Authors: Baby Grand
The traffic light turned
green, and the crowd surged into the crosswalk. Jamie held her portfolio tight
to her chest to keep it from being bumped by the other pedestrians and kept her
hand locked on the strap of her pocketbook, the way her mom used to. Frank's
Deli had been Jamie's favorite place to eat when she'd had a bad day at
USA
Baby
, and she could already taste their homemade egg salad, a Brooklyn recipe that was reminiscent of the kind her grandmother used to make. She tried
not to think about the interview at Gerbury, but it was impossible. That was
the third interview this month. With so many writers out of work, it was going
to be difficult to find something, even with her years of experience. And as
magazines continued to fold, and content, particularly the long-form, objective
kind that Jamie had been trained for, continued to become devalued with the
rise of blogging and e-zines, she was never going to be able to pay her rent.
She already owed her brother five hundred dollars from last month.
A
taxi driver inched his way into the flow of pedestrians, trying to turn onto Sixth Avenue, the nose of his cab jutting forward not quite so gently and causing a few
people to glare and give him the finger, but the driver remained impervious.
Jamie stopped to let him go by, annoying the people who had been walking behind
her, who huffed and puffed their way around her as if she were an obstructive
buoy in a strong river current. As the taxi sped down Sixth, she was reminded
of something her mother once told her when she had gotten her learner's permit:
"Driving is easy—go when it's green, stop when it's red. The real trick is
learning to live your life that way." It was a maxim, as the taxi driver
probably could attest, that Jamie could never quite master.
There
was a bottleneck of people at the curb—customers exiting the deli, men and
women waiting in line at the magazine kiosk, walkers trying to get by in every
direction. As Jamie jostled her way through the patterns of people, the cover
of
O, The Oprah Magazine
, hanging from the window of the kiosk, caught
her eye:
SINK OR SWIM: THE TIME IS NOW
TO LIVE THE LIFE YOU DESERVE.
Another
headline below it, in purple, screamed out:
NEVER LOOK BACK: 10 SUREFIRE
STEPS TO MOVE FORWARD.
The
cover photo showed Oprah wearing a floral print dress with her feet up in the
air on a children's swing and looking as happy as could be—the kind of carefree
that, Jamie knew, came but once in a stream of digital photos featuring mostly
closed eyes, awkward expressions, and misbehaving props, the kind of carefree
that, she also knew, was probably one in a million in the real world. Still,
she got in line, paid the four bucks for the magazine, and found a spot against
the deli's dirty front window to flip through its pages as the nearby subway
entrance emitted a harsh puff of warm air and a train rumbled somewhere below.
Bob had always teased Jamie for buying
O
. He said it was a waste of
money and time and that Oprah had made a living out of duping people into
believing that what she said mattered; that alone made Jamie feel that it was
the best four dollars she'd ever spent.
She
looked north, across the street, where Bryant Park was filled with people. It
was a beautiful day in Manhattan. The local weathermen had all predicted an
unseasonably sunny and warm April day, and after a dreary morning of keyboard
punching and sales meetings, modestly successful professionals were flocking to
that tiny, renovated grass area, the only immediate and economically sound
choice for weary fingers and brains.
The
idea of sitting inside the deli and eating as fast as she could, only to dash
onto the subway and catch the earliest Long Island Rail Road train home—Jamie's
typical MO—suddenly lost its appeal. It was one thing if there were a
destination that demanded hurrying off to—schoolchildren to escort off an
afternoon bus, dinner to make for a returning husband, or even a rush-hour crowd
to beat—but Jamie had none of those things awaiting her and nothing else
planned for the day. For the first time in a long time, she was feeling
untethered, which was a strange and unusual feeling for a thirty-two-year-old
woman who had spent practically all her life as someone's
girl
—a
mother's daughter, a brother's sister, a husband's wife. She looked again at
the magazine in her hands:
NEVER LOOK BACK.
Across
the street, a hot-dog vendor catered to a long line of patrons, and, on a whim,
Jamie got on the back of the line, deciding to forgo the egg salad and the
comforts of routine. "One with mustard and sauerkraut and a water, please," she
said when it was her turn in line. The vendor never looked up as his hands
flipped metal covers open and shut and his hands slid the dog into its bun.
