Tonight the Streets Are Ours

  The thing I most want to do is go out for coffee with this girl. The thing I least want to do is go out for coffee with this girl and her boyfriend.

  “I’m here for another few hours,” I said. “Sorry.”

  “Bummer. We’ll look around then. Maybe buy some books. You’ll hook us up with your employee discount, right?” Leo asked.

  “I’ll hook you up with anything you want,” I said. To Bianca.

  I walked away and returned to my stupid cash register. Once she wasn’t directly in front of me, I started berating myself. Dude, she’s Leo’s girlfriend, you don’t know anything about her, lay off.

  But those arguments only make sense if you don’t believe in fate, or things that are meant to be. And I can’t make myself not believe in that.

  Twenty minutes later, she came to the cash register. Leo was hanging out a little ways behind her, doing something on his phone.

  “Hi again.” She set a book down on the counter in front of me.

  “So you decided to buy the sonnets after all, huh?” I asked as I rang her up.

  “Yeah,” she said, leaning forward on the counter, like she wanted to get just a little closer to me. “Did you know it’s called Sonnets from the Portuguese, but it has nothing to do with Portugal? Elizabeth Barrett Browning just claimed that her poems were translations of traditional Portuguese sonnets because she was too shy to claim credit for writing them.” Bianca paused, then added, “I read that on the back flap.”

  “I always wondered why it was called that,” I said. “Thanks for telling me.”

  While she was looking into her purse, fussing with her wallet, I quick wrote on the back of her receipt:

  Let me know what you think of the book.

  Call me.

  —Peter

  And I added my phone number. I stuck the receipt in her book, stuck the book in a paper bag, and handed it to her.

  If Leo found that note, I could play it off, I think. Like, Oh, just little old bookish Peter, looking for someone to talk about sonnets with. Anyway, what are the odds that Leo’s going to open a book of poetry?

  “Thanks!” she said. “Have a good day.” Then she smoothed the lace over her chest, pulled on her shades, and headed outside into the blinding sunshine.

  That’s what happened today. Like I said, it could be nothing at all. Or it could be the start of the rest of my life. Ball’s in your court, Fate.

  “Babe, are you coming in?” asked Chris.

  Arden snapped back into the present, Peter’s hot summer day vanishing in an instant. Chris had parked outside The Grass Is Always Greener, a junk shop in the strip mall just outside of town. He was already out of the car, his coat on, while Arden was still sitting in the passenger seat, staring at her phone.

  “Coming,” she said, and she opened the door.

  Arden and Chris’s task for today was to purchase hats for all sixteen members of American Fairy Tale’s chorus. Chris was not in the chorus, obviously. He was Chris Jump; he was the leading man. But he still wanted to be involved in the selection of hats because it was crucial to him that everything on stage look exactly right, even down to the hats on the heads of the people swaying in the background behind him.

  Inside The Grass Is Always Greener, Chris tried on every single hat. Arden’s job was to rank each one on a scale from one to ten, and then he also ranked it on a scale from one to ten, and if the average score between them was higher than a five, he put it into the “maybe” category, and if its score was lower than five he returned it to the rack. Except in one instance where he overruled Arden’s score of one because he said it was “wacky” and she just didn’t “get” its “wackiness.”

  He was wrong, by the way. The hat was covered in purple and green polka dots, but that didn’t make it wacky—it just made it stupid.

  In between hat ratings, while Chris studied himself in the mirror, Arden clicked back to Tonight the Streets Are Ours, and she read on.

  June 25

  I am such an idiot. I keep checking my phone—maybe she’s called, maybe she’s called! A few minutes ago—this is so embarrassing to admit, but whatever, almost nobody reads this journal, so I’ll say it—a few minutes ago I called myself from my mom’s phone, just to make sure my phone was working. As if maybe the reason I haven’t heard from her is some major telecommunications technology breakdown, not just because she hasn’t called me. My reception is never out. I live in New York City, and there’s a cell phone tower on every street corner.

