Intersection
a short story
Running through Manhattan in the pouring rain might actually be romantic in real life if you’re with someone else. If I’d had time to stop and soak in Union Square for the first time as a New Yorker, I might have seen an elegant woman in a dress and stockings with a nice coat and dark red lipstick, some homeless dude pushing his things around in a shopping cart, kids shouting in a foreign language as they hurdle past, whoever, little particles of me tailing after them through the cold February night, following the routes of their lives. But I couldn’t stop because I was running late, which is how I wound up eating shit on my way to meet Josephine.
The conductor said this was the last stop on the L. It took me a minute to find my way to the surface. I popped my structurally unsound umbrella, half its prongs limp, and it nearly peeled away as I emerged into the torrent. I pictured it jerking east down 14th St. back toward Brooklyn, beholden to arrhythmic gusts but still as hemmed in by the city’s grid as the rest of us. Then I saw my bus pull up across the intersection. I scampered through the rain like one of the city’s infamous rats I hadn’t yet seen, dodging the deepest pools in the uneven pavement. A taxi nearly hit me, then some poor DoorDash guy on a bike came out of nowhere and before he could swerve, I did, slipping on the edge of a puddle where the sidewalk lowered into the street. My left knee hit first, then my hand, wrist, the side of my face. A small crowd under the covered Target doors watched. They were waiting for a different bus, next to escalators from the subway. It must have looked hilarious to them.
The cold seeped through my clothes and numbed the throbbing. I untangled my legs from my umbrella and scrambled up. Something crunched under my feet—my glasses? No, an older woman about to board bent over for my glasses. She didn’t have to. She was too stiff to hold her umbrella upright at the same time, so she got wet all down her back. If I were her, I’d have pretended not to see them and just get on the bus. But she handed them to me, smiled, put her hand on my shoulder. She was shaking. Once seated, I realized I was too.
I tried to watch Union Square as we pulled away. I’d been once before, a Thanksgiving weekend in high school when my family took a day trip to the city. We went to the Strand and my father complained about the price of the tote bags before walking out with one for himself and another for my sister. I was taken with the buildings surrounding the trees and how many men sat bundled up at folding tables, calling through the chill for passers-by to join them at their chess mats. It was hard not to sense a kind of magic—call it possibility, adventure, divinity if you like—the instantaneous understanding of the enormity of the universe, the circuitry of the streets and the trains below algorithmically channeling hundreds of overlapping lives just as important and banal as yours to that one point, one solution to so many functions. Now I could only make out the glowing signs of a collection of stores you could find in every suburb of Boston, stacked together like a shopping center filling the façade of a newly developed apartment complex.
The bus was mostly empty. A few stragglers in the back, a pair of high school or maybe college girls across from me. One of them laughed about something and I looked at her; they both looked at me; I’m not sure who looked or looked away first. I ran a hand through my hair and felt it frizzing as it dried. My fluorescent reflection in the window glared against headlights outside. My glasses pulled the gaze round, under and past the brow bone, but the image was too murky to make eye-contact with myself.
Had Josephine responded to my last message? My only Twitter notification was the latest dm from this girl Delia saying hi. We’d hung out once back in December. She was almost a decade older than me but she’d only been on HRT for like six months. We played Commander and drank cheap beers in her dim and drafty Northampton apartment while her nominally bisexual cis girlfriend had their car at work. We heard her fiddling at the door with her keys, otherwise she’d have caught us sloppily making out on the faded green sofa. Maybe that’s what Delia wanted. I caught her in my rear-view mirror staring with bitter, imploring lust as I pulled away, smug and satisfied with the freedom to fuck when, where, and who I wanted all the way up I-91 and back to North Adams, where I smoked weed and played Elden Ring until the sun rose over Crum Hill. I didn’t respond.
I swiped back to Josephine’s page. Her avi smirked at me. Understated makeup, curly brown hair, perfect teeth. She was cute, maybe beautiful, maybe not hot. Same as me. We’d been mutuals since I joined trans Twitter two years ago. We liked each other’s selfies, left sort-of funny replies on each other’s posts, dunked on the same inane discourse from anime-avi accounts. Are the kids alright? I asked, and she answered idk lol there as dumb as on tumblr. not us tho ofc :) . I followed her private account and we’d let our guards down in dms, naturally a bit flirtatious but not pitifully horny like most Online trans girls. She was the rare digital acquaintance who made me feel interesting and desirable without ever giving me more attention than I wanted to enjoy.
