“You sound sad, Dash.”
“One of the failures of cell ular communication is that tiredness often comes across as sadness. But I appreciate your concern.”
“We’re still here, if you want to come back.”
“I’m told there’s no going back. So I’m choosing forward.”
I hung up then. The exhaustion of living was just too much for me to talk any longer. At least to Thibaud. And, yes, there was sadness in that. And anger. And confusion. And disappointment. All exhausting.
I kept walking. It wasn’t too cold for December 27, and all the holiday-week visitors were out in force. I remembered where So a had said her family was staying—the Belvedere, on Forty-eighth Street—and walked in that direction. Times Square sent its glow into the air, blocks before it actually began, and I walked heavily into the light. The tourists still crowded into a thronging pulse, but now that Christmas was over, I wasn’t as repelled. Especially in Times Square, everyone was enraptured by the simple act of being here. For every exhausted soul like myself, there were at least three whose faces were lifted in absurd wonder at the neon brightness. As much as I wanted to have the hardest of hearts, such plaintive joy made me feel what a leaky, human vessel it really was.
When I got to the Belvedere, I found the house phone and asked to be connected to So a’s room. It rang six times before an anonymous voice mail picked up. I returned the receiver to its cradle and went to sit on one of the couches in the lobby. I wasn’t waiting, per se—I simply didn’t know where else to go. The lobby was full of hustling and bustling—guests negotiating each other after negotiating the city, some about to plunge back in. Parents dragged vacation-tired children. Couples sniped about what they’d done or hadn’t done. Other couples held hands like teenagers, even when they hadn’t been teenagers for over half a century. Christmas music no longer wafted in the air, which allowed a more genuine tenderness to bloom. Or maybe that was just in me. Maybe everything I saw was all in me.
I wanted to write it down. I wanted to share it with Lily, even if Lily was really just the idea I’d created of Lily, the concept of Lily. I went to the small gift shop o the lobby and bought six postcards and a pen. Then I sat back down and let my thoughts ow out. Not directed to her this time. Not directed at all. It would be just like water, or blood. It would go wherever it was meant to go.
Postcard 1: Greetings from New York!
Having grown up here, I always wonder what it would be like to see this city as a tourist. Is it ever a disappointment? I have to believe that New York always lives up to its reputation. The buildings really are that tall. The lights really are that bright. There’s truly a story on every corner. But it still might be a shock. To realize you are just one story walking among millions. To not feel the bright lights even as they ll the air. To see the tall buildings and only feel a deep longing for the stars.
Postcard 2: I’m a Broadway Baby!
Why is it so much easier to talk to a stranger? Why do we feel we need that disconnect in order to connect? If I wrote “Dear So a” or “Dear Boomer” or “Dear Lily’s Great-Aunt” at the top of this postcard, wouldn’t that change the words that followed? Of course it would. But the question is: When I wrote “Dear Lily,” was that just a version of “Dear Myself”? I know it was more than that. But it was also less than that, too.
Postcard 3: The Statue of Liberty
For thee I sing. What a remarkable phrase.
“Dash?”
I looked up and found Sofia there, holding a Playbil from Hedda Gabler.
“Hi, Sofia. What a small world!”
“Dash—”
“I mean, small in the sense that right at this moment, I’d be happy if it only had the two of us in it. And I mean that in a strictly conversational sense.”
“I always appreciate your strictness.”
I looked around the lobby for a sign of her parents. “Mom and Dad leave you alone?” I asked.
“They went for a drink. I decided to come back.”
“Right.”
“Right.”
I didn’t stand up. She didn’t sit down next to me. We just looked at each other and saw each other for a moment, and then held it for another moment, and another moment. There didn’t seem to be any question about what was going to happen. There didn’t seem to be any doubt about where this was going. We didn’t even need to say it.
fourteen
(Lily)
December 28th
Fan•ci•ful\fan(t)si-fәll\adj (ca. 1627) 1. marked by fancy or unrestrained imagination rather than by reason and experience.
According to Mrs. Basil E., fanciful is the adjective for which Snarl—I mean Dash—feels the most longing. Certainly it explained why he’d answered the call of the red notebook at the Strand to begin with and played along, for a while, until he discovered that the real Lily, as opposed to his imagined one, would turn him less fanciful and more dour (3. gloomy, sullen).
What a waste.
Although, fanciful’s origin circa 1627 made me still love the word, even if I’d ruined its applicability to my connection with Snarl. (I mean DASH!) Like, I could totally see Mrs. Mary Poppencock returning home to her cobblestone hut with the thatched roof in Thamesburyshire, Jolly Olde England, and saying to her husband, “Good sir Bruce, would it not be wonderful to have a roof that doesn’t leak when it rains on our green shires, and stu ?” And Sir Bruce Poppencock would have been like, “I say, missus, you’re very fanciful with your ideas today.” To which Mrs. P. responded, “Why, Master P., you’ve made up a word! What year is it? I do believe it’s circa 1627! Let’s carve the year—we think—on a stone so no one forgets. Fanciful! Dear man, you are a genius. I’m so glad my father forced me to marry you and allow you to impregnate me every year.”