  I didn’t have work today, but I went back to the bookstore anyway and hung around for a while, just in case she might wander in again. I would make a terrible criminal. I always return to the scene of the crime.

  GET A GRIP, PETER. YOU ARE PATHETIC.

  “Hey,” Chris said. Arden looked up from her phone, blinked at him. “Which of these hats?” He modeled.

  “We already did those two,” Arden said. “I rated them both sevens, remember?”

  “Yeah, but I’m not going to get two black derby hats. They’re for the footmen, and Jaden and Eric already look enough alike without us putting them in the same hat. We’re trying to help the audience differentiate between their characters. So?”

  “Get the one with the ribbon around it,” Arden said. “That one. Yeah. And give Jaden the green and purple polka dot one. That will help the audience tell them apart.”

  “I thought you hated that one?”

  “I changed my mind.”

  Chris assigned the hats to their correct piles. “This would be a really fun thing to do on a date,” he said.

  Arden’s shoulders drooped. “We are on a date,” she reminded him. Was she really so unremarkable that even when she was right there beside him, doing just what he wanted, it still wasn’t enough?

  He glanced at her for a second. “Oh, right, I know. I just meant it’d be fun with someone you didn’t know very well, you know? Like, trying on silly hats with someone. Taking funny pictures, playing different characters.”

  “We could be taking funny pictures right now, if you want,” Arden suggested. “We could play different hat-wearing characters.”

  Chris shrugged. “Nah, that’s okay. We still have a lot to get through.”

  Arden didn’t argue. She hadn’t really wanted to put away Tonight the Streets Are Ours, anyway. She was just offering because it seemed like what Chris wanted.

  June 26

  I’m sorry to keep harping on this when I know there are major events of real significance going on in the world, but—do you think Bianca might be my soul mate?

  I know this is a ridiculous question. Contrary to what my father believes, I do listen to myself talk. I know ridiculous when I hear it. I know that Bianca is just a beautiful girl with great hair buying one of my favorite books on a sunny day. None of that makes someone your soul mate. If that’s all it took, then Bianca would be everybody’s soul mate. On that day she was wearing the sundress with the lace accenting her chest, maybe twenty people alone fell for her. They can’t all be her soul mates.

  But it makes me feel better to imagine that she might be mine. Because if we were soul mates—if this was somehow ordained on a higher plane—then I wouldn’t have to worry about what the future might hold, because I’d know we were right on course.

  I am worried, though. What if she never calls? What if the only time I see her is on Leo’s arm—what if she’s never mine? Why couldn’t I have met her first?

  The problem is that there are a million different New Yorks, all layered on top of one another yet never intersecting. The girl of your dreams may live down the block without your ever seeing her, until it’s too late. Circumstance plays no role, and Fate turns a blind eye.

  “Babe!”

  Arden looked up again. Chris sounded frustrated.

  “I like that one,” she said, gesturing at the newsboy cap on his head.

  “I know. You already said that. What is going on with you today?”

  “What do you m
ean?” she said. “Nothing.”

  “You’re being super spacey. You’re not paying any attention to me.”

  “Of course I am,” she snapped. “You’re trying on hats, Chris. There’s only so much I can contribute to that process. It’s not like you’re paying so much attention to me, either, by the way.”

  Why doesn’t anybody love me as much as I love them?

  “Well, that’s because you’re not doing anything,” Chris countered. “You’re just sitting there staring at your phone. On that gross old armchair. Which is probably infested with bugs, by the way.”

  “It’s vintage,” said the sales clerk, who happened to be walking by.

  Bianca didn’t do anything, either, Arden thought. Bianca just walked in the door, and that alone was enough for Peter to pay attention to her.

  “I’m sorry,” Arden said to Chris. “I’m tired, that’s all. I didn’t get to bed until almost three last night.”