When she heard I was moving to New York, she offered to show me around; when I told her I was moving to Bushwick, she seemed disappointed. kinda far from harlem. My first night out in Brooklyn, I went to a club I’d seen girls mention online and met a few Manhattanites. Is that the right term? A couple programmers and a lawyer who moved across the river once they’d landed promotions or something. Except this one girl, Olivia, a “digital anthropologist” fresh from Brown whose West Village parents were paying for her new one-bedroom in the East Village so she wouldn’t have to live with them anymore. I sipped my drink and marveled at her coked-out dignity ranting to a girl she’d known for five minutes.
Then she led me outside to about a dozen girls smoking around a metal fire pit. I’d never seen so many of us in one place before. They wore crop tops and cargo pants, or fishnets under tight skirts, winter be damned, beautiful in a way I recognized without comprehending, intrusive to observe and impossible to isolate. One conversation absorbed another and split back into smaller chats, boundaries adjoining and morphing like a kaleidoscope—some movie I didn’t know, their model friend’s shitty boyfriend, a job at what sounded like a brunch spot, Drake, which end of someone’s block had the better bodega, another movie, the merits of ‘good’ karaoke and an ensuing debate about what that meant and whether it could exist in the first place. This world was bounded by subway stops, clubs, rent prices, but among these girls, it was infinite.
Two of them took turns putting their arms around each other’s waists, giddy kisses here and there. A third girl introduced herself as Sharon and explained in a matter-of-fact monotone that “those two” had finally gotten together after months of simmering yearning.
“About time too,” Olivia chimed.
The couple was sexual in a self-evident way I expected. No one else was. In fact, it wasn’t until the initial awe faded from the scene that I started to register much smaller gestures: the probing tone of a mundane question; who touched whose arms and shoulders how often; a slightly cocked head, raised eyebrow, invitation to light your cigarette off hers, the exact angles and duration of eye-contact and concomitant up- or downturning of the lips or lack thereof. Back in the Berkshires, I could get girls to drive over an hour from Albany or Vermont or the Pioneer Valley to hook up with me—and I might change my mind anyway! I relished that power to pick and choose. I wasn’t desperate, I wouldn’t waste my time driving to a girl unless I knew exactly what she wanted. These girls were negotiating at a magnified level I was powerless to translate or engage. I went home dazed and elated.
No one I met that night or at the trans picnic the next weekend knew Josephine. Actually, I think some of them had her blocked.
I got off the bus and double checked Google Maps under scaffolding. We were meeting at Cubbyhole, one of the only lesbian bars left in the country, or so I had read in a Twitter thread a while back. The walk was brief and wretched. My converse shoes became sponges and I made it half a block before my feet were aching from the cold.
Here! I messaged, just a few minutes late. I huddled in line under the awning as what sounded like a Tinder date unfolded behind me. One, from Phoenix, was in town visiting an aunt. The other had grown up in Milwaukee and been here since their days at NYU. They definitely weren’t cis men and probably weren’t trans women; beyond that, their genders were illegible. I wondered if they noticed me and thought the same. What a shame to come all this way and still not be seen—but maybe they didn’t want to be. Back in New England or upstate, I’d usually meet girls over takeout and Netflix or Smash Bros in living rooms strewn with bongs and sex toys. Even in the queer college towns of the Pioneer Valley, the girls I saw didn’t like moving through public space. On the rare occasions we did go out somewhere, if the waitstaff didn’t steer us to the table in the back corner, the other girl inevitably would. The pandemic isolation didn’t help, and masking meant girls didn’t have to worry as much about shaving and laser. I tried to stop thinking about it when the bouncer checked my ID, unfazed by the mismatch between the college schlub on my license and the trans woman in front of him, or whatever he saw.
