Pounding the Pavement

by Jennifer van der Kwast

  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.

  chapter twenty-two

  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.

  To: Sarah Pelletier

  From: New York Human Resources

  Re: NEW YORK TERMINATION POLICY

  Dear Employee,

  It has come to our attention that your course of employment at WCA has come to an end. Please take the time to carefully review your Health Coverage continuation options attached—

  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.

  Dear Sarah,

  I have been informed that Human Resources has taken it upon themselves to relieve you from your position as my assistant. I am truly sorry to see you go. It was a pleasure to have met you and I wish you all the best. Please know that I still think very highly of you and I would be happy to provide you with a recommendation as you continue your job pursuits. I’ve already mentioned you to several acquaintances at similar companies who are currently looking to hire. Feel free to contact me at my office at any time, and I will gladly discuss the details with you.

  Best,

  Marianne Langold

  Hmpff. Isn’t that just a kicker?

  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 unappeal
ing, 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.

  Man, I am so not going to miss any of this shit. I am so glad I will never again have to deal with ruthless cabdrivers, Porsche drivers with death wishes, idiots who stop to read street signs when they should already know that Fourteenth Street is below Fifteenth Street.

  I follow the flow of traffic. And as soon as I’ve charted one alternate route after another, I’ve already missed the turn I was supposed to take. Before I know it, before I can navigate my course elsewhere, I find myself leaving the city through the only porthole left to me—the Battery Tunnel. In the dark, winding cavern, I curse myself the whole way through.

  It is downright eerie, lingering in this dark, smoggy canal. And what makes it even worse is listening to the garbled cackle and hiss coming from the car stereo. I flick over to the FM stations, hoping to find a voice that sounds even remotely human. Failing that, I turn off the radio entirely and continue to creep along in dreaded silence.

  I finally emerge back into daylight and pull onto the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway. Although the traffic is no less daunting, and I’m still muttering a few choice adjectives under my breath, I can feel the tension lifting from my shoulders and my minor bout of road rage starts to subside. I flip the radio back on. An announcer ticks off a list of bands I really couldn’t care less about. But compared to the dismal traffic reports, names like “Bad Company” and “Grateful Dead” sound relatively soothing. I let the station stand.

  In the reflection of my rearview mirror, I catch a fleeting glimpse of the New York Harbor. How funny. I keep forgetting that Manhattan is an island. Which, when you think about it, makes perfect sense—the pink-skinned Scandinavian tourists in tank tops and short shorts, the unbearable smell of fish in Chinatown, the sidewalk vendors who don’t speak a lick of English. As on any island, an extended stay here means risking a bad case of overexposure. At best, you’ll suffer from a minor heat rash. At worst, you’ll feel trapped and suffocated, pining for—

  Suddenly, I freeze. I realize I’m singing along with the radio. And, as far as I know, I don’t know the words to anything. I turn up the volume.

  Wait a second. Did he just say … sugar bear?

  After all those years building up a firm resistance to love songs, now I discover, much to my disbelief, I’m completely powerless against it. Two things happen immediately. First, I start to cry. The tears spring up so quickly, I wonder how on earth I could possibly have been caught so off guard. Not just any love song could have done it. It had to be this particular song. It had to be the fuck-you to all love songs. Elton John is a sneaky son-of-a-bitch to creep up on me like this and to break my heart so effortlessly.

  And second, my foot eases off the gas pedal and I find myself, rather inexplicably, pulling off the highway at the next exit.

  “Ha!” I laugh, overcome with head-spinning, palm-sweating giddiness as I realize I’m driving past a familiar row of brownstones, on a street lined with lampposts and cherry trees.

  Now, see these are the decisions I like the best. Not the bold, spontaneous ones. Not the agonizingly slow and dubious ones. I like the decisions that make themselves. Of course the route I’ve chosen to take out of Manhattan just happens to lead through Brooklyn. Of course there’s an exit ramp off the BQE that just happens to lead directly to Jake’s apartment. And of course I could only be driving down this final stretch drumming my fingers against the steering wheel and belting out the lyrics to “Someone Saved My Life Tonight.”

  The safe thing would be to end my story here. Before the car runs out of gas, before I get hit by an oncoming bus, before I spend hours frantically searching for recognizable street signs or an open parking spot while truckers and gypsy cabs honk and scream at me. And all of this is even before I discover Jake isn’t home, or he’s reunited with Simone, or he wants nothing to do with me. When I look back on today, whether it’s from Denver, Aspen, Manhattan, Brooklyn, or wherever, all I want to remember is that I was singing in the car, loudly and off-key, and it was one of those miraculous moments when every traffic light I hit along the way was green.