Loner (23 page)

Daniel went to the bathroom and, on the return trip, with his crudely acquired sexual bravado, somehow managed to wangle a conversation with Heidi McMasters. Daniel Hallman talking to Heidi McMasters! It would have been inconceivable six months ago. As Paresh and George compared the merits of their school's dormitories, I watched Daniel feign suaveness. My initial envy was tempered by seeing Heidi, for the first time, for what she was: just a cute suburban girl whose best years were already behind her. He strode back to us as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened, deliberately not mentioning his transcendence of previously impermeable social borders so that Paresh and George would obsequiously grill him, the intrepid explorer, about the otherworldly wonders he'd glimpsed in his travels.

As the night ended, Daniel asked if my “hand-job queen” had written back.

“No,” I said. “I remembered she was going to see a movie tonight.”

“Do you even really know this girl?” he taunted. “Or do you just jerk off to her picture?”

“Of course I know her,” I said. “I see her all the time.” The only photo of us actually together also included Sara, with my arm around her, and if it came out that I'd been dating her, they'd never believe I had also hooked up with you. And the one of me at the library would provide Daniel with more ammunition—that you must
have been giving me hand jobs under the table all night long while we studied.

Maybe you really were at a movie. Even so, there was no need for you to ignore me, not after what we'd done together. It was less than a week ago, but the memory was already growing fuzzy. Talking about you in the third person almost made me feel as if I'd conjured you up, a character in a dream. It'd all be better once school resumed and I saw you again. But four days was too long to wait.

After logging another sixty hours with the Federmans, on Saturday morning I told my mother I'd made plans to meet a college friend in Manhattan and would she mind dropping me off at the train station after lunch?

“Of course,” she answered, and asked when I'd be back.

“I'm not sure,” I said. “If it's late, I'll take a taxi home from the station.” Then, optimistically: “I may just sleep over and come back in the morning. Okay if I play it by ear?”

Most eighteen-year-olds in my position might have had to negotiate to stay out late in New York City without concrete expectation of a return. My mother couldn't have looked more pleased I was getting out of the house. Chumless David, who'd spent his adolescence in his room, who hadn't had so much as a sleepover past the age of nine, had not only made a close friend at school, but a Manhattan sophisticate to boot.

“Perfectly fine,” she said.

“Are you kidding me?” Anna whined. “You wouldn't let me see Sophie tonight because you said we
all
have go to the Goldmans'. Why is
he
allowed to get out of it?”

“David's in college,” my mother told her. “He's allowed to visit his friend in the city if he wants.”

Before leaving I mapped out which subway to take down to Zipper & Button, the clothing boutique in SoHo whose label was on your black sweater. Riding the A train, my reflection in the window that of a disgruntled native, I thought of taking a selfie and sending it to Daniel Hallman, telling him I was clothes shopping in downtown Manhattan today; did he want me to pick up anything for him, or did he prefer to stick to the mall?

The streets were clogged with shoppers chasing post-­Thanksgiving sales. Zipper & Button, however, advertised no holiday deals and was empty but for two unsmiling female clerks. They looked up from their conspiratorial huddle behind the counter and gave me a cold, cursory appraisal.

With its exposed-brick walls and creaky floors, the space felt more like someone's home than a store. From speakers whispered an acoustic guitar and a woman singing in what sounded like a Scandinavian dialect. Inventory was sparse and didn't look particularly masculine. It occurred to me this might be a women's-only shop.

I took another lap around the racks to check that I hadn't missed anything. This time I located a sweater identical to the one you wore, two lines of stitching from the shoulders meeting at the chest, only in gray instead of black. I brought it to the counter.

“Is this men's?” I asked.

“Unisex,” they answered together.
Xesinu.

I took it into the dressing stall and pulled it over my T-shirt. It softly conformed to my upper body, a luxurious departure from the lumpy, scratchy sweaters of unwanted childhood gifts. Next to my Gap jeans and Foot Locker sneakers, it looked incongruous, the brooding musician whose siblings were a dentist and a database administrator. I needed a whole new wardrobe, but this was a start.
For the price I'm paying
, I heard my father grumble,
you'd think they could throw in a pair of pants.

I charged the sweater to my debit card, wore it out of the store, hopped on the uptown 6 train, and walked over to Park Avenue, where I found the elegant prewar residence of good ol' Larry and Margaret.

My plan was to sit in a restaurant or coffee shop with a view of your building. At some point you'd pop out for a cigarette, and that's when our coincidental run-in would transpire. I'd dart out and we'd laughingly exchange
What are
you
doing here?
s.
Oh, I just saw a friend, but I have a few hours to kill before my train; sure, I could join you for a walk through Central Park.
Away from school, away from Tom and Liam and Suzanne and Jen and Christopher and Andy and everyone else, you could be your unguarded self.
Don't take the train back,
you would plead as dusk descended.
Stay here, my parents are dying to meet you.
You'd bring me back to your apartment, feverish with excitement.
So this is the David we've been hearing so much about!
Margaret would swoon.

