The Futures(96)

“This is great, Jules,” Elizabeth said, crumpling the wrappers from our banh mi into a tight, waxy ball. “It’s going to be a great summer.”

On Sunday, Cat opened the door. We’d met a few times, through Abby.

“That’s all you have?” she said.

I shifted my tote bag on my shoulder. “Yup. For now.”

She showed me around their West Harlem apartment quickly, apologizing for her abruptness, but she was on her way downtown to meet friends for dinner. “That’s the thing about this neighborhood,” she said, responding to a text, slipping on her sandals, tying her hair back in a bun, a flurry of motion. “I love it, but it’s so far from everything. Anyway, I sleep at Paolo’s most nights. He’s in the East Village. It’s just easier.”

I spent a lot of time walking that first week. I had nothing else to do. I woke up in the morning, and it was always the first thing I realized: there was nothing I had to do that day. But this was different from how I’d felt in Boston. Then, the emptiness of the day stretched before me like a punishment. The discipline of my routine was a way of combating the loneliness, the reading and running and walking the dog like beads on a rosary. But at Abby’s I woke to an empty apartment, and the emptiness actually felt good. Peaceful. Every morning was different. Sometimes I’d make coffee in the kitchen, drinking from Abby and Cat’s mismatched mugs. Other mornings I’d go to the diner on the corner, watching the sidewalk traffic over eggs and bacon. Or I’d set out on a long walk to some unknown destination and pick up things on the way. Coffee from a Cuban restaurant, milky and sweet. A hot, spicy samosa for breakfast at 11:00 a.m., because I could do whatever I wanted.

Was it that the city had changed since I left? Was it such a different place, altered by the events of the previous year—the collapse of the economy, the election of a new president? Maybe it was, in small ways. The quieted construction sites, halted until the money started flowing again. The real estate listings, marked down further and further. The miasma of worry that hovered in the subway cars, nervous and desperate job seekers, commuters distractedly thinking of their 401(k)s. But mostly, life went on. Before long, it would be back to normal. The market would rebound. Apartment prices would pause, catch their breath, then resume their relentless climb.

But my city, my New York, was different. It was empty of the people I had known, of the associations I had clung to before. Abby was gone, on another continent for the summer. Evan was living his own life. Adam had surely moved on to another girl. Elizabeth was busy with work. This, too, was different from what I’d felt the summer before: neglected, and bored, and constantly waiting. Waiting for Evan to get home, waiting for his attention to refocus on me, waiting for him to fill whatever this vacuum was. Waiting, and wanting, for someone else to solve my problems.

I walked down Frederick Douglass Boulevard, near Abby’s apartment, or through the twisting blocks of the West Village, or down the Bowery, or along the Battery. One day I walked across the Brooklyn Bridge and along the promenade in Brooklyn Heights, looking at the city from a new angle. The skyscrapers glittered in the late afternoon sun; the harbor was dotted with the white slashes of sailboats; the spray from a Jet Ski refracted the light. I could pick out Jake’s apartment building, the balcony where Abby and I had stood during his party the previous summer.

Through it all, I began to see how badly I’d gotten things wrong. I kept looking for salvation in other people. I kept waiting for something else to come along. But that was never going to be the solution. The solution wasn’t going to be Rob, either. It wasn’t going to be staying at home, listening to my parents. I was lonely because I was alone—because everyone was, and no one could solve that for me. I could only learn to solve it for myself. For once, that knowledge didn’t feel oppressive. I walked through the dusk back across the bridge to Manhattan. I didn’t know where that realization pointed me. But for the moment, I let myself be content with it, with knowledge divorced from action.

I saw Elizabeth for dinner every couple of days. We’d eat something cheap and easy in her apartment, pasta with butter or scrambled eggs with cheese. I ate a lot of my meals alone, on bar stools or park benches. I liked the way it felt. I was free to observe the city, uninhibited because no one was observing me. I’d been slow to appreciate the invisibility New York grants. No one cares what you do, and that’s a good thing. I felt more alive that week than I’d felt since graduation. Or maybe even further back, since that summer in Europe. In the middle of that first week, my mother sent a box of clothes to Abby’s apartment. In among the Tshirts and sundresses she had tucked a note, written in her delicate script on a sheet of her monogrammed stationery. Jasmine was cleaning out the kitchen drawers, and she found this old disposable camera. She got the pictures developed—I thought you might want them. We miss you. It’s very quiet here without you. xxx, Mom.

I walked, and I walked. I walked down the West Side a lot. I could pass Adam’s apartment building on Riverside Drive, and it was surprisingly easy—I felt nothing. I finally acknowledged what I’d been carrying around for so long, and I had started to make my peace with it. But the one neighborhood I avoided was the Upper East Side. I didn’t even like to cross the invisible midline of Central Park. I worried about what might happen if I ever ran into Evan. What scared me was the possibility that I could inflict more hurt. That there was more damage to be done. That Evan and I might bump into each other, and I would say or do something that only made things worse.