James has heard horror stories all his life.
“Oh, the people are so rude; you don’t want to be around people like that. The streets are filthy, and the crime rate, James, dear lord, you’re just gonna hate it, son, you’re going to hate it.” He anticipated rats the size of cats and colonies of cockroaches.
After searching thirty minutes for open street parking, James climbs out of the car, writes for Nelle to do the same, and stands on the lamplit street lined with brick buildings. Not too different from those back home. Fire escapes scale the fronts, dotted with rugs and plants, a long-haired cat peeking through iron bars. Unlike little downtown Lincoln, these buildings hold apartments and sushi restaurants, cafés and improv clubs. Driving in, he saw people of all races, heights, classes, ages, and hair colors hiking up and down the sidewalk, all of them leaders of their own little worlds.
Nelle stands in a circle of yellow streetlight, hands in the pockets of her charcoal-gray pants. When she declared Midi’s borrowed clothes too dirty to wear on the way out of DC, an hours-long shopping spree ensued in Baltimore. After trying on a hundred things, she settled on five neutral pieces.I’m trying to pin down my style, she said again and again as she ducked into dressing rooms.
“Is this the building?” She peers up at the fire escape. Sulfuric wind hisses down the street, twisting her blond strands.
“No.” James squints at the street signs, not really sure where he is, and it’s only getting darker.
A pair of students with dyed hair lurks on the sidewalk, both wearing crop tops. The boy’s fingernails are painted black. The girl is smoking a cigarette. An older man in a leather jacket climbs on his motorcycle and revs the engine. A guy in a red tracksuit lingers on the corner after the light signals him to walk. He lifts his face, soaking up dusk.
“This is when we could use a phone,” James says.
A bulb clicks on in his head, and he scribbles in the journal for Nelle to follow.
She turns after him. “Where are you going?”
He passes a closed coffee shop, and around the corner—
“Huh.” He skids to a stop at the pay phone. “Didn’t think I’d find one that fast.”
Fifty cents. He digs through his jacket, miraculously produces two quarters, and dials a number he has had memorized for years. It rings, rings, rings.
“Please pick up, Jessie.” The vastness of the city around him, the fact that he knowsno oneelse for hundreds of miles, is starting to sink in.
Jessie answers, her staticky voice saving him from existential panic. “Hello? Who is this?”
“It’s James,” he says. “Remember that girl I was telling you about when you came to visit? Nelle? Well, we’re in New York right now. I think we’re pretty close to your apartment. You still live at 376 Bleecker Street, right?”
“Slow down.” Jessie laughs. “You’re in New York? Why? For how long?”
“All questions will be answered over wine and pizza, both of which we can pick up on our way.”
“Wine I have. I’d love pizza, though,” Jessie says. “No mushrooms.”
“I need directions to your apartment,” he says.
“From where?”
He reads from the street sign. Jessie prattles off convoluted directions to a 24-7 pizza place on the way to her apartment.
“The menu says the largest they’ll go is extra-extra-large, but if you ask Kyle, he’ll make what I like to call a ‘big daddy.’ He might resist a little, but tell him it’s for me. He’ll do it.”
“Thanks, Jessie. See you soon.”
James hangs up the phone. Nelle stands behind him, arms crossed. Behind her unfurls a New York street, graffitied brick walls, smooshed cigarette butts. A siren wails. Somewhere on this island are his favorite writers, the world’s top publishing houses, the work of the most talented performers, painters, sculptors, some long dead. For the first time, it hits James hard enough to stop his breath.
I am in New York fucking City.
James knocks on apartment 3B, the pizza against his hip.
“Ding dong, the witch is dead,” Nelle sings off-key.
She cradles a bottle of moscato in the crook of her elbow, adamant that Jessie would dislike her if she came empty handed.
“WasThe Wizard of Ozon Quill’s list of approved movies?” James asks.
