May 28, 2021 - A few blocks west of the Oculus
It was strange. I was having a coffee on a Thursday morning in September before work and sitting on a bench in Battery Park. The night before there was lightning and thunder outside my window, so loud and so consistent that it kept me awake almost until sunrise. I only slept a wink. The strange part wasn’t the lack of sleep followed by the coffee; and it wasn’t sitting on a bench in Battery Park before work. I started doing that all the time in July. Some mornings I’d have the lunch that you made me –––– ham sandwiches on gluten free bread with crisps and apple slices. Then later I’d have a bagel, plus two coffees with milk for lunch.
Battery Park wasn’t far from where you told me you wanted to meet me after work, the last Thursday of September. You had news and you wanted to share it with me and you wouldn’t give me any hint about what the news might be. I had asked and asked for a clue, but you wanted to keep it a secret; you wanted to make it a surprise. The strange part wasn’t how the rain from the night before was still in the morning air the next day. September storms linger; it happens all the time.
The strange part was how after work I walked out of the office across the way from the Bowling Green subway station and went over to the park bench where we were supposed to meet at 7:00pm; and once I arrived you were already sitting there, very still. You didn’t get up to hug me or kiss me so I sat down beside you and gave you a kiss on the cheek; and you looked over at me and you smiled. You were carrying the tote bag from that vintage used clothing store that we went to all the time whenever we’d go to your parents house in Cleveland; and after a while you reached over and into the bag and pulled out a small box. The box was wrapped with gold and green wrapping paper with a bow and the bow was gold. You gave it to me and said don’t read too much into it, and I asked whether you wanted me to open it then ––– and you said, yes, you did.
I started by pulling the strings of the bow rather than ripping the paper open. It was wrapped so beautifully and wrapped so delicately. Inside there was a plane ticket. Round-trip, from New York to San Francisco –––– and it was dated for the last week in November; the 22nd through the 29th. It started to rain, only a little bit at first but then it really started to rain –––– and you didn’t have an umbrella, and I didn’t have an umbrella, so we got up and started running toward an awning across the way. We found one outside of a coffee shop across. For a while we stood there in silence; and then you spoke: I’m moving, you said, and I want you to come and visit me –––– you have to come and visit me.
The strange part was the confidence with which you spoke: you have to come and visit me. The rain didn’t let up but instead the opposite happened. It started raining harder -––– really beating down. Your favorite spot to walk by the water wasn’t far away –––– a few blocks west of the Oculus. The rain softened and when we walked out from beneath the awning the temperature felt twenty degrees cooler. I had left my jacket on the back of my chair at the office and all you had was a second sweater in the tote bag, which you offered to me, but I declined.
We walked south and then west and I thought about those first few years that we spent together in Cleveland, working in the same office park and seeing each other at the same four or five happy hour bars that all of our friends would invite us to back then. When I think of you and I think of those years I think of how aloof you were. Even if you were in the same room as everyone else and doing the same thing as everyone else and drinking the same drink as everyone else, you were still aloof ––– all on your own: an island, a lighthouse.
