It is drizzling when we meet in the city. Skyscraper tears—so slight that I feel silly for opening my umbrella but get wet if I don’t. It took hours of phone calls to plan a single afternoon together. Soon the five of us will stand under the flagpoles of Rockefeller Center, five out of the eight or nine people from our dorm who live in the area. It’s the third week of 1991, the fifth week of our gratuitously long winter break. In September and October, I considered these people to be my new friends. By November, they were just my friends. Now, in January, after living back at home for the past month, they feel like my new friends again. I am strangely nervous to see them outside our campus bubble.
I am the first to arrive, an off-peak commuter from the suburban hinterlands of New Jersey. There was no way my mom was going to let me drive into the city, so I got the train in and took the subway from Penn Station up to Midtown. Usually I’d make this trip with my high school friends; this is the first time I’ve done it alone. Now I stand by the ice rink, gazing over the skaters without noticing any of their details. I let myself drift into a slow-motion daydream, picturing myself back on the subway, between stops. Caught between the here and the there, stuck behind unopenable doors. I try to look at the people around me, but it’s like we’re all reflections in the subway glass, faint as ghosts ...
“There you are,” Andie says. I turn, and she gives me one of those hollow hugs that encircles without making contact. “How are you?”
“Metaphorical,” I reply. She smiles but doesn’t understand. Which is okay, because I wasn’t expecting her to.
“The city is so weird this time of year,” she observes. She’s also from the suburbs, but on the Westchester side of things. “I thought the tree would still be up, but it makes sense that they took it down. I wonder where they put it when they’re done.”
We say “the city” like New York is the only one, as if the people living in the suburbs of Cleveland don’t say they’re going into “the city” too. I look to the spot where the Rockefeller tree used to perch; I’m not surprised it’s gone, but I am surprised that they’ve managed to sweep away all the needles.
“Maybe there’s a retirement home for Rockefeller Christmas trees,” I tell Andie. “Like an old military hangar, but more festive.”
“You are so weird, Eric.”
It’s not an insult, but it’s not praise either. It’s a point of difference. I am weird, Andie is not weird. This is how she sees it, and therefore how it is.
We’re saved from further small talk by Pam and Margaret. Pam’s local, and Margaret slept over at her place last night. There’s a round of better hugs before we dive into our trademark liturgy of indecision—What do you want to do? I don’t know, what do you want to do?I want to go to the Strand, because that’s what I always do in New York, losing myself in the labyrinth of books and then reading my way out. But I don’t think Andie will go for that. She once told me that reading was a distraction, something she only does at the gym, on the exercise bike, if the TV is broken.
Pam suggests we get out of the rain as we wait for Noah, so we duck into the doorway of 30 Rock. The liturgy continues:Are you hungry? Not really, but if you’re hungry, I could get something to eat. No, I’m not that hungry ... but if you want to get something to drink, I could get something todrink.We have these conversations all the time at school, and I usually zone out on them there too.
I look through the window of our enclosure, keeping an eye out for Noah. I see my imprint on the rainy day. That glass effect again, so much like the way my brain works. I am faded. I am fading. If I stand back, I can be invisible. I will slip right out of anyone’s mind. People will forget I’m in the room. When invitations are sent, I’ll be called afterward, or right before the party, to be told, “I’m sorry ... I really want you to come. Things were so busy, it just didn’t occur to me ...”
I don’t want to be in the position where I am trying to conjure Noah in the rain. He is from the city, of the city. I’ve called him four times since break began, to see if he wanted to do something. Three times I got the answering machine, his mother sounding like the lady who intones “Thank you for using AT&T” whenever a collect call is going through. In all three messages, I said, “Call me back whenever you get a chance,” then waited a second before hanging up. Answering machines bother me—while I talk, I get too comfortable, say too much. Then, once I realize this, I shut things down fast, but not fast enough to avoid one last awkward pause, a teetering, a click. I knew he was going to Florida to see his grandparents for part of the vacation, but the fourth time I called, it was definitely after he was back. I hung up that time before the answering machine came on.
I’m looking for him out the window, but he comes in through another door, somehow knowing where we’d seek shelter. He pops in, says, “Hello, everyone,” hugs the girls, shakes my hand. He smiles when he sees me, asks me how my vacation’s been going. I smother my perturbation and respond with a neutral brevity, then ask him about Florida. While he’s answering, I can’t stop thinking:Is youranswering machine broken?I wait for him to say something, wait for his shoulders to sag into an apology.
But instead he turns to the rest of the group and asks, “Have you already seenHome Alone?”
“Yes,” Andie says, “we’ve all seenHome Alone. Don’t they have movie theaters in Florida? I’m not going to spend a few hours in the city on something you can see in a mall.”
“We could go to TKTS and see a show,” Margaret quietly offers.
“That costs a lot,” Pam replies. “Even half price.”
Pam is the reason I’m here. I called her a week ago, wondering if it might be a good idea to get a group together in the city since most of our high school friends were already back at their respective universities. She said that it was funny I should mention it, because a bunch of people were going to meet next Wednesday—she was about to call me with an invitation. She had talked to Noah and Andie, and Andie had talked to Margaret, and there were a couple other people who were going to be out of town or already had plans. I asked if there was any way it could be changed to Tuesday, since I was supposed to visit my aunt on Wednesday. Pam said, “Oh, I don’t think we can change it”—someone was going to be away, she couldn’t remember who. I said it wasn’t a big deal. I could reschedule with my aunt. Then I started to ask Pam about her Christmas, and she said we’d catch up on Wednesday, she really had to go.
Now it’s Wednesday. It’s two in the afternoon, but my day is still waiting to begin. It’s only been wake-up and transportation so far. Pam suggests again that we could eat, but no one’s hungry enough to commit.
“We could go seeAlice,” I say.
“Cool,” Noah says. “I think it’s at the Paris, which is real close.”
“Who’s Alice?” Andie asks.
“It’s the new Woody Allen movie,” I explain.
“I’ve heard good things,” Noah says.
“Alice is my great-aunt’s name,” Andie says.
“Why don’t we go to Chinatown?” Pam asks.
“Is it one of his funny ones?” Andie asks. “I only like his funny ones.”
“Maybe?” Noah replies.
“Chinatown would be cool.” Andie turns to Pam. “Is it far?”
