Made With Love

Chapter 2

Montague Street courses on both sides with moving sound, the sidewalks mobbed with commuters en route to the metro and the street grid locking to the turn off for the Brooklyn Bridge. I step out of the apartment block as if into a deep running stream and let myself be carried along with clacking heels and cell phone chatter and barking horns into the underground. I can always count on the city to bring me back to myself or, at the very least, to fill my head with so many incoming sensations that it’s impossible to think of anything but what’s right in front of me.

The #7 express clatters into the station. I lean forward into the wash of just cooler air that it pulls up through the stale tunnel and watch the knot of people jostle into the already full cars. I hop over the gap, loop an arm around the rail, and cast a soft gaze toward the back of the car. A pair of elderly sisters, the same blue rinse in their tight curls, nod into their seats as the train jolts forward, eyes softly closed. A circle of boys yammer in a fast Caribbean Spanish, punting a basketball from foot to foot across the floor. A girl in a neon top sends a text that makes her laugh out loud and then flush.

You can have the Empire State Building and the Statue of Liberty; my New York is right here in the underground. Here everyone is in constant, buzzing exchange. I watch them and imagine where it is they’re coming from, which stop they’re counting up to, and if there’s someone waiting there for them.

The train rumbles to a stop, and I take the steps two at time to Broadway. The cross streets slide by, one after the other, and the taillights of the city bound cars blur in the fine, slantways rain. The constant stream of movement, of light and life across the city, surges through me like a bright, beating tide. Alone doesn’t happen in New York, and for me that’s just about as good as it gets.

At the corner of 5th and West 42nd, I pick up the two tall lattes that the ever faithful Mr. Henshaw has waiting for me at his lunch counter.

‘You’re my hero,’ I smile to him.

‘I know,’ he says.

I round the corner to Madison just as Kate comes rocketing up the stairs of the subway terminal in three inch heels and a lacy fuchsia dress. Her lipstick is smudged.

‘Perfect timing, as always,’ I say and hand her a latte.

‘I was this close to missing the train!’ she huffs, taking quick little swigs of her coffee every few steps.

‘Late one last night?’ I wink.

‘Let’s just say my bicuspids aren’t the only thing Karl knows his way around.’

‘Your dentist!’ I squeal. ‘What happened to Jake the pharmaceuticals guy?’

‘Booooring,’ Kate says and fakes a yawn.

‘I thought he was nice!’

‘You think all of the boring ones are nice.’

‘That’s not true!’ She smirks at me. ‘What, you think Brad’s boring?’

Kate fishes the last of a cheese Danish out of her bag and crams it into her mouth.

‘God no,’ she says, eyes fluttering. ‘Did you see his latest spread in Vanity Fair?’ I nod. ‘And his hair! And that tight little ass of his.’ Kate shivers.

‘Hey, that’s my boyfriend you’re perving on!’

‘Jules, I’m telling ya, he is the complete package,’ she laughs and nudges me in the ribs. ‘You are so going to be the power couple.’

‘As in Mr. and Mrs. Scholer?’ I squirm. ‘I don’t know.’ Brad is miles into the best-I-ever-had territory, but marriage? I’d always thought he was too avant-garde for marriage.