It was no brighter inside than out. True to its name, Cubbyhole was stuffed, one long intestine half-obstructed by the bar, bodies undulating through musk. “Sugar, We’re Goin’ Down” vibrated through the speakers and walls. Every sense felt smothered, and except for two tall girls making out in tight tank tops and jeans, the frictions between soggy fabrics and skins were awkward, irritating, and dull. So was waiting for Josephine. I couldn’t get to the bar so I scrolled my phone again, retweeting a mutual’s take about transmisogyny from trans men that scanned as clever but made me vaguely angry just seeing it. A different mutual, Margot from California, had posted a selfie in a bike helmet. I knew from some brief dms last year that she lived in Santa Cruz specifically, a grad student in Chemistry, but she didn’t advertise that. Instead, Margot advertised full body shots in stringy pink lingerie, the outline of a chastity cage, and pristine lighting. I always liked OnlyFans pictures and left little replies to boost them in the algorithm—a wow or oh my god, heyy with pink hearts if I really meant it—but seeing her made me pull my phone close to my chest. It might not have scandalized anyone there, but I felt scandalized letting anyone see me looking at it, not least when an insistent warmth percolated through my gut. I swiped up, replacing Margot with girls from that night at the club. They were quoting these two posts about someone’s new book and a DJ playing an event of indecipherable vibes later that night at something called Bossa. Maybe they were the same person? Before I could find out, the bathroom door swung open and knocked me back into someone. My knee pulsed harder, in time with the beat. Some sticky fluid splashed my arm. Before I could look around, a perpendicular gap opened in the crowd for me to slide to the bar.
I stuck out my arm like someone in an old movie calling for a taxi. One bartender was up to their spaghetti-strapped shoulders in a crowd of gay guys at the far end of the room. The trans girl behind the counter though, she came right to me. Her inky blue hair coiled past a square jaw to shoulders bulging from her top. Stubble peppered her chin and upper lip. As far as I could see, we were the only trans women there.
“What can I get you, love?” She thrust her voice, deep and round, though the noise, leaned in to hear me order an old fashioned. I winced picturing her lean in for a kiss instead. As she made the drink, my phone vibrated out of time with the rest of the room. i’m in line! it’s super long lol. The trans woman came back with a smaller glass than seemed fair for the price, but I thought how miserable must it be working all night in a bar full of cis women more beautiful than you, who maybe even avoid going to you over the other bartenders, and I tipped her 30%. We’re all we have.
That’s why I moved to Bushwick. Trans Twitter talks about New York like it’s all mean girls, too cool for anyone or anything anywhere else, or even each other. But I saw what that actually meant: there were enough girls here to sustain community, communities, without needing social media to form connections, without even pretending we all get along.
I messaged Josephine back: I got in fast. I wanted her to think I’d waited for her, so I downed the old fashioned, grimacing. It was too bitter. The song changed to “Mr. Brightside.” Is that an odd choice for a queer bar? There were some cis men there with their girlfriends—but what if one or both people in the couple were bi, or nonbinary, or weren’t a couple at all, or were with queer friends, or… Tweet after tweet, dozens of reply chains redoubling into the digital vacuum, I imagined the discourse, or rather, the discourse appeared in my imagination, reproducing itself as it does always and everywhere. I felt annoyed, then annoyed at myself for feeling annoyed, then annoyed at myself for caring either way. I was meeting a friend. Friend? Do longtime mutuals count as friends? Hmm. Wait, did she think this was a date? Josephine and I had never drawn lines, let alone crossed them. It was probably fine. It seemed like girls here didn’t anticipate anything from new people. Around the fire at Nowadays, they barely even spoke to me!
Ten minutes passed. Sweat seeped under my bangs and bra straps. Every time the door opened I’d perk up, look around, sigh. Josephine messaged again. the line will be a while. im too far back. getting drenched. can we find somewhere else? I set my glass atop the ATM and rode the current of bodies to the door. The line wrapped around the building, at least three times as long.
I knew what she looked like from years of selfies, but when I finally found Josephine, my vision flickered. You only see curated angles online, unconsciously assuming other details as you approach a constant conception in your mind. The real person is always shifted, squished, squeezed out, uncannily modified by some unexpected variable like a friend with a new hairdo. Josephine hadn’t changed hers, chestnut curls under her hood frizzy in the humidity like mine, but she was taller than I pictured and her face seemed more angular, glasses enticing you along her cheek bones until her imperious gaze drew you into her irises, golden-green even in the dark, almost elven. An ornate bronze pendulum of clockwork gears swung from her neck.
“Omigodhiii.” The syllables blurred together nasally, her voice a step or two lower in tone and more feminine in cadence than I’d imagined. Umbrellas jostling, rain pearled the back of her black leather duster as we exchanged a looser embrace than I expected. She looked me up and down like a full-length mirror she might purchase. “Great to finally meet you!”
“Yeah, you too,” I said cooly, suddenly reenergized but trying to match her vibe. “Sorry you had to wait.”
She sighed too heavily, either feigning annoyance or actually annoyed, or both, I couldn’t tell. “Shall we?”
“Lead the way.” She brushed past me, her hand just catching on my arm. Her stride was rigid; I tried to sway my hips. I kept waiting for her to look back.
