HERE COMES JAMIE, HOPPING TOWARD ME UP THE front steps of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in a navy blue down jacket and blue plaid scarf, his curly blond hair squirming out of a stocking cap. This is the guy who read my blog and emailed me and sent me photographs every few days for months. I heard from him more often than my best friend, Ari. I was far away from everyone in my life and loving that feeling of being alone, but, you know. Alone is still alone. Jamie’s photos gave me someone extra special to carry around in my pocket.
Needless to say, I’m overjoyed to see him. But I don’t want him to know that, so I just raise my hand and say, “Hey.”
“Hi,” he says back.
Then we hug. We’re both wrapped in thick winter coats so it’s not exactly titillating.
“How was your bus ride from New Paltz?” I ask.
“I had the best time peering down into the cars to spy on people. When did you get back?”
“A few days before Christmas.”
He nods. Now here’s the awkward silence.
“Should we get on line?” I ask.
Jamie breaks into a grin. “Lines? Lines are for suckers.” He pulls some folded paper out of an inner coat pocket. “I already bought tickets through the website. My treat.”
“You’re smart,” I say. “And sweet,” I add, as if I’m someone who knows how to work the whole boy-girl system.
As Emerson had warned me, the museum is stupid-packed. But the crowd is comforting, because Jamie and I have to focus on navigating it, instead of on how to act with each other. We follow signs to the Henry Eisenkraft exhibit.
Eisenkraft is apparently a super-famous photographer and even though I’d never heard of him before yesterday, I was great at faking it. That’s what Jamie and I first bonded over, photography, because at the time, that was my thing. Problem is, it’s not anymore. I like taking photos, and I enjoy looking at photos (especially Jamie’s), but I’ve moved on. Anyone reading my blog might have noticed that somewhere between London and Bath, I stopped posting ten pictures a day. This was around the time I got the idea for Together at Midnight and all my Thought Worms got excited about that.
I should mention here that this is a pattern for me. Not an excuse. Just some context.
In the first room of the exhibit, I can instantly see why Jamie is a fan. Eisenkraft’s work is full of people and situations you wouldn’t normally look twice at. A group of teenagers huddled against the brick wall of a factory, smoking cigarettes. Two kids and a cow in a field.
“This is what I love about the guy,” says Jamie, stopping in front of a photograph of a woman holding a baby on a street corner, blurry cars going by. “He’s all about these stolen moments, full of stories.”
His whole face has lit up, examining the photograph.
“So tell me,” I say. “What’s the story here?”
Jamie stares some more and thinks. “She’s waiting for someone to pick her up. A husband, maybe. She married him too young or just doesn’t like the guy anymore. She’s stuck with the kids. And all she can think of is that she’d rather get in any other car, any of the ones going by, than the one she has to.”
“That’s depressing.”
“Then the image has done its job. You’re affected. It changed you, even if it’s only for a few seconds.”
We move over to the next photo, a shot of two men in cowboy hats holding glass bottles at the back door of a restaurant. They both look like they want to cry and are terrified by that.
“Does his work get any happier?” I ask. “Is there maybe a room dedicated to his ‘Prozac Years’?”
Jamie laughs. “Even if there were, nobody would want to see it.”
After the exhibit, we spend the rest of the afternoon upstairs in the collection galleries. We wander separately but near each other, from piece to piece. Every so often, Jamie drifts close to me and whispers an observation or a joke, or sometimes mutters “I love this one” under his breath, like he’s afraid to admit it to anyone in the world but me.
This is what I discovered in all those museums in Europe: when you really connect with a work of art, it doesn’t matter that a million people have already stood where you’re standing. The instant it means something to you, it’s yours. I wonder if Jamie feels this way, too.
While we’re sitting on a bench in a room full of Monets, a tour group seeps in. The guide starts explaining how and when these paintings came to the museum, and it takes me at least a minute before I realize she’s speaking French. And I’m mostly understanding her.
I hear the artificial click of a cell phone photo and turn to see Jamie, snapping a picture of me.
“Why did you do that?”
“Stolen moment,” he says with a shit-eating grin. “Full of stories.”
Damn this boy.
We’re walking through an atrium when Jamie checks his watch. Who wears a watch these days? He does.
“I have to go soon,” he says. “I’m staying with a friend overnight, and I’m supposed to meet him for dinner.”
Something deflates inside me. Nooooo, it sighs as the air rushes out. I don’t want him to leave.
“Yeah, I should get back, too,” I lie.
“How long are you staying in the city?”
“Not sure. A couple of days, maybe. I want to put off reality as long as possible.”
He nods. “I hear you. Unfortunately, I have some reality I can’t avoid, in the form of a ski trip with my folks.” His eyes travel over my face, darting from feature to feature, and I can only wonder what he’s looking for. “Will you be here for New Year’s?” Jamie adds.
