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by Frank McDonnell

We met at Astor Place. I said hello, she said hi. Her face was the same as I remembered. It was a Sunday afternoon in autumn, and the wind made her cheeks rosy. She smiled curiously. Looking back, maybe it was less the wind and more the circumstances. It had been quite sometime since our last encounter, two months, if my memory served me.

“Shall we,” I said leading the way.

Down the stairs of the subway station we passed through the turnstile, I first, then she.

Subway’s no way for a good man to go down, rich man won’t ride and the hobo he can drown.

Waiting for the 6 train I began to fidget, as Elton John’s lyrics bounced back and forth in my mind. She attempted to talk over the roar of the uptown train. “How was your summer?” she loudly inquired.

And I thank the lord

“Is that what you really want to ask?” I shouted back.

for the people I have found.

She turned her head and nodded, as the train rolled to a stop. The doors opened and the people poured out, filling the platform. Her body backed into mine, and a faint, familiar fragrance swept through me. Time stood as the aroma lingered. A heartbeat later we were fighting our way through the entanglement. Entering the passenger car, we managed to find an empty seat.

The smell of her hair. I remembered that, I remembered the morning after finding my face softly nestled in a pillow of blonde, breathing her in. She had yet to wake, and the sun rising through her barred apartment windows painted crisscrossing patterns on her exposed back.

“14TH STREETUNION SQUARE. THIS IS A BRONX BOUND 6 TRAIN, NEXT STOP 23RD STREET.” The mechanical voice stole me back to the present.

Gathering myself I apologized to her. “Whatever for?” she asked. “I’m not quite myself today, I, um, I seem to have lost my words…” I trailed off watching the child in the seat across from me wriggle in the arms of his mother, fighting for his freedom, the mother’s face a picture of exhaustion.

“Don’t give it a second thought, sometimes it’s nice to be alone, alone with someone else,” she said.

Through the reflection in the window in front of me, I stole a glance at her face as she spoke those last words. ‘Alone with someone else,’ I thought as the train raced under the streets of the city…

I thank the Lord for the people I have found.

“86TH STREET AND LEXINGTON AVENUE. THIS IS A BRONX BOUND 6 TRAIN, NEXT STOP 96TH STREET,” the same mechanical voice sounded off.

Following her lead we left the subway car and joined the ranks of the outside world again. The day itself hadn’t changed much, the same breeze and faint blue sky, but the surroundings were different. It was like something out of a Lewis Carroll story. You entered the rabbit hole and emerged in a far-away land. While we may not have stepped through the looking glass, uptown Lexington was quite a different place from downtown Broadway. Carroll’s verse beginning Alice’s adventure crept into my mind:

I have not seen thy sunny face,
Nor heard thy silver laughter;
No thought of me shall find a place
In thy young life’s hereafter—
Enough that now thou wilt not fail
To listen to my fairy-tale.

Standing beside my own fair-haired blue-eyed maiden, I wondered whether my time for fairy tales had come to an end. For was she any more real to me than Alice? The past months had been good. I’d been busy, and she had rarely come to mind. But when she did arrive in thoughts, I would remember what it was like to be near her and how that made me feel. And I’d begin to wonder whether some goods were better than others. It took me two months to remember what I discovered in one night. But had I missed my chance? A Sunday at the Metropolitan Museum of Art was a start. I wanted the company, and she said herself that sometimes being alone with someone was better than being alone by yourself. But could we be together and forget about being alone altogether? If I could only ask her…

This Broadway’s got, it’s got a lot of songs to sing. If I knew the tunes I might join in.

Still wordless, we made our way to the park, taking our time to absorb the day. Standing behind her at the streetlight adjacent to the Met, I was tempted to grab her hand, but, unsure, I hesitated as the sign changed to WALK.

I’ll go my way alone. Grow my own, my own seeds shall be sown in New York City.

Ascending the vast stone steps we entered the museum. The atmosphere immediately shifted as we paid the admission and received our buttons. The doorways and hallways and steps and people were overwhelming.

“Here we are,” I spoke quietly through the confusion, looking at the map that named the different exhibits, trying to gain a perspective. Assured, she took me by the arm and led me away with her.

Through a labyrinth of doorways, halls and stairs, she led me past countless exhibits - Egyptian masks, medieval weapons, European sculptures, Islamic musical instruments; all monuments to a time since past. Suddenly she stopped, and I took the moment to gather myself.

“I’ve always loved the surrealists,” she said taking a long pause to survey the vast collection of paintings. “They’ve always reminded me that things are not always so ordinary.” She laughed quietly to herself. “Sometimes you can look at things in ways you’ve never thought to before. And you realize that in themselves, they can be pretty to look at, like all the individual elements of each of these paintings. But together, taken as an entire work of art, you see that in the end it takes every single one of those subtler images to be beautiful.”

I considered her words as she made her way to Dali and Leger. Off in the opposite corner I noticed Picasso’s Sleeping Woman in Armchair. The complacency of the woman’s face again brought me back to that morning.

For what felt like hours, I watched as she lay sleeping. Never before had I seen a face so beautiful, so beautiful and so at peace. As time progressed, the crisscrossed shadows slowly made the journey from the small of her back to her tranquil face, and she began to stir in the rays of the morning sun. I remember that morning thinking back to the first time I had seen her, how she instantly consumed me. I remember all our encounters after that first one, and the anticipation and longing I felt between each. But days turned into weeks and weeks into months. We spent a fair amount of time together, and over time our relationship seemed to drift more towards platonic than passionate. My longing subsided in that place in my stomach where all unrequited desire lies dormant.

My eyes strayed from Picasso to de Chirico and his Disturbing Muses. I stood pondering the three figures in their state of discord.

Until you’ve seen this trashcan dream come true, you stand at the edge while people run you through.

Absorbed in thought, I lost sight of my companion and immersed myself in the sea of images. Chagall, Klimt, Miro, Modigliani… The artists’ scenes conjured up new streams of memories, though these were less specific.

The corner of a crowded bar. The intimacy of anonymity. The noise of a distraction drawing us together. The drinks drowning inhibition. Finding our way back to her place. The morning after, our bodies intertwined, as we lay revealing our dreams. Breakfast and the first taste of coffee scalding my lips. Walking away and the long subway ride home.

I thought I knew, but now I know, that rose trees never grow in New York City.

Looking up again I saw her standing with her back to me, staring at the most peculiar painting. In the corner of a crowded room, two hooded lovers stand kissing. Cloaked as if to represent the unattainable, the only clues to their identity are found in their clothing: a dark suit and a red dress.

Standing there observing her observing the painting I thought seemed oddly appropriate. Was it she I longed for, or that which she represented? Had our night together been one more indistinguishable moment in the many that would make up our lives, or was it the belated beginning of our own happily ever after? The image captured the essence of our experience together that had been plaguing my memory. Surrounded by the surreal, my feelings for her became all the more real.

Stirred by a sense of urgency, I made my way to her side, taking her hand. Caught off guard, her eyes darted to the left to see who had disrupted her moment. But seeing me seeing her, she seemed to understand.

And I thank the Lord there’s people out there like you, I thank the Lord there’s people out there like you.

Together our eyes drifted back to the painting. Hand-in-hand, two lovers looking at The Lovers II.

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