Shrimp

by Rachel Cohn

  You'd think a person as sensible as Danny would have enough sense not to be excited about returning to an apartment for which you had to climb five long flights of stairs through narrow, dark, and creepy stairways to reach the top of the building, but then again you'd also think that someone with so much supposed sense wouldn't let a gem like Aaron out of his life and out of his apartment to begin with.

  Danny's excitement didn't last much past the opening of the five door bolts. When we stepped inside the door, wheezing from the stair climb, I saw that Danny's apartment looked completely different than when I visited last summer: empty. The lease may be in Danny's name, but obviously most of the furniture was Aaron's, because all that was left in the living room was a tattered sofa with a sheet thrown over it, a foldaway chair that looked like it would collapse from the weight of a kitten, and a glass coffee table covered in ring stains--the coasters must have been Aaron's too. Even the drapes were gone, so the view out to the Village scene was bright--and we could see

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  directly into the apartment across the street, where a chunky naked guy was playing guitar and watching TV Aaron could keep the drapes.

  Danny threw his luggage on the floor and walked around the apartment, inspecting. The slump of his body and the high degree of sighing he picked up from Nancy indicated the homecoming was as painful as he'd anticipated. His bedroom was left with only a sleeping bag on the floor, an ancient kids'-room lamp with a base in the shape of a model airplane, and a set of dresser drawers. The spare bedroom that Danny and Aaron used for a study was empty except for a bookshelf with Danny's cookbooks. Danny sighed the Nancy Classic when we got to the kitchen and he opened the fridge. He pulled out a shopping bag that said barney greengrass on it, read the note attached to the bag, his eyes welling up a little, then told me, 'Aaron left some bagels and nova for us."

  'And this random act of kindness is a cause for sadness because...?"

  "Because he went to my favorite restaurant for nova and he got H&H bagels too. He would have had to go all the way to the Upper West Side this morning to pick this stuff up and deliver it here, and just when he's starting a new job over on the East Side."

  Didn't I say Aaron was a gem? I knew I was there to be supportive but I couldn't help myself. "Not something I could ever see Terry doing for you. Is Aaron seeing anybody new?"

  Danny said, "I have no idea. But Ceece, if you try to play matchmaker you will be excommunicated. I wasn't kidding when I said it's over between Aaron and me. That

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  doesn't mean he and I won't always love each other, but we won't be getting back together."

  WHY?!?!?! I don't understand how they can still love each other but they're still completely over.

  Danny obviously didn't want to talk about it anymore so I said, "Well, I don't like nova--it's too salty for me--so why don't you put that bag away for the morning and order us a proper New York pizza?" That's what I love most about New York, not the arts and culture and diversity and whatever, but the fact that you can order any kind of food-- Chinese, Italian, Dominican, Thai, pizza, or whatever--to be delivered to your fifth-floor walk-up any time of the day or night.

  Maybe Danny had most been homesick for proper NY bagels and Barney Greengrass nova, but what I most missed about NY was the "grabba slice" that almost-summer fling boy Luis got me hooked on last summer. NY has the best pizza, but it's not just about hot, plump crust or the zesty tomato sauce, it's also about the way it's eaten in New York: Dab the oil off the cheese with a napkin (if you so choose), sprinkle the slice with your spices of choice (I like garlic powder and oregano), fold the slice in half, and then eat it with your hands, starting from the bottom tip (keeping the paper plate underneath the crust side for the oil to run onto, if you have not gone for the previously mentioned napkin-dabbing option).

  While we were sitting on the floor eating the pizza, Danny told me our agenda for the weekend: cheap furniture shopping on Saturday morning, followed by a job he had to see about that afternoon, and, biggest bonus, Aaron's note said his band was playing at some dive in the Village on

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  Saturday night if we wanted to go. WE DID! The downside: Easter Sunday brunch with Frank and lisBETH. "Do we have to?" I asked Danny. There should be some family law where you can pluck just one favorite member of a family and keep them all for yourself and never have to deal with the rest of them. "Yes," he stated, although he didn't look too thrilled by the prospect himself.

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  *** Chapter 35

  Neither of us slept much that night. Who could, between the excitement of being back in NYC and all the freaking noise? We had to sleep with the living room window open because the chronically banging radiator was too hot. But if I thought the radiator noise was aggravating, it was tame in comparison to the noise coming from the street below: constant honking and brakes screeching, people yelling, and some guy who kept shouting, "Yo, Sal" from outside the bar at the ground floor of Danny's building. The noise, along with the bright night lights followed by early-morning sun streaming through the drapeless apartment windows, meant I didn't get more than four hours of sleep. I slept on the tattered sofa that was too short for my legs so I was crunched into a ball shape all night, and Danny slept through the noise like a contented baby, nestled in his sleeping bag on the floor below the tattered sofa because he got too spooked being in his old bedroom by himself for the first time in years.