But during my many jaunts down your block through Google Street View, I'd failed to notice the critical oversight in my strategy: Park was strictly residential. There wasn't a single commercial establishment that could serve as an inconspicuous hideout; it was as if the avenue were designed to discourage the casual lurker.

A landscaped meridian bisected north- and southbound lanes of traffic, with concrete embankments serving as islands for pedestrians who didn't catch the green light in time to make it all the way across the boulevard. Raised flower beds bordered interior strips of each median that had held grass in warmer months.

I stood in the middle of the crosswalk opposite your building, surveying my options. If I waited on the sidewalk right outside your home, I would blow my cover; if you saw me sitting on the edge of the island's empty flower bed, you'd know I was on a stakeout. Failing to come up with a better solution, I decided to stay put. Under the pretense of waiting to cross the street, I remained adrift on my concrete no-man's-land, eyes fixed on the green awning that
canopied a set of double doors from which you might at any point emerge.

As the afternoon sun sank, suffusing the street with a tangerine glow, the indigenous species of the Upper East Side meandered by, women with pinched faces and coiffed hair, their toy dogs snug in cashmere sweaters, nonagenarians escorted by uniformed help, teens in sweatpants with the names of their prep schools scrolled in oversized fonts down the legs, towheaded toddlers slumbering in strollers.

Your building's doorman, dressed in a brass-buttoned suit and a porter's hat, maintained equal vigilance from his post inside your lobby so as not to be caught unawares by an approaching resident. And he never was, always anticipating the precise moment to turn the handle and swing the door open, stepping aside and acknowledging the occupant's return with a deferential nod.

Every so often the door would open and he'd march out on his own to the curb, blow a whistle, and wave a white-gloved hand at the oncoming traffic. A yellow cab would screech to a stop in front of the awning and a resident would materialize from the lobby and climb in.

After one of these excursions, rather than going back inside the building, he headed over to my island. I typed pointlessly into my phone.

“You waiting for someone?” he asked in a gruff outer-borough accent.

“I'm doing a study on pedestrian traffic for Harvard University,” I told him. “I'm measuring the ebb and flow of population density and calculating carrying capacity.”

I held up my phone, ostensible proof of my scientific method.

“Harvard?” He grimaced, looked around as if uncertain what to do with this information, and nodded. “All right.”

Evening set in. The temperature dropped and it began drizzling. I thought about running over to another avenue to buy an umbrella,
but if you chose that interval for your appearance, all my work would have been for naught.

The sky cleaved and the drizzle turned into a downpour. The only awning nearby was your own, and I couldn't make that my haven. All I could do was stay in place, getting soaked as walkers scattered and I remained the one person outside sans umbrella.

On top of being wet, I was hungry, cold, and tired from standing. I didn't know if you were home; if so, when you'd be leaving; or, if you were out, when you'd be returning. Yet the adverse conditions only fortified my determination. I was scaling Everest. It'd be another heroic story to tell you someday.

As it turned out, you were home.

You carried an open umbrella out of the lobby around ten o'clock, walked to the corner opposite where I stood, and stepped off the curb. My fatigued quadriceps contracted with anticipation. I stayed where I was, assuming you were going to cross the street in my direction, but instead you held up your hand to hail a taxi, forgoing your doorman's services.

“Hey!” I yelled, but my voice was lost in the thrum of raindrops and whistling traffic. Two cabs spotted you simultaneously and jockeyed for your fare at the corner. While you folded your umbrella and climbed into the nearest one, I made a cavalier dash across the street. Your car took off as I jumped into the second cab, my wet jeans squeaking against the pleather seat.

“Follow that cab directly in front of us,” I told the driver. “Please.”

A chase sequence in traffic-jammed Manhattan wasn't as exhilarating as it might sound. We stopped at frequent red lights; our cars never exceeded fifteen miles per hour; my driver yammered on the phone the whole time in a foreign language.

When we reached your destination, the rain had stopped. Our cabs pulled up in tandem at a curb that, according to the on-screen map, was on the Lower East Side. I paid with my debit card but had trouble swiping it cleanly, and by the time I was done you'd
disappeared into a bar on the corner. A squat man with an imperious stomach guarded the door. I could wait until you departed, but at that point you might be headed home. And I was tired of waiting.

I sauntered up to the bar's entrance, scratching the back of my neck and checking my phone with blasé distraction. Slouched on a stool, hands in the pockets of a puffy jacket, the bouncer barely lifted his eyes from his own phone. “ID,” he mumbled.

“I left my wallet here last night,” I said. “They're expecting me.”

He yawned and blinked wearily. “Can't let you in without ID.”

“My friend got his stomach pumped because he was here last night,” I said. “We had to leave right away, and I've been in the hospital with him all night and day. I've got a flight tomorrow, and if I don't get it—”

He released a bored sigh. “Make it quick,” he said.

My first time in a bar—and a New York City bar, at that. But it wasn't what I had expected from a Manhattan establishment, nor was it the kind of place I would've guessed you'd haunt. Bad eighties music shrieked on a jukebox; retro arcade games blinked and blipped against one wall; the floor was sticky with beer. A number of ironic moustaches and earnest beards among the male clientele; the women seemed intent on marring their looks with conscientiously frumpy clothes and eccentric glasses.