Summer Stories

A Chance Encounter (Part 1 of 2)

Lower Manhattan is swelteringly hot in August and, if it's even possible, more packed with people than at any other time of the year. As you walk, you have to constantly swerve to avoid people: a swarm of teenagers who've broken out in uproarious laughter at God knows what; a severe-looking woman in a business suit who's in a hurry somewhere even though it's a Saturday afternoon; a Chinese tourist who's so fascinated by the street sign he's photographing that he's totally oblivious to the fact he's blocking the sidewalk.

So here I am, wandering around, not even sure why I left my apartment in the first place. Anything's better than being cooped up in a tiny room on my own, I guess. And despite the stifling heat and the bustle of the streets, I can't say I dislike the city. Until I moved to New York at the age of twelve, I lived in Arkansas, in what was quite possibly the shittiest town in the whole world. I won't name it here, for fear that the residents might start a hate campaign against me, but believe me: it was terrible. Everyone knew everyone. It was a curse. You couldn't even go to the grocery store without fear of running into some relative or neighbour. Like that one time when my aunt was there and I forgot to say "Thank you" to her when she held the door open for me, so she then reported the incident to my mom, telling her what a "rude, ill-mannered young man" I was. Jesus Christ, how I loathed that woman.

Anyway, it's probably because of this sort of childhood that I appreciate New York more than others do. It's easy to be completely anonymous, to lose yourself in a crowd. And it somehow always seems new, unlike the sleepy, unchanging town of my younger days. I bet you anything the people who live there now are the exact same people who lived there back when I did, and that they're still doing the same boring crap they always did, and that they're eventually going to die in that town, never knowing anything but that same monotonous existence. No way in hell was I going to let that happen to me. So I was glad I got out when I did.

I'm not really sure why - maybe nostalgia compelled me - but I've ended up drifting towards that cafe near the Guggenheim, that cafe I'd spent so much time in as a high schooler. All five of us used to sit there after school on those wooden chairs, talking about nothing in particular, laughing about nothing in particular. We even used to meet up there in the summer after graduation, before we all went our separate ways, and back then it seemed to us that the future stretching out ahead of us was limitless and infinite. Well, here I am, twenty-three, the future is an uncertain haze, not that the present is much better, and I'm stumbling into the cafe.

I take a seat in the corner and pick up a menu. I've got almost four dollars in my pocket, mostly in loose change, so that should be enough to cover a coffee, but what about food?  I inspect the menu. They've put the price of a cappuccino up by fifty cents since last time. It's now three dollars fifty. Greedy bastards. Looks like it'll just be a coffee for me today. I close the menu and play a racing game on my phone while waiting to be served. When the waitress eventually comes over, I order a regular cappuccino without looking up from my phone. No point crashing my car and losing the race just for some meaningless eye contact with a stranger. I get bored of the game eventually, and put my phone back in my pocket. And just as I look up, I see a woman entering the cafe. I know her. I would recognise that face anywhere.