  I woke earlier than Danny, so I went out for caffeination. The temperature was significantly warmer than that of the night before, but the spring air was still chilly. The streets were wet from the melted snow, which with the brisk cold air made the city feel unusually clean and fresh. I found the closest deli and asked for regular coffee, which I forgot means something different in New York than in the

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  rest of the world-- coffee regular means coffee with milk instead of straight black coffee--so I had to toss the first cup in the heaping trash can on the street. Then I went into two different cafés for an espresso, one that was too weak and bitter and the other that just plain sucked, both of which also had to be tossed in the trash. Finally I went into a juice bar for a cup of fresh grapefruit juice, because Danny's café and Dean & DeLuca were the only places I remembered where you could get a good coffee in Manhattan, and The Village Idiots was now extinct and I couldn't remember how to get to D&D. Plus, my coffee budget was shot for the whole weekend.

  When I got back to the apartment Danny had showered, eaten his bagel and nova, and was ready for us to hit the city. We wandered the streets of the Village, browsing in some used furniture and antique stores. All the furniture was either too ugly or too expensive, though, leaving Danny, who said he couldn't be bothered to go all Martha Stewart with the time, money, or effort required to refurnish the apartment, to settle somewhere in the middle. He opened a credit account at Crate & Barrel, where he bought a basic sleeper sofa that could double for a bed for him until he could afford a new one, a table and some chairs, and a desk. He was all but hyperventilating at the total cost, but I reminded him he had a job interview lined up for later in the day that was a sure thing, and it wouldn't kill him to ask Frank for some help, either. I would never ask Frank for help again, but why shouldn't Danny? Frank was just my biological father, and maybe he'd never been Father Knows Best for Danny, but he was still Danny's real dad. If Frank had been willing without a moment's hesitation to help his

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  love child pay for an emergency clinic visit on the OT, he'd probably be more than willing to help his legitimate son if Danny for once asked him for help.

  Once Danny stopped looking like he was going to have a heart attack I stepped outside the store to wander around, as completing the transaction was going to take longer than I could spend browsing Crate & Barrel without collapsing from utter boredom. Also I've never paid attention to what furniture costs before, but: Yikes! Shrimp and I will have to get many, many jobs to get our own apartment.
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  As I walked through the Village streets, I couldn't help but wish Shrimp were here to experience this city with me. The chilly air was so cozy, I could snuggle right into him. The masses of people walking around all looked so different--young to old, black, white, yellow, brown, and red, yuppies to hipsters to freaks to old-timers--that I suspected Shrimp's art could find more inspiration in a block of this city than he ever could in the whole of the East Bay. Shrimp had promised to pick me up at the airport when I got back home, and my first order of business would be to try to sell him on the potential idea of us living in New York together, instead of Oakland or Berkeley. Why not? True love knows no city boundaries, so why shouldn't we keep our options open? Did we have to live in the East Bay? Wasn't it more important that we move in together somewhere than that we stayed near home?

  All the thinking about Shrimp and the knowledge that this time next year the two of us would be sharing a love shack made my insides warm. It was probably no coincidence that I found myself stopped at a fence, standing on the sidewalk watching an extremely hot group of sweaty

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  guys wearing long shorts and no shirts playing a game of pickup basketball on the other side of the fence. Saliva was possibly hanging from my mouth down to the pavement for how beautiful these guys were, to say nothing of what amazing hoop players they were: fast, graceful, intense, like an NBA street gang. Them dudes had serious game. My eyes homed in on one guy in particular--was I having déjà vu, or was that New York Knicks tall guy with the cinnamon skin and shiny-slick black hair none other than Luis, a.k.a. Loo-EESE? When I saw him miss a pass because he was staring back at me, then get slammed by his teammates for losing his focus, I realized, Yup, that's who.

  Maybe Nueva York is not the city for me to move to after all. The last time I was here I ran into my ex Justin at the Gap on Madison Avenue. What is it about this city and the randomness of running into people from your past, especially the ones who having lustful thoughts about will get you into big, big trouble?

  When the guys called a time-out in the game, Luis dribbled the b-ball over my way until he was standing opposite me on the other side of the fence. "Terrorizing the big city again, are you?" he asked, smiling, his eyes appraising me up and down, from my black combat boots with the thick black leggings to my short black skirt to my biker babe black leather jacket.

  Small beads of sweat dripped down his face, begging to be licked off. "I'm spending the weekend with my brother," I told him. "What's up with you?"

  Luis dribbled the basketball, not needing to look down to see the ball for it to connect with his hand, and my mind had to repeat a mantra in time to the bounce's beat,

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  reminding me: Shrimp. Boyfriend. Shrimp. Boyfriend. Luis said, "I went away for a while. Spent time with some cousins down in Virginia, thought I might move down there--fresh air and cheaper cost of living and all that-- but I ended up back here. I'm a New Yorker, yo. This is the only place to be where you can feel truly alive, right? So I'm enrolled at Hunter College full-time now, living at my aunt's new house in the boogie-down Bronx, gonna get serious about finishing that business degree already. One of my boys plays ball down here every Saturday, so I came along with today." He had this thick New York accent that sounds ugly until you get used to it, and he was friendly in that genuine New York kind of way that pretends hostility but is in fact gracious, and that you never find in California, where people are all sunny disposition but would prefer not to give you the time of day. "What about you? Did you and that boyfriend of yours ever get back together?"

