In a New York Minute(95)

The dad in the corner was pointing at me and then to the TV, explaining to his son what had just happened. Behind the counter, two more workers had joined the first and were staring at me.

I felt surprisingly calm. Too calm. I was in shock. Love-shock. I needed to get to Hayes.

“I don’t…I don’t know where he is,” I stammered. “Also, I spent all my money on breakfast. I don’t have enough for a MetroCard.”

“Well, if he’s on New York News, he’s at Rockefeller Center,” the dad said, still bouncing his kid on his lap. “Go there.”

The old man leaned forward in his chair, pulling a wallet out of his back pocket. “Here,” he said, passing a yellow MetroCard to me. “I always keep one on me that has at least ten rides, just in case.”

“I want to say that I can’t accept this, but I’m going to accept this,” I said, clutching it to my chest. “Thank you so much.”

“He’s cute!” his wife shouted at me as I hustled for the door. “Go get him.”

And off I went, to do exactly that.

*



I had no watch and no phone to keep track of time, but it felt like the train inched from Brooklyn into the city. It was the weekend, so it was making local stops, and the feeling of calm that had settled into me in the bagel shop was long gone. I was now a full-on wreck: a foot-jiggling, nail-biting, sleeve-twisting mess. Hayes was in love with me too, and now every second we were not together was a complete waste of time.

The train chugged into the Rockefeller Center station, and I bolted as soon as the doors slid open. I ran up the stairs, past the shops that lined the hallways of the station, and then I was outside, on Sixth Avenue and Fifty-First Street.

“Crap!” I dodged my way through the throngs of people already hogging the sidewalk. Two breathless blocks later, I was near the NYN studio. I took a minute to catch my breath, hands on my knees, panting next to a lamppost. I looked around as the world moved quickly by me. I laughed, out loud, at the ridiculousness of it all. It would be impossible to find him in the middle of this chaos. I looked down. In my frantic departure from the bagel shop, I’d smeared cream cheese on the front of my sweatshirt.

Of course.

My grand plan of meeting Hayes as he left NYN was quickly being ruined by reality. I turned the corner to walk in the street, past the crowds and the shops hawking tourist wares, and toward the center of the Plaza.

I suddenly felt incredible stupid. What was I thinking, running here smelling like an everything bagel with a stranger’s MetroCard in my hand? I had to get back to Brooklyn, where at least I could shower and put on some mascara and shave my legs, and then call him and go to his apartment and strip naked immediately and climb on top of him. That was a much better plan.

I got the hell out of the tourist madness and made my way down Fifth Avenue, to Grand Central Station. The Main Concourse was slow for a Saturday morning. The space always reminded me of a library, with its giant glass windows and arched celestial ceiling.

I was walking across the marble floor, headed toward the long hallway that led down to the subway tracks, when someone a few steps ahead of me dropped a wad of cash. I ran to pick it up and then lifted my head to figure out which way he’d gone.

“Excuse me,” I shouted, but this being New York, no one turned around. “Hey!” I said, jogging a few steps to tap the stranger on the shoulder. I’d moved so quickly I hadn’t had a chance to even process the man’s shape, the long body, the thick hair. But the second I laid a hand on him, I knew, even before he turned around.

It was Hayes.

He stopped so abruptly that I was still in motion, and I lurched into his chest, my head smacking against his shoulder and my right foot stomping hard on his shoe.

“Ow,” he grumbled, taking a step back, his hand on my elbow. “Ma’am, are you o— Oh my god.”

He tilted his head so he could see my face under my hat. “Franny?”

“You dropped some money,” were the first words out of my mouth as I opened my palm.

“What are you doing here?” he asked incredulously.

“I saw you on TV,” I explained, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. “I went to Rockefeller Center to find you.”

“But we’re in Grand Central,” he said, his brows still quizzical, face perplexed.

“I know. I couldn’t find you, so I’m on my way home. But here you are.” We stood there for a second, still. “Wait,” I said, something dawning on me. “‘Ma’am’? Do I look that old?”

He laughed, as if he couldn’t believe what I was saying. “I was trying to be polite—you startled me.”

“How do you think I feel? I was minding my business eating when you came on a TV in the bagel shop!”

It was then that I realized his hand was still on my arm, and so I stepped closer to him, desperate to breathe him in.

“Franny,” he said, cupping my face with his free hand. “Do you want to go back and finish your bagel?”

His mouth shifted into a playful smirk, and I smacked him in the shoulder and then let my hand move slowly down his chest. “No, you jerk. I just want to be here, with you.”

He smiled at this, and then his long arms were around me, pressing me into him, warm and steady, his chin resting atop my head. I reached my arms around him and held on.