It’s what convinced me to go out on my own, to start the business that turned Meg Mackworth into The Planner of Park Slope.
Therearesigns, I’m thinking, to the invisible Reid who won’t get out of my head.You just don’t know how to read them.
I’m a few blocks from the shop when the idea hits me. I can’t seem to do anything about Sibby, about the path she’s going down that’ll take her even further away from me, but I can do something about myself, about the way I’ve been feeling lonely and blocked, restless with the need to say too much in the jobs I’m doing, reluctant to even attempt a start on the job that could change everything for me.
Maybe I can remember that every single letter I draw is a sign. No reckless, inappropriate codes necessary.
I need to get out here again, walk the streets, see the signs, remember what really brought me to lettering in the first place. Inspiration for this new job, some bonus content for my social media. A series of walks, inspired by the city’s best hand-lettered signs. A bit of research and planning, the warmer months coming—it’ssomething, something to help me get unblocked.
Some of the weight from this morning has lifted as I approach the shop’s front door, as I unlock the two heavy bolts for the old storefront gate, a relic from back when this place was a jewelry repair shop. Inside I leave the lights off for now, the shop’s interior lit enough by the nearly midday sun. Before it’s time to open, I figure I can straighten all the stock, double-check the register, make sure the back room is tidy for meetings the freelance calligraphers and letterers will have here today. Lachelle at noon, Yoshiko at two, David at three thirty. Tomorrow Cecelia will be back, and the distraction of these temporary shifts will be at an end.
But I’ve got a plan now. I wish fleetingly that I had someone else here I felt close enough to call up, to say,Hey,want to go with me on these inspiration walks?But one of the worst outcomes of the distance between Sibby and me is how quickly it revealed the shallowness of so many of my connections here—colleagues and clients, people I like and respect and enjoy, but people who know me only as cheerful, frolicsome Meg, drawing and working with ease, quick with a smile, good for a laugh and some light conversation.
Calling any of them now—when I’m so blocked, when my reckless, ridiculous habit seems determined to make a reappearance—seems, somehow, impossible.
Still, going it alone will maybe be a good reminder. This city is mine, too, whether Sibby’s my roommate or not, whether Sibby’s myfriendor not. This city is home.
A flash of white on the worn oak floor catches the edge of my vision as I approach the counter, a scrap of paper someone must’ve dropped, and I reach down to pick it up. I should’ve swept last night, one of the items on the evening closeout list, but I’d been distracted by Reid waiting for our Incredibly Uncomfortable Espresso-Herbal Tea Summit, standing by the door like a statue in my periphery.
Once it’s between my fingers, though, I get that same ripple of feeling I had when he’d stood right across from me, the counter and my secret between us. It’s not a piece of scrap paper at all. It’s a perfect, pristine rectangle. It’s cardstock, extra thick, rounded corners you pay extra for. Black ink, raised, so you can run the pad of your thumb over it and feel each letter. A lovely, Glyphic serif—what a surprise.
It’s simple. A name, a title, a place, an e-mail address.
A sign.
For the first time in months, my mind sparks with an idea. An outrageous idea, maybe, but still—an idea.
To write to Reid Sutherland, and to ask him if he wants to be part of my plan.
Chapter 4
For the next six days, I am haunted not by a word, not by a letter; not even, really, by a name.
Instead I am haunted by a single sound: that brief, airy swoosh that came from my phone when I pressed send on my impulsive e-mail to Reid.
I hear it all through my last fill-in shift at Cecelia’s, when the sound is fresh, when I’m still in the headspace where it seems completely rational to navigate to my Sent folder so I can read my short, hastily drafted message every—oh, say twelve to fifteen minutes. I hear it all that night and the next day, when I try desperately to focus on work, when I resort to tasks like designing new color-coding systems for my pens (my old system was fine, really), when I do a six-part Instagram story on how to draw a black letterR. I tell myself it stands forRegretrather than a certain person who has not yet returned my e-mail. I do get a direct message that tells me my black letterRis “lol, boring,” which is only comforting in that I can’t imagine Reid had any such reaction to my e-mail.
I hear it Wednesday evening when I’m sitting on my couch, my browser open with approximately ten thousand Google Maps tabs open, research for the city walks I may very well be doing alone. That one is so real-seeming, even in spite of the headphones I have in my ears, that I look up, only to find Sibby opening the door to our apartment, her eyes down on her own phone, her eventual smile of greeting bland and noncommittal. I hear it again Thursday morning when she leaves for work, while I stay still and quiet in my bed, still groggy from a restless sleep.
On Friday I think I may get a respite from this twenty-first century Tell-Tale Heart sideshow, because Reid finally,finallye-mails me back, his message time-stamped at 5:01 p.m., becauseof courseit is. It’s brief, efficient (more shock and awe, obviously), barely more than a recitation of my own offer to meet again.I’ll find you at the Promenade, he’d written.Sunday, four o’clock. I stare at that e-mail for a long time.Maybe he’s hidden a code, I think, though there aren’t enoughf’s for “fuck off,” which, you know. Would be fair enough, I guess.
But I hear it again now, a tiny echo of it.
Because it’s Sunday, one week since he showed me that program. Because it’s three p.m., and if I’m going to make it to the Promenade by four, I need to leave the shop soon and catch the R train (“lol, boring”) to Court Street. Because in one hour (you know he’ll be right on time!), I need to make a pitch to a man who has very real reasons to dislike me. Because if he takes me up on this, I might be seeing him semiregularly for the foreseeable future.
“You seem antsy,” says Lachelle, which I appreciate, because at least it stops the phantom swooshing in my brain. Across from me, she pulls her nib away from her sharpening stone and picks up the small magnifying glass she’s wearing around her neck to check the sloping edge. She makes a noise of frustration and drops the glass again, adding a few more drops of water to the stone.
“Oh, not at all,” I say casually, my voice customer service cheerful in spite of the fact that we’re in the rear of the shop. Lachelle’s in to try out a new brand of walnut ink Cecelia’s ordered, some museum benefit job they’re collaborating on. I’m in to pretend I need to test out Cecelia’s metallic pen inventory, but really I’m here because Sibby and Elijah are at our place watching a show about people making terrible baking errors, and my nerves are too jangled to act normal around themoraround the baking errors. And since I couldn’t really decide what would be worse—Sibby noticing my nerves and asking me about it, Sibby noticing and not asking me about it, or Sibby not noticing at all—I figured visiting the shop made sense.
A return to the scene of the swoosh, if you will.
“What I mean is,” Lachelle clarifies, “your leg shaking is making this table move.”
I feel my face flush as I still my unruly right leg. “Oh! I’m so sorry.”
Lachelle looks up at me and smiles. “Do you have a date or something?”
Swooooooooosh, my brain says, loudly. I use the silver Tombow I’ve been testing to represent this noise on the page. It looks disappointingly similar to the famous logo, which is strike one million against my creativity lately.