Years from now, Jamie imagined that she would remember this hot dog as
emblematic of the beginning of a new life path, how she had chosen the hot dog
of tomorrow rather than the egg salad of yesterday. She paid him and made her
way toward Bryant Park.
It
was hard to believe that Bryant Park, with its lovely gardens and European-flavored
promenades, had seen its share of ill repute over the years. Back in the days
of disco and graffiti-ridden subway cars, the park was an eyesore, a mainstay
of muggers and drug lords, and was avoided by savvy New Yorkers. However, since
that time, it had been transformed into a Manhattan oasis of lush greenery,
while still retaining its "city park" feel with a spattering of historical monuments
and urban amenities. In 1994, Bryant Park became the locale for Fashion Week,
the semiannual fete in which clothing designers premiered their latest
collections in invitation-only runway shows, but Jamie was glad when the event
moved uptown to Lincoln Center a few years ago—the sudden intrusion of
celebrity, hidden beneath a series of large white tents, made the park look to
her as if it had sprung a glitzy fungal infection.
Jamie
searched the grass for a chair, but the quest was formidable. Not quite 2:00 p.m., the lunchtime masses had descended upon this tiny patch of green hidden within Manhattan's vast concrete and steel landscape. Men, clad in business suits just ten
minutes prior, were now stretched out on the grass—jackets off, ties loosened,
and shoes and socks placed neatly beside them. Women of all shapes and sizes
were baring midriffs and painted toes.
Jamie
navigated the grounds, asking sheepishly, "Is this seat taken?," but to no
avail. Manhattanites could be territorial about their seating, hurling unwanted
jackets, pocketbooks, and brown paper bags on chairs that, if not in use now,
must be available to hold their elevated feet at a moment's notice.
Oprah
would never approve
, she thought with a smile.
A
couple was sitting at a table near the park's entrance, where there was an
extra, empty chair beside them, but the gentleman pulled the seat closer to him
when he noticed Jamie and leaned his forearm across its top. In the distance
she spotted a bench that appeared vacant just off the grass. She quickly made
her way across the park, balancing her lunch on the magazine on top of her
portfolio. When she got there, she realized that one of the legs was broken,
making the bench wobbly, which explained its availability. She decided to sit
down anyway, careful not to lean back too much and to keep most of her weight
on her left side.
It
wasn't until her bottom had touched the cool metal of the seat that she
realized how nice it was to sit down. When the full-time employment in Manhattan had stopped, so had the walking, since driving was pretty much the only way to
get around in the suburbs, and she found that the tiniest aerobic exercise
exhausted her. She unfolded the aluminum foil from around her hot dog and
unscrewed the cap from her water, careful to place her pocketbook on the foil,
so it would not go flying into the breeze, and keeping her arm looped through
its straps while she ate.
The
bright afternoon sun blazed down upon the park, and she put her sunglasses on
and scanned the evolving crowd, which seemed to change minute by minute like
the ebb and flow of a tide. In the center of the grass was a woman sitting
alone and sipping what looked like an iced cappuccino, judging by the insignia
of her tall paper cup. She was tanned from head to toe with skin tones that contrasted
with her white suit, consisting of a halter top and miniskirt, and she had that
relaxed, LA look about her—one of her white sandals had been tossed carelessly
onto the grass, while the other dangled from the big toe of her left foot. To
Jamie's left, a man was lying in the grass with his arms and legs stretched out
as if he were making an angel in snow. People stepped over him in their search
to find a vacant chair, but he didn't budge, seemingly unaware that anyone was
around. Further west, near the Sixth Avenue entrance, a dark-haired,
broad-shouldered man in a black suit leaned on the veterans' monument.
Everything was still on—his suit jacket over a white-collared shirt, which was
unbuttoned at the top revealing a large gold cross—and he was wearing dark
sunglasses with his arms crossed over his chest, a far cry from the untroubled
mood of the crowd. Jamie took another bite of her hot dog and watched several
sheepish-looking men approach the woman in white and hover around her like bees
while she stretched her arms in the air like she'd just awoken from a nap, her
shifting halter top revealing a silver belly ring.