  Chris shook his head and returned to his piles of hats, and Arden returned to her phone. He said, “You’re so crazy sometimes, babe.”

  June 28

  A lot of the time I don’t understand what I’m doing here. In life, I mean. I’m not saying that I wish I were dead or anything. Most of the time, I’m glad for the opportunity to be alive. I’m just not sure what I’m supposed to be doing with it. I think my purpose is to be a writer: to craft beautiful sentences that change the way people view the world, to create something meaningful outside of myself. That’s what I think a lot of the time. But then sometimes I wonder if I just made that up in order to make myself feel like I have a reason for taking up space.

  Anyway, all of that is just a depressing, navel-gazing introduction to what I wanted to say here, which is that today, I had a rare day where I understood without any doubt why I’m alive.

  Miranda texted me in the morning and asked what I was doing, and I said I had work at the store until two and then I was going to go to a coffee shop to write. Miranda told me to blow off work and screw writing and meet her in Prospect Park for a day of sunbathing and gossip. I said I am a professional bookseller, and professionals do not just “blow off work,” and also my skin doesn’t tan, but I would meet her after work anyway as long as she brought wine juice boxes. She said done. Miranda’s father is a liquor distributor.

  (I wonder if you can get in legal trouble for referring to your own underage drinking on the Internet? Let’s assume not.)

  I found Miranda in the park a bit before three. She was lying on a picnic blanket in nothing but a bikini and sunglasses.

  “You’re already pretty tan,” I told her.

  “It’s an art,” she replied.

  This is a line from some marketing video that our school issued last year. The video showed kids painting and playing cello, and there was even a shot of Miranda pirouetting, and then various voice-overs said, “It’s an art!” I don’t know if this video resulted in more applications to the school or not.

  “Still pining after that unavailable chick?” Miranda asked, rolling over to give me room on the picnic blanket.

  “It’s an art,” I answered.

  “That’s true, actually,” she said.

  We hung out for a while and I drank wine through a little straw and Miranda described her summer dance program, which sounded exhausting and made me glad that my art isn’t the sort of thing you have to go to summer camp for.

  Then my phone rang.

  It was a New York City number, and I didn’t recognize it.

  “It’s her!” Miranda shrieked. “It’s her, it’s her!”

  “Or maybe not,” I said.

  It was her.

  “Hi,” I said. “What are you doing right now?”

  “Calling you,” Bianca said. “Why?”

  “Come meet me in Prospect Park.”

  I heard her breathy laugh through the phone. “Now?”

  “Yes.”

  “It’ll take me, like, an hour to get there.”

  “I’ll wait.”

  Then I had to get rid of Miranda, which she pouted about, but I didn’t need to be getting to know Bianca in front of a friend of mine who was dressed like a model out of Sports Illustrated’s swimsuit edition.

  About twenty minutes after Miranda had taken off, Bianca showed up—alone, fortunately. I had wondered a little, what would I do if she showed up with Leo? But deep down, I’d known she would come alone. I’d known she wouldn’t tell him what we were doing. Not that we were doing anything, but …

  We sat in the park for hours. I don’t know how, but we just kept finding things to talk about. Either we’d agree on things, which felt amazing, like she somehow got me, or we’d disagree on something, which felt equally amazing, like she was opening my eyes to a way of looking at the world that had never occurred to me before.

  Here are some things I learned about Bianca today:

  1) Her mother is from England, so she’s spent most vacations in Bath, and she can fake a flawless British accent.

  2) She’s lived in New York her entire life, but as far as she’s aware, she’s never seen a movie star.

  3) She daydreams a lot, so she admits that it’s possible she’s seen lots of movie stars and just didn’t notice them because she wasn’t looking.

  4) She’s trying to read her way through the Modern Library’s list of the 100 best novels ever written. (Then we pulled up the list on my phone and she told me which ones she’s read so far and I told her which ones I’ve read so far, and she’s actually three ahead of me, but I’d never seen the list before today, so I’m sure I can get caught up.)

