III

The night before Adam left there was a huge accident on the set. One of the lighting rigs crashed into our “forest” right in the middle of a take. No one was hurt, but it set us back about three days. The forest had to be completely reconstructed, and I had to go through all of the old takes with the set designer to make sure that the new set looked enough like the old set to blend seamlessly. I called Adam right after the accident to tell him I missed him and loved him and all that jazz. He loved me too, and wished that I were with him (he was watching the Red Sox get trampled by the Yankees and wanted desperately to rub it in). I wanted to be there too, with a big box of chocolate cookies and his hand running through my hair. I sighed.
“I love you too. Good night.” I still had about six hours of footage to get through before I could begin to think about the next day’s schedule. At some point around six in the morning I fell asleep at the soundboard. When I woke up, it was twelve thirty in the afternoon. Adam’s train left at one. After two poorly timed subway transfers, I hopped a cab to Grand Central Station, and ran in my rumpled work clothes down to his platform, just in time to see the train pull away. There was an old man in an orange vest next to me.
“Missed your train? There’s another one in the morning.” I turned to face the rail worker, but realized he hadn’t addressed me at all. I turned quickly to find Adam, grinning at his clever rouse. I was so happy to see him that I nearly cried right then and there. I think he knew that because right then he brushed away my invisible tear and drew me up into his arms the way that he had that first night in Cambridge. When I pulled away I really was crying, but I covered it quickly with mock scolding.
“Don’t pick me up like that you’ll hurt yourself.”
“Oh, please.”
“Hey, I’m heavy,” I warned.
“You’re perfect,” he said, and kissed me again.
We didn’t go to sleep at all that night, and spent our last night together roaming the streets of New York. We went to Coney Island to watch the sun set over the city, and walked barefoot on the beach until dark. When the lights of the boardwalk were on, he took me to the batting cages, and despite his warnings, I opted for the fast curve balls instead of the medium pitch softballs. I only hit two, but I was proud of myself for making it out alive.
We went on the Cyclone and ate Falafel, but sadly not in that order, which found Adam in sad shape for about a half hour. After making a quick recovery, Adam said that he wanted to take me somewhere. I still didn’t know New York very well, so I had no choice but to trust him, finding myself headed back toward Manhattan on the Subway. When we got off the subway, he made me close my eyes, and despite my prying eyes, I still couldn’t figure out where we were. When I was finally allowed to open them, I looked around and found that we were in the middle of Washington Square Park. He took my hand and leaned in close to whisper to me.
“I know that it’s too hot for our breath to make white clouds, or to hang in the air… But I thought maybe this would be nice.” At that moment, he had the piercing blue eyes of Bob Dylan, and I didn’t care that the song was about a lost love gone wrong. He held me close, and I imagined that we were in Paris.
A week later I found myself back in Washington Square Park, sitting on a bench, wondering where Adam was at that very moment. It seemed that I hadn’t gotten anything done, but somehow had been the longest week of my life. I kept that moment under the arch, the lights of the city around us, in the back of my mind to comfort me when nothing else could. The first few nights, I tried sleeping in my Red Sox T-shirt. It still smelled of him, and I couldn’t wash my sheets either. Nothing helped me to sleep though, and eventually I gave up on it all together, save dozing off here and there when the pills wouldn’t do the trick.
I found myself wandering back through the park every couple of days, and even though I was doing great at work, and was writing better than I had in months, I still couldn’t get Adam off my mind. He was busy with summer classes, and I was even busier on the vampire film. We emailed when I could get some computer time at work, and I almost always came home to a message telling me how much he missed me.
After a couple of weeks, the messages had faded a bit, and we only spoke a couple of times a week. I was beginning to wonder if it was stupid to think that it would last between us. I carried on with work, letting it consume my waking hours, which were all of them, now that I was up to two pills a day easy, and was lucky to stumble upon a connection through a girl at work. I’d started on the pills toward the end of my first semester at school, just on nights when I needed to stay up late to work on a paper. Needless to say it was a habit that had grown quickly on me, and had worsened since Adam had gone home. I had barely slept since I’d left him at the train platform and gone straight to work. I listened to “Rhapsody in Blue” every day, lying on the floor like we had that first Saturday. Sometimes I listened to it four or five times over, not even realizing that I’d reset the needle.