“How do you like New York so far?” she called.
“Aside from this storm?” I raised my voice, feeling it drop and darken in my throat, too much space to resonate. “It’s been great. I’ve met more trans girls in three weeks than my whole life! Not that that’s saying much, but still.”
“Really?”
“I was in small-town Massachusetts. Not many to know.”
Where was she leading me? Nowhere in particular, I realized, rain pelting the slanting street bisecting blocks, the unchanging angle of our elongating vantage refracting through droplets blurring our lenses as we plodded through the undertow, Josephine’s necklace clinking against the metal buttons of her blouse. We rounded a corner. She pointed to a luminous marble bar glowing warm under a chandelier in a restaurant across the street. “What about there?” We were already in the crosswalk when I hesitated.
“Looks expensive.” Josephine finally looked around, backlit and framed in the window front, eyes drilling hypnotically into me. The glow swelled around her, light waves swirling with particles of rain. She smiled and reached for my hand. I froze. Then she gripped my wrist and yanked me out of the crosswalk as a car blitzed behind, horn squawking down the block. Josephine had the agility to whirl and catch me against herself. Our noses were inches apart, my waist pressing her skirt into a damp brick wall. I shivered as the glow seemed to quiver through her and into my gut. I tried to make something more than shaky breath come out of my gaping mouth; I don’t know what I would have said.
“You okay?” she gasped.
“Yeah. Wha—thanks. Thank you.” I stepped back, our umbrellas snagging as they reluctantly pried apart. “You’re quick on your feet. Where’d that spin move come from?”
“Swing dancing.” She rock-stepped in place.
“I don’t think I’ve ever met someone who swing dances.”
“Oh, no, I used to, back in Baltimore. Years ago. I could probably teach you some time though, if you wanted?”
“Maybe, yeah.” Her offer carried a sing-song cadence, at once enticing and vaguely off-putting. “I didn’t know you lived in Baltimore.”
“Mhmm, I grew up in Jersey and then went to Towson University.”
“Never heard of it.”
She closed her umbrella in the doorframe, spraying me and then holding it open. It was a Mediterranean restaurant, not too busy, mostly couples, some younger, some older, a mom and dad and two kids in a booth. Everyone was stylish, including the servers, carrying their drinks and themselves with assumed ease. These people had never wondered where they were supposed to be. Dripping, disheveled, and underdressed, I tried to shrink into my chair at the bar. A bald man in a turtleneck was leaning with one elbow, his sleeve folded down over a crisp periwinkle blazer, strong fingers swaying a glass of red wine. His silky-haired date sat with her back to me; from around her shoulder he almost raised an eyebrow, tracing my eyes tracing the arc of his arm. I tried to comb my hair flatter with my fingers. Josephine sat between us. She didn’t look as monied as these people; still, in her black blouse and polished pink skirt, she was comparably assembled. She understood this world enough to pass through, if not frequent.
“Hungry?” she asked.
“Huh? Oh, no, I ate dinner before I came out,” I lied. The curve of the woman’s spine behind Josephine was still in my head. I looked down, stomach bubbling over my belt, crossed my legs and straightened up. At least I was finally off my feet.
The bartender came over. He was bald too, with a voice just as smooth. “What can I get you ladies?”
What’s tasteful and classy? “A martini, please.”
“How would you like that?” We stared at each other. “Vodka or gin, wet/dry, dirty or neat?
“Uh, just a. Normal martini?”
“An old fashioned for me, and the flatbread.” Josephine said without waiting for the server to ask. “My treat.” I think I blushed. I don’t know if she saw.
“So, what brought you here from Baltimore?” I asked.
“Got a job doing systems administration for this company, nothing special.”
“Oh, same! That’s how I was able to move here.”
“And then the pandemic started,” she continued. “I was going to go remote and move back with my parents to save money, but you know,” she waved a hand, “‘quarantrans,’ parents were shitty, so I stayed.” I knew the gist of this from tweets over the years, which I’d always read in a wounded tone. In person, she was unaffected. “Guess I won’t get my inheritance. Is what it is.”
“They have a lot of money?”
“Dad’s a doctor, mom’s a banker. Completely cut me off when I came out.”
“I’m sorry.” I reached for her hand and we squeezed together.
“Thanks love.” She made herself smile. “What are your parents like?”
“They’re teachers in the Boston suburbs. I graduated from UMass Amherst, came out to them, and they weren’t great for a while. I moved farther west to the Berkshires, they got better. Something about the greater distance I guess? We’re not close or anything but they’re fine. You deserve better though.” I’d had this conversation before: with Delia, in fact with most of the girls I met before I moved, comparing lists of injustices within minutes.
