“My husband is moving out. I think I might be getting a divorce.”
My eyes fill and he disappears into a blur of light and color.
Something cold touches my face and then again. I dash my tears away and realize that a light drizzle has started up.
The cabdriver calls something terse out the passenger-side window and St. Michel waves a dismissive hand toward him. And then he’s there, right in front of me. He puts one finger under my chin, a light, friendly touch.
“Darling,” he says.
I’m rapt.
He’s about to say something medicinal and necessary, I can feel it.
“Divorce isfine.”
“Oh…”
And then he kisses me brusquely on the cheek and waves his hand over his head as he walks back to the cab and slides away down the street.
“Okay,” I say to myself. “So…”
The bus stop is two blocks away and the brown paper around my package is already starting to dampen from the drizzle.
Mad dash home!is the logical train of thought, probably.
But…here’s the thing about having memorized the address of the apartment that your husband is moving into on August fifteenth…here’s the thing about having put it into Google Maps…and having pinned it on the map…it beats like a blinking cursor on the map in your head.
Which is what is happening to me. Right this very second.
The rain is increasing from a drizzle to a more insistent pitter-patter, enough that I see a drip form at the end of my bangs. This package is not going to survive if I keep standing on the curb in front of St. Michel’s shop.
I can’t keep standing still. I have to move.
So I shove the package under my sweatshirt as best I can and start to run. In the direction of the bus stop, and home. Within moments my socks and shoes are soaked. It’s dumping rain now, and a buffet of wind tosses a sheet of water onto me from the side. There’s the bus stop at the end of the block!
Here it is!
There it goes!
I keep running right on past.
In front of me, cars slice a gigantic puddle in half. The light changes, I jump the puddle, scamper across the street, there’srain down my back. This is such a bad idea that the universe is attempting to stop me in my tracks with bodily discomfort. But I’ve chosen belligerence. I press on.
There’s a yellow awning up ahead and I sprint.
I make it there and huddle up onto the single stair, out of the worst of the downpour.
Nine Five Four. The enormous metal numbers leer down at me.
It’s a brick building, this new address of Vin’s. I can’t see, because the rain has turned the world gray and opaque, but I bet there are flowers on the windowsills. Probably someone upstairs plays grand piano with their window open on the sunny days. There is probably a band of plucky and precocious children who knock on the doors of their neighbors to deliver the kugel their mothers have just made too much of.
This is clearly the most charming apartment building in all five boroughs and I hate it.
I’m just about finished cursing it, about to drag my soggy ass back into the pouring rain, when the foggy glass door behind me comes open an inch and shunts me back onto the street, out of the cover of the awning.
“Honey, come in! Come in!” a voice says behind me.
There’s rain sliding down the back of my neck, wetting my eyelashes, dripping off my ears.