  5) Her favorite place in the city is Times Square. (She’s the first New Yorker I’ve ever met who actually likes Times Square. As far as I’m concerned, Times Square is tourist-land, and let them have it. But Bianca swears that she loves it there. “Do you even go to watch the ball drop on New Year’s?” I teased her, and she answered—totally honestly—“I used to go every year! Now I just watch the whole thing on TV. It’s my weird little obsession.”)

  6) She hates romantic comedies. (“Because you hate romance, or because you hate comedy?” I asked her. “Neither,” she said.)

  7) She wants to get a job in international politics when she grows up, like work for the UN or be a diplomat or something else where she travels a lot and wields influence.

  8) Her biggest phobia is fire, which she says is a “rational fear,” since fire can kill you. She laughed at me when she found out that my biggest phobia is public speaking, because according to Bianca, public speaking cannot actually result in death.

  9) She’s the most incredible girl I’ve ever met.

  When the field started filling up with the after-work crowd, we left our spot and walked around for a while. I bought us lemon Popsicles from a pushcart. We were talking so much that we barely made the time between sentences to eat, so her Popsicle melted all over her hand. She was laughing at the sticky mess, and I wanted so badly to lick every last drop of lemon off her fingers—but I didn’t, I didn’t touch her fingers with my tongue or any other part of her with any part of me.

  We wound up at the carousel, so I bought tickets for both of us and we rode horses next to each other. Afterward, I walked her to the subway, all the way down to the turnstile, as far as I could go without actually getting on her train with her.

  “I had a lot of fun this afternoon,” she said.

  “Me, too,” I said. “Maybe we’ll do it again sometime.”

  And neither of us said anything about Leo at all.

  I wanted to kiss her. I would have traded anything for it. Watching her walk away felt like suffocating, and again I thought of Romeo and Juliet. My lips, two blushing pilgrims, ready stand to smooth that rough touch with a tender kiss.

  See, this is why it’s hard to be a writer. Some other writer has always said it all before you, and surely they have said it better.

  But today I don’t care, not about any of that. Life is sort of like Goldilocks and
the Three Bears, if you know what I mean. Some days are too big. Some days are much too small. But today was one of those rare days that was just right.

  While Chris was buying his sixteen hats, Arden poked around The Grass Is Always Greener. On one of the racks, she found a dress that didn’t look too far off from what Bianca had been wearing the first day Peter saw her in the bookstore. It was bright blue, not yellow, but it had that lace trim at the top, just like what Peter had described. That style had been very en vogue last year, so it wasn’t surprising to find it here.

  Arden slipped into the dressing room and tried it on. The straps were a little too long, so they kept sliding down her shoulders, but maybe that was sexy? Otherwise, it fit well. She stood on tiptoe and held her hair off her face in an improvised upsweep. I look pretty, she thought. I think.

  “Arden?” She heard Chris’s voice from outside the dressing room.

  She opened the curtain. “Hi.” She looked up at him through lowered eyelashes.

  “Oh, there you are,” he said. “I’m ready to go. I got the last hat for free, because I’m buying so many! Anyway, I’m starving. You want to get some food?”

  Arden swallowed hard. “Um,” she said. “What do you think of this dress?” She pirouetted slowly, still on her toes.

  When she turned around to face front, Chris seemed to have only just registered that she wasn’t wearing the jacket and jeans that she’d been in all day. “It’s nice,” he said. “But don’t you already have something like that?”

  She dropped to flat feet. “No.”

  “Well, then you should get it if you like it. I’m going to start loading the hats into the car while you’re doing that, okay? I’ll meet you out there. And then food! God, I’m starving.”

  He galloped out of the store, and Arden returned to the dressing room. Before peeling off the dress, she looked in the mirror for a second, but she didn’t see anything pretty there anymore. She just saw herself.

  Back in regular clothes, she handed the dress to the sales clerk, who asked, “You buying this?”