“Hey,” I said, “shitty parents or not, you have a great life here. And now, I will too. Fuck ‘em!” The couple behind Josephine had gone silent. Was it the trans stuff or was this the kind of place where you shouldn’t swear? But Josephine’s lips hooked, that same smirk from her Twitter picture. She looked intently into my eyes with that spark in hers.
“I’m glad you’re so excited, really,” she said, frowning, and I understood she was struggling to say something, “but honestly, I don’t want to stay here.”
“In this restaurant?”
“No, in New York”
Then I frowned. “Why not?”
“It’s expensive.”
“Sure.”
“And there are so many girls I want to meet in Pittsburgh and Kansas City and Atlanta and all these other places. Charlotte, Esmeralda—” She recited a list of trans Twitter girls we both knew, and plenty I didn’t, an encyclopedia so immersive she didn’t acknowledge or even notice the bartender set our drinks down. “Nikki—sorry, that’s her real name—Erin, do you know her, @estrogenerator?”
Josephine ping-ponged from girl to girl: she and Charlotte dm’ed all the time, but Charlotte hadn’t been around much lately because she was dealing with drama in Pittsburgh from this other girl Jade, in Portland, who was friends with Charlotte’s ex, Hannah, back when they all lived in Ann Arbor. And one time last summer Josephine and Esmeralda had this long conversation about trauma one night that turned into both of them sexting with Hannah? And Erin and Josephine both liked Pokémon. Somewhere between demure sips of my martini, it became apparent she really didn’t know these girls any better than she knew me.
She finally stopped and took a deep gulp from her glass when her flatbread came out. She grimaced the moment the server looked away with the same exaggeration as her sigh earlier.
“Ech. Disgusting. Way too bitter. Do you want it?”
I took it without thinking. It was much better than the old fashioned from earlier, but onto my third drink, I needed to concentrate on Josephine to steady myself. As she chomped, raining crust crumbs and artichoke wedges from her lips, my stomach curdled. Sun-dried tomatoes and olives sewn into the cheese, her flatbread looked like a rotting checkerboard.
“Why leave though?” I asked as earnestly as I knew how. “I don’t know much about those cities but like, they can’t have more trans people than New York, right?” She literally chewed it over. “Our world can be so much bigger here.”
“Just wait. The Brooklyn girls are full of it. You’ll see.” She spoke in this knowing way, more condescending toward me than whoever she meant.
“Really? They seem normal to me. Maybe a little aloof.”
“A little?” Her lips twisted. “Everyone is self-obsessed and too busy to do anything. No one makes any effort to keep up a conversation, let alone hang out.” She bored into me with distaste. I rolled my eyes, understanding she wanted me to agree. “Like, you know Cass?”
“The one with red hair who does OnlyFans as Tera Firm?”
“No. And she’s blonde now.” I knew; she had posted pics of her bleached hair the same day I moved, but I didn’t want to recognize strangers online anymore, especially not girls whose boobs crossed my timeline at least twice a day. “I mean the DJ. Straight black hair, amazing eyeliner, always wears that choker with roses?”
“OH, yes, her. She was at the picnic last weekend. Have you been?” I couldn’t say much more. My head was getting heavier.
“No,” Josephine said sharply, agitated. “We’ve been mutuals for years and used to talk all the time! One night, she posted about how dysphoric she felt and I dm’ed her like hey, hope you’re okay, i’m here if you need someone, she thanked me and vented a little, and then I tried to say like ‘hey I feel the same way about these things’ and she didn’t respond until the next afternoon. That annoyed me but I was like fine, whatever, and when she messaged back it was like we hadn’t stopped talking, you know? I thought for ages she was just a bad texter or really busy, but then I asked if she wanted to get coffee and she didn’t respond for a week. I’m lucky if she even reacts with an emoji these days.” Josephine talked faster and faster, glaring ahead.
“Then, a few months ago I went to a club she was playing, in Brooklyn. Told her I’d be there, she heart-reacted and goes yay! It was like a 3 hour set and I don’t like dance music, so—”
“I thought you swing danced?”