Jamie
looked down at her own double-breasted suit that she had plucked from the
can-wear-one-more-time-before-dry-cleaning rack in her closet. She imagined her
body language wasn't enticing anyone to just wander over and chat.
Did she
even remember how to do that?
She looked again at the man in black. Jamie
probably looked as unapproachable as he did.
"Excuse
me," someone said, making Jamie instinctively tighten her grip on her
pocketbook. "Do you have the time?"
In
front of her was a short, balding man in a tracksuit wearing the kind of
eyeglasses that strapped around one's entire head. He was still jogging, in place,
looking a bit tense, waiting for Jamie to answer. She pulled out her phone.
"Yes,
it's just about two o'clock," she said.
"Thank
you." The man jogged there for a few seconds longer than he should have, according
to Jamie's standards, before nodding and heading off toward Sixth Avenue.
Jamie
kept her eye on him, hoping he wouldn't turn back around, since he looked a bit
creepy. She marveled at how in a park packed with people, the guy had chosen to
approach her, kind of like how she always managed to be the one to come home
with all the mosquito bites after a summer outing while everyone else got away
scot-free; the whole bit her mother used to give her about being so sweet did
little to stem the itching, although she had to admit that it did make her feel
better. She wondered if it was her sweetness that prompted jogger-guy to stop
by, or whether it was more likely that Jamie looked as if she had nothing
better to do than dig in her bag for her phone. Jogger-guy hurried up the park
entrance steps and out onto Sixth Avenue, passing right by the man in black who
still stood by the veterans' monument with his arms folded.
Had he not moved
all this time
, Jamie wondered.
Her
phone vibrated in her hands. It was a text from her brother Edward.
HOW
DID IT GO?
Jamie
smiled at the four little words, which reminded her that, despite her feelings
of isolation, or freedom, she did have someone she was still tethered to. She
texted back:
SHITTY.
She
waited a moment. The phone vibrated again.
THEIR
LOSS.
She
smiled and wrote:
DAMN
STRAIGHT!
She
was watching the men wave and walk away from the blonde sun goddess in the
grass when another text arrived:
WHEN
ARE YOU HEADING BACK?
Jamie
wrote:
WHAT
R U WRITING A BOOK? :)
Within
seconds came the reply:
NO,
BUT U SHOULD B.
Jamie
sighed. Edward never gave up. He had been encouraging her to write fiction
since she won a short-story contest in the fifth grade—a story that she got to
read on a local radio station. And as much as she pooh-poohed the idea to
friends and colleagues, becoming a creative writer had been a longtime dream of
Jamie's, a dream she had set aside when she took a job at a local newspaper
just out of college, a dream that she kept aside while married to Bob.
Somewhere, lurking in the deep recesses of her brain, and her hard drive, three
enthusiastically started but abandoned novels lay dying.
Another
text arrived:
DINNER
TONITE. MY TREAT. B/C U R UNEMPLOYED & BROKE...
And
then another text:
AND
DIVORCED & LONELY...
Jamie
smiled and started to text back when her phone vibrated again:
&
UGLY 2...
Jamie
laughed out loud. She typed:
SOUNDS
GOOD & I'M HAVING DESSERT!
She
put her phone away and turned her attention back to the blonde who was now
packing up her things and presumably returning to work. Lunchtime was coming to
a close, as more and more chairs lay abandoned and New Yorkers prepared to suck
it up for just a few more hours until the five o'clock whistle. Jamie, of
course, had nowhere to go. At least, not until dinnertime.
A
little girl about four or five years old popped into view, hopping along in
front of a woman who was beseeching her to "slow down" and "stay with mommy."
Her young face was radiant, with her long, dark hair pulled back into a
ponytail and a slight sunburn on her cheeks and the bridge of her nose. When
she slowed down so that her mother could catch up and take her hand, she
surveyed the park with fascination and caught Jamie watching her; she responded
with a smile and a wave, which Jamie returned.