My throat tightens, but in a good way. New Year’s. In New York City. That’s a lot of pressure. That’s like, diving into the ocean when you’ve just learned to swim.
“Yes,” I say.
Jamie smiles. Maybe he found what he was searching for, in my face. “Let’s meet back here on New Year’s Eve.”
“Right on this very spot?”
“Somewhere in the city, To Be Determined.”
I almost say It’s a date! But thank God, thank God, I catch myself. “That sounds perfect,” I say instead.
“Where does your brother live?”
“Way uptown. Ninety-Sixth Street and First Avenue.”
“My friend is on Park and”—he checks his phone—“Eighty-Second Street. Is that the same direction?”
“It totally is.”
“Then let’s walk.” Jamie holds out his hand and for a second, I think I’m supposed to take it, but then I realize he’s just indicating the way forward. Our next steps. I take that hand mentally and we cross Fifth Avenue. I lead him toward Madison.
“So, do you have your college apps in?” he asks.
Those two words together make me wince. I swallow hard and say the thing that could change everything about how Jamie sees me:
“Not yet. No rush for me. I’m just applying to the community college.”
His eyebrows go way up but he doesn’t look horrified.
“It’s more my style right now,” I continue. It’s also more my speed, but when you bring up words like speed in connection to school, you also silently bring up words like stupid and learning disabled and for obvious reasons I don’t want to do that here.
Jamie nods. “I hear they have a great art program.”
“Yes!” For knowing that and saying that, I like him at least 5 percent more than I did. “The art department was actually a big draw for me. Until I get my grades up and figure out what else I might want to study, it’ll keep me busy.”
“Lots of kids from my school end up there,” Jamie says, “before moving on to another college.”
The Like-o-Meter jumps again.
“What about you?” I ask.
“I applied to seven schools, but my first choice is Wesleyan,” he says. “Fingers crossed.”
Wesleyan is somewhere in Connecticut, which means it’s not too far away and we could have a doable long-distance relationship. Sure, I’ll cross my fingers for Wesleyan.
“So tell me more about the trip,” says Jamie after a few moments where we’re walking in silence. “What was one amazing thing?”
I quiet my mind so something can slide in, and that’s not easy for me, especially in a city. Even the dog peeing on the tree trunk up ahead makes noise in my brain. Finally, an image of a cathedral offers itself up.
“Visiting Canterbury, while we were reading The Canterbury Tales.”
“Shit, that’s cool. What else?”
The sun’s beginning to set, and the lights on the buildings, in the trees, in the store windows take on a different, calmer glow that feels artificial and natural at the same time. We hang a left to head uptown and as we keep putting one foot in front of the other, I tell him more about the cities and places I visited. He listens like he cares.
Every step we take nudges the needle on my Like-o-Meter.
We hit the corner of Eighty-Second Street and Jamie stops dead, peers east toward Park Avenue.
“I guess I’m headed that way,” he says.
“And I can get an uptown bus,” I say, pointing to the bus stop at the curb.
We stand there for many seconds. It’s so, so awkward. We’re right outside a deli with bins of produce under an awning, and I stare the heck out of some grapefruit.
“I had a really good time today,” says Jamie.
“Yeah, I’m glad we did this.”
We’re grabbing phrases out of a book (blue, small, but thick). Things to Say at the End of a Date.
God, I’m so tired of waiting for boys to kiss me. Of hoping, expecting, fantasizing.
You don’t have to be her anymore, I remind myself, and I reach up to kiss him. First.
It’s just a quickie. My lips skim his lips, like a pebble against the surface of water. They touch once before leaping away. Jamie’s lips are cold and a little chapped. Surprised, but not horrified.
His eyes flicker and he smiles at me and reaches out. His fingers latch onto either side of my waist. Well, my waist buried deep inside my thick wool coat. Frankly, I’m surprised he can find it. He grabs the material and starts to pull me closer.
“Jamie?” someone asks.
I look up.
Oh. My. God.
Jamie looks up, too, then lurches away from me.
Standing behind us is a guy named Max.
I’m so shocked to see him, that he could actually be here, that I do the most inappropriate thing possible: I break out laughing.
Now Jamie’s frowning at me and so is Max. Information begins arranging itself into neat rows in my head.
Max is the friend Jamie’s staying with.
Jamie didn’t mention that because he knows what Max and I did last summer.
Judging from the expression on Max’s face—a cross between shock and anger, I’ll call it shanger—he didn’t know Jamie and I were hanging out.
I’m suddenly full of shanger myself, because Max is the last person I want to see right now. I can feel him staring at me, but I can’t meet his eyes, physically can’t turn my head even if I wanted to. He’s Medusa and I’m whoever that other guy was. Theseus? Perseus? I get them mixed up, and anyway, why am I thinking about Greek myths right now? Because this is mortifying, that’s why.