For three weeks, I’d been waiting for the upcoming weekend. Adam was coming for 24 blissful hours wherein neither of us had anything to do except for each other. Three hours before I was supposed to pick Adam up from the train he called me from Boston. He had to go to a conference with his Faculty Advisor that had just “come out of nowhere,” and he was “really sorry babe,” but he’d see me soon, he promised.
I cried myself to sleep, Friday afternoon, and when I woke up it was Saturday night. Adam had called twice, and Carrie had called once. I didn’t feel like talking to either of them. I put on my favorite dress and ran a wet comb through my hair. Unsatisfied with this result, I scrounged through my closet for a small make-up bag that I hadn’t used since I came to New York. After applying a bit of mascara and lip-gloss, I put on my jacket and headed down to the village.
Prior to my brief stay in New York, my knowledge of the Big Apple was limited to movies and pop-punk cultural references. As such, there were only two places I knew that I wanted to visit in the village, and I wasn’t sure that my fake ID would fly at the Bitter End. So I opted for the amateur night at CBGB’s, where my real ID got me in, and the cute guy at the bar got me a drink or two. His name was Brady and his band was playing the next night, and would I like to come? I politely declined, but after another hour or so of conversation, and another long island iced tea, I gladly accepted his invitation.
For some reason the next night found me particularly flustered, and none of my clothes seemed to be what the evening’s punk show called for. Eventually I settled on my favorite jeans and a too low cut halter-top that showed off the sprinkle of freckles I had on my shoulders. I wasn’t sure why I cared, but for some reason I had butterflies in my stomach like I hadn’t had since before I’d met Adam. It was nice.
Brady’s band was horrible. I’ve never been a fan of screaming vocals that you can’t make out the words to anyway, but this tested my limits. Of course that’s not what I told Brady.
“That was really great,” I said, wanting to vomit at my own impression of a groupie.
“Yeah, the new singer’s really amazing.”
“Yeah, he’s pretty great. You were good.”
“Eh, you can barely make me out back there behind the drums.” But you could make him out pretty well back there behind the drums. And he was sexy back there behind the drums. He wore jeans that hung just low enough that his stomach was exposed a bit when he lifted his arms, and it was perfect. He had a dark tan, which I couldn’t imagine he’d gotten in New York, deep brown eyes, somewhat unruly brown curly hair, and a devilish smile.
“So what are you doing now?” My tone was innocent, with just enough sex kitten to make him wonder what I meant.
“Well we were going to hang around and have a couple drinks. After that I was going to head back to my place. Wanna come?” I raised an eyebrow, but spoke before he could explain himself, and before I could stop myself.
“Sure, let’s go.” He had barely introduced the other guys in the band before we were saying our goodbyes. His place was only a few bocks away, in the Lower East Side, and at some point during the brief walk he took my hand. By the time we got up to his twelfth floor, we were making out so heavily, that he barely got the elevator door opened. We tumbled into his apartment, and luckily his bed was right near the door.
I think the alcohol counteracted my pills, and when I woke up, I looked around the tiny loft where I’d broken my own heart. Tiny was an understatement. I hadn’t thought that there were apartments smaller than mine in New York. The walls were spray painted with at least three generations of band tags, and the hardwood floors were scuffed, leading me to believe that at one point there was furniture in this apartment. Now, however, there was a futon mattress, a couple of beanbag chairs and stacks of books and CDs littered the small spaces in between.
Just as I was getting my bearings on the events of the previous night, Brady came out of his closet sized bathroom in nothing but his boxers. He was even more perfect than I’d remembered. I was a bigger fool than I’d imagined. I didn’t know what I’d tell Adam.
“Hey tomcat, wanna get some breakfast?”
“I really can’t.” Quick. Why couldn’t I? “I have a hair appointment.”
A hair appointment? Did I look like the kind of girl who had hair appointments? On a Sunday??
“Cool, well give me a call later on, maybe we can catch a movie or something.”
Did he think we were in high school? Was he courting me? But I smiled and nodded while gathering my carelessly strewn clothes, carefully recollecting the caution I’d clearly thrown to the wind the night before. I quickly dressed, and made my exit.
As I was making my walk of shame to the Delancey/Essex subway station, I put my hand in my pocket and found an unfamiliar piece of paper. I took it out and opened it. It was, of course, Brady’s phone number, and a date for an upcoming show they were playing at the Bitter End. I crumpled it up, but just before throwing it in the Metro Card recycle box, stuffed it back into my pocket.