to catch a better glimpse of him, baldy's head suddenly dropped down to his chest, relaxed into a catnap by the massage on his hands. His very loud snore could be heard at our end
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of the shop, even over the sound of the Lite-FM radio station attacking our eardrums with some lame Nashville-country-queen-gone-pop-star power ballad crap.
Reality check: When I am sad from missing Shrimp and cursing myself for letting him go so I could start up this new life in New York City, I kind of like that power ballad crap, but I will die a thousand deaths by octopus-handed Muppet tickle monsters before admitting that out loud and not-proud. When Danny finds me alone in my room staring out the rear window and he asks me what I'm listening to on my headphones, I will name some obscure alt-country-soul band, but what I am really listening to is a crap UK dance remix of a pop princess ballad or some American Idol's pukey winning song.
A girl's gotta do what a girl's gotta do to work her way through the heartbreak. Forgive me.
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***
SIX
In my commune land of make-out make-believe, I am not walking through Washington Square Park with freshly painted blue-green toes and ginormous headphones over my ears to drown out the singing street performers, the chattering students on study and smoke breaks, the bike messenger snarling "Welcome to New York, bitch," as he almost mows down a photo-taking tourist.
In my resurrected commune world I am with Shrimp at foggy Ocean Beach in San Francisco. We are sitting on the cold concrete ledge at dusk, watching a speck of orange pink sun muted by gray fog as it sets over the Pacific. Our legs intertwine and our feet rock against the ledge in time to the crash of the ocean. Here nature requires no headphones, and the chill ocean breeze rules out exposed feet. We are silent sympatico.
The News are all Olds. I've given up New York, and Shrimp has
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forsaken New Zealand, never having bothered to find out what the Old Zealand may have been about, although the name alone is pretty compelling, and maybe for our next new commune that's where we'll go, Old Zealand. We'll make it up as we make out in our make-believe. Except it will be real. We will New the Old, as if time never went by with us apart.
Shrimp's shivering in his damp black wet suit, but I warm him right up. I am an Ava Gardner hot tamale, rubbing against his side. We turn to each other so our lips can meet all over again, and he tastes like home, like espresso and sea air and true love. His kiss is nothing like Old York, where I might have had to kiss strangers whose espresso taste would be second-rate, and where the air smells like taxi and bus fumes and hella toxic house wine spilling outta street corner restaurant Dumpsters.
Shrimp pauses the melding of our mouths long enough to lean up and mumble his old standard into my ear, "Burr-ito."
The whispering of this sweet nothing except it's really something makes us hungry, and we look longingly behind the concrete ledge, where my real family is throwing us a vegetarian barbecue in the parking lot. A power ballad wails from the boom box on the red-checkered picnic blanket, something about "I can't live without you lighting up my life forever and ever baby, baby, baby," while Sid-dad stands at the grill, flipping a Velveeta cheese sandwich without once winking at me in irony. I am his Cupcake, and we don't
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need secret signals to have that father-daughter understanding. My mom is flipping out, trying to contain the squeals of Ash and Josh--"Kids, they can hear you two all the way up in Marin County. Pipe down!"--while she flips through the Neiman Marcus catalog with one hand and pats her pregnant belly with the other. She's an excellent multitasker. Her normally pale-pink manicured fingernails are painted goth black, in my honor, with ghetto fabulous little orange pink rhinestones shaped like shrimps on the tips, in honor of he whom she used to grudgingly refer to as "That Boy." We've all evolved.
Danny has come along to the New-Old commune too. He's wandering the beach alone, forlorn, thinking very hard about what a big mistake he made letting Aaron go, and planning grandiose schemes involving m
ountains of cupcakes to win Aaron back. Once he accomplishes that, all will be right with the world and with true love again.
My Greenwich Village existence will not be wiped from memory, but it will be wiped out of the time-space continuum that finds me walking down Bleecker Street past a diner offering a stoner food menu of sushi, sundaes, and syrup-covered pancakes, a dive that just begs for CC and her imaginary new friends George, Chucky, and Tyrell to hang out there after a movie. In the New-Old commune back at Ocean Beach, there will not be a tantalizing flyer advertising Hot Nude Yoga taped to that same Manhattan diner's
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door, literally calling to me to snatch it off the door and investigate the prospect. The city that never sleeps will have decided to take a nap long enough for me to return to my regularly scheduled boyfriend in my predictably foggy broody city, where people leave their hearts and their wallets, and sometimes their minds if they spend too much time on Haight Street.
In the land of make-out make-believe I will not have to possibly deal with the possibility that Shrimp and I are truly over. It's my land. I make the rules.
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***
SEVEN
I have walked the walk. Straight into the bathroom at the Starbucks across the street from the restaurant where I was having dinner with George.
I do not drink Starbucks. Please. But I could only applaud and thank Starbucks for the spacious and relatively clean lavatory into which I'd snuck away--it was the perfect venue for an emergency cell-phone-tarot-card-reading with my major-arcana life advisor back in San Francisco.
"Please don't make me go back to that date," I pleaded to Sugar Pie. I was only an hour into my date with George, we'd barely been served our main course, and already I knew he and I were a no-go. But how to extract myself from the rest of the evening? No way would I make it through dessert and the movie we were supposed to see next--and on our own, too, since Chucky had text messaged
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that she and Tyrell couldn't meet us, on account of a late evening nap situation from which they could not extract themselves (totally understand: envy).