  "YES!" I stated, maybe overkill on the enthusiasm. "We're moving in together next fall. Probably in Berkeley; we'll get a place there." Definitely, Berkeley. Nueva York: bad, bad idea, loconess.

  Luis laughed. "Berkeley? No way. You don't belong there."

  "How do you know? Have you been?"

  "No, but I don't need to. Do you realize there is a bum peeing on the wall next to you, and a crazy lady singing 'Mary Had a Little Lamb' for change behind you, and you haven't even noticed? Does your wardrobe know any color other than black? You're a New Yorker, niña, whether you know or not. I didn't spend all that time showing you around for Frank last summer not to know that."

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  We couldn't talk longer--the game was starting back up and the guys were whistling and teasing Luis to tear himself away from the fence. After Luis and I said our goodbyes, I headed across the street to the street corner subway stop where I saw Danny waiting for me at the spot where he'd told me to find him after he left Crate & Barrel.

  "I did not just see you and a guy who looked disturbingly like Luis programming each other's numbers into your cell phones, did I?" Danny said.

  "You need glasses, old man," I told him as we bopped down the stairs into the skanky-smelly-glorious subway station.

  When we got downstairs to the subway platform, as if on autopilot I walked right over to the platform edge to peek into the subway tunnel to see if I could see the distant train lights on the rails indicating a train approaching the station, as Luis had taught me to do last summer. "Check out the New Yorker girl!" Danny said. A train barreled into the station and Danny yanked me back from the edge by the collar on my leather jacket. "But not enough to know not to stand on the platform edge when the train is coming in, idiot!" he shouted over the thundering sound.

  We rode the train a few stops to Chelsea, where we walked toward the culinary institution where Danny was going to find out about a potential teaching opportunity. While we were walking down the street I asked Danny, "What is it about the randomness of running into people in Manhattan? I hardly know anybody in the world at all, and yet both the short times I've been in Manhattan, I've run into people I knew."

  Danny said, 'Aaron and I used to call it OINY--Only in

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  New York. I have no idea why that happens, but this city is full of those stories. I just ran into a girl I went to college with while I was at Crate & Barrel--she was choosing her wedding registry. Have you ever watched a TV show that takes place in Manhattan and noticed how people are always running into one another, in this city of millions? That's because it happens all the time here. Don't ask me why. New York, man.- the world's biggest small town."

  We took the elevator up into the culinary institute building in Chelsea, and walked down a long hallway past a series of classrooms with glass windows. In the first window I saw a chocolate-sculpting class putting the final touches on an all-chocolate, lifelike display of white chocolate roses in a dark chocolate vase. Another classroom had a roomful of students wearing chef's whites, standing over a steaming wok, stirring veggies and meats. The last room we passed must have been the Italian cooking class, because the garlicky smell of fresh tomato sauce and the dreamy looks of a dozen middle-aged students hinted that they, like Nancy, may have read Under the Tuscan Sun one too many times.

  We stopped at an empty kitchen, where Danny led us inside. The haze he'd been in since reentering his ghost town apartment appeared to retreat, and I could see his face coming alive again as he admired the immaculate kitchen full of state-of-the-art industrial equipment. "Why don't you open another café?" I asked him.

  "So much work; so much money." He lingered over the huge KitchenAid mixer on the floor, touching his hand along the rim of the bowl so big you could almost jump into it and take a bath. "I don't have it in me right now. I just

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  want an easy teaching job, a regular paycheck without worrying if the balance sheets are in the red or black this month. I can also pick up some cash making some cakes for a friend's bakery. I'll probably have to get a roommate to make my rent if I'm just working part-time, but that's fine. Owning and operating a café is so much work, CC--and I can't go it alone, without an Aaron."

  A lady wearing chef's whites and a most excellent white chef hat came into the room and grabbed Danny in a hug. "Looks who's home, finally, back where he belongs! So glad you could make it over during
the break in my class!" she said to him.

  Danny introduced me to her, saying, "This is my little sister, Cyd. Yeah, I know, 'little* indeed. I brought her along so she can check out the place. She's thinking of enrolling in some courses here."

  "No I'm not...," I started to say, surprised, but Danny hustled me from the room because his friend had only a short break to tell him about the job opportunity.

  I went outside the empty kitchen and sat on a bench while I waited for my "big," sneaky brother. Along with the many delightful smells coming from the kitchens, I also smelled a plot brewing to distract me from Shrimp.

  I whipped out my cell phone and placed a call to Shrimp at Some Guy's house in Berkeley, praying Shrimp and not Some Guy or Some Other Guy at the group house would pickup the phone. I scored. "Hey, beautiful," Shrimp said when he heard my voice. I slid to the other end of the bench, away from the chocolate class, not wanting the heat from the high degree of melt in my heart at hearing Shrimp's gravel voice to affect the class's brilliant chocolate

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  sculptures. "You're not falling in love with New York and forgetting about our plans?" he asked, teasing.

  "No way," I answered. Though I acknowledge that the threads the chefs wear, all white and crisp and geometric, are indeed most excellent and accessorizeable and tempting.