“That’s completely different.” She was so agitated it stirred the alcohol in my stomach into a tight, queasy knot. “So I go up to her after her set. She’s sitting with these three girls, they’re all super hot, one of them definitely had FFS and a BA. They’re chatting and smoking—they all smoke, it’s disgusting.” Now she was looking at me, intensely, crucially. It was startling. “So I go to say hi and she sorta half-waves and says hey and that’s it! Doesn’t get up to hug me, doesn’t invite me to talk, nothing. I guess I’m not cool enough for the fucking Bushwick trannies or whatever.” I blinked hard at the word. “So I leave, it takes more than an hour to get home, and when I finally get off the train I see a message from her that’s like thanks for coming, it was nice to see you with a fucking smiley face. Then I see her post a joke about getting head in the club. Or giving head, I don’t remember. And then I see her post a nude on her private from the bathroom. Do you follow her private? She’s so fucking hot. And it was just so fucking shitty, you know? Like was she just using me to get more money? Was I just an ego boost? Was I even an ego boost?” Her voice hadn’t risen in volume, but at some point she began biting into her words, spitting them out with gale force.
“We talked at the picnic,” I said flatly.
“I’m surprised she was even awake for that.”
“Well, she came over and said hi. I thought she was friendly. We made small talk, she said my dress was pretty and invited me to this show in Ridgewood.”
“Ugh. No one ever wants to come up to Harlem.”
“Are there trans clubs in Harlem?”
“No. I mean.” She deflated. “I get it. It’s a long way from them.” She tapped my leg with her foot, leaned over, put her head on my arm. If I were more sober I’d have recoiled. “That’s why it’s so nice to finally meet you. You actually listen. You actually came.” She giggled and looked up at me with contemptuous desire.
My stomach unknotted and my whole body felt lighter. I knew that look. I liked knowing that look. It had followed me all the way from Massachusetts. It was Delia, still in my rear-view mirror.
Something shifted behind her glasses and they dimmed. I could make out my own outline. I realized the gleam hadn’t been hers; it was a ray bent upward from between two gears in her necklace, which had come to rest couched in her chest. Her eyes rusted over.
Nausea oozed through me, forcing me to hold onto her, which made her coo, which made my stomach loosen further, which made me sweat and pant and gag. When I did, she got up.
“Are you okay?”
“Y—” I hiccuped. “Yeah.”
I didn’t know what else to say, so I checked my phone. It wasn’t quite 10. The thing at Bossa started at 11. Was that anywhere near my apartment? I’d want to stop home and change into dry clothes first if I went at all. I fingered my pocket and gasped a high-pitched, strangled choke. The bartender, Josephine, the couple behind her, and the kids at the table in the back all jerked their heads to me.
“Oh my god. My keys. My keys are gone, I lost—oh my god.” I stood up, twitched in place searching the floor.
“Huh?”
“Look.” I pulled out my pocket. An AirPods case and a pink tube of chapstick. I crouched for a better view. Josephine scoffed and shone her phone’s flashlight. “Ah, stop, that’s too bright.” She threw up her hands. “Shit. Fuck. Shit. Uhh.” On the ground, my feet ached worse than they had all night, and my back and my side and—
“I fell earlier.”
“What?”
“I fell earlier, in a puddle in Union Square.” I was talking as quickly as she’d been.
“You think they flew out of your pocket when you fell?”
“That—they must have. I had them when I left my apartment.”
Josephine stood up too. “So you fell on flat ground, in these,” she playfully pinched my hips, “tight-ass jeans, and your keys flew out?”
“Yes. I—yes. It’s the only explanation. I’m sorry Josephine, really, I gotta go. My roommates are out of town this weekend and I’m subletting right now, they never gave me the landlord’s number.”
“Oh. Yeah, of course. Get home safe.” She deflated into her seat. I snatched my umbrella off the floor and pushed the door open. I thought I heard her nasally voice in the creaking door hinges. “Let me know if you wanna hang out again.”
No sooner had I rounded the corner than the wind tore my umbrella away. I started after it in vain, accepting defeat as it tumbled out of sight. I ran for a block or two, then trudged, out of breath, through the grid.
I somehow found my way back to 14th St without any help and followed it east through the maze to Union Square. I never knew I had an innate sense of direction. This time, when I crossed the intersection toward Target, there was no traffic. From the north side of the street, I easily avoided puddles until I came to the largest one. I tapped my phone’s flashlight, again briefly blinded by the glare as it bounced off the water onto my face. I pushed my glasses back up my slippery nose, following my finger with eyes too dark to see reflected in the water.
Then, a glint, where I had stood up. I knelt down and miraculously, my keys were right there. I let them dangle from the ring. I laughed and splashed through the puddle to the subway, but this time, there was no one around to see.