“Hey, man,” asks Jamie in the most forced-casual voice I’ve ever heard. “What are you doing here?”
Max holds up a brown paper grocery bag. “Big E needed milk and roasted almonds.”
This clearly makes sense to Jamie, because he nods. Then we’re all silent again for a few moments.
“And I got us some Chinese takeout for dinner,” adds Max, holding up a second bag in his other hand.
“Perfect,” says Jamie, nodding again. Another pause is about to settle over us when he takes a deep, deep breath. “Fuck it,” he continues. “I’m sorry, Max. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you it was Kendall.”
Max opens his mouth to say something, then changes his mind.
A bus approaches the stop. I have no idea which route it is, but it’s headed uptown, away from this corner, and that’s good enough for me.
“I should go,” I say, throwing a quick thumb toward the bus.
“Wait!” says Jamie. “Catch the next one.” His eyes are pleading and generally adorable. “This is not how I wanted the day to end. I should have told you I was staying with Max. I just didn’t want this weird thing in the middle of our time together.”
I huff a sigh, looking back at the bus. People have climbed on and the doors are closing.
“Okay,” I say. We watch it pull away. Now what?
Jamie has not taken his eyes off me. Max is still standing there, a few feet from us, and I still haven’t looked at him.
“Good,” says Jamie. “Thanks. Will you . . . will you wait here a minute?”
“Why?”
“Just wait. I’ll be right back.”
Jamie steps back and holds his hands up like he’s balanced me on something precarious. He pauses to see if I am, in fact, going to move. (I’m not.) Then he turns and runs past Max, into the deli.
Max exhales long and hard. “Hi,” he says. “I didn’t say that yet.”
“Hi,” I reply. I can do hi.
“How are you?”
“Good.” I can do that, too. No problem.
“Are you heading back home tonight?” he asks. So we’re going to trade small talk. This is tinier than that, really. It’s microtalk.
“I’m actually crashing at my brother’s place this week. I didn’t know you were living here now.”
“I’m not. Just staying with my grandfather for a few days.”
I nod. We’re silent again, and it’s still horrible, but at least now I can look at the guy. He seems different than I remember him from the Night of the Nuclear Mistake. Still crazy tall, but his brown hair looks darker, and shaggier too. Parts of it are tucked behind his ears, but other parts have escaped. He still has what I consider one of the least boring noses I’ve ever seen, big and face-defining, with a bump in exactly the right place.
“Have you seen Ari and Camden lately?” Max finally asks.
“No. I’ve . . . I’ve been away.”
“Oh, that’s right! You went to Europe. Was it awesome?”
“It was awesome.”
I really, really didn’t want it to, but here comes the thinking anyway, about the minivan in the parking lot of that comic convention we all went to. I was crying. Jamie had just told me he didn’t think of me romantically. Max put his hand on my back, right between my shoulder blades.
I wish I could remember who kissed who first. Or maybe it’s better that I don’t.
I glance at the bus stop, which has filled up with people again. It’s one of the things I love about cities and public transportation: an endless tide of passengers, crashing and receding. Where is Jamie?
A young couple walks past us. “That was so embarrassing!” the girl barks at the guy.
“I had a right to be there!” the guy barks back.
“Well,” says Max to me. “When you see them, tell them I said hi.”
It takes me a second to realize he’s still talking about Ari and Camden, and I’m about to respond when I’m distracted by the young couple again. The girl has stopped walking and now she’s raising her voice.
“We’re done! Do you understand? You cannot show up at parties you weren’t invited to!”
“If you hadn’t blown off my messages today,” the guy says, air-jabbing his finger at her, “I wouldn’t have had to do that!”
He’s quite a few years older than us, late twenties maybe, wearing a sweatshirt and white pants, and the white pants seem out of place in the winter.
“Oh my God, you’re such a dick and you don’t even know it!” yells the girl. She’s younger than the guy, wearing a long down coat and ballet flats. Her ankles must be really cold compared to the rest of her.
“And you’re a dirty-mouth bitch!” shouts the guy.
There’s no politely ignoring this, no it’s-fine-this-happens-in-New-York-every-minute vibe. I can see a thought bubble hovering above every person on this corner. Is this a situation? Should someone do something? Just questions, though. No answers.
The girl mutters and starts to walk away from the guy, but he grabs her arm. “Get your hands off of me!” she spits. She scans the crowd at the bus stop.
I scan the crowd, too. There’s a mother with a toddler in a stroller. An older couple with many shopping bags. A woman clutching a soft leather briefcase to her chest. And a middle-aged man with a guitar strung over his shoulder.
“Luna, you do this to me every single time,” says the guy to the girl. “I’m not going to let it happen again.”
I glance at the others. Is nobody going to ask the guy and girl if everything’s okay?
The guy reaches out to grab the girl, but she makes a break for it.