Red Line

We used to run into one another on the red line. You’d be surprised to see me and ask me how long I was in town for and I would respond and say that it was only for a hot second. I’d just come down to renew my drivers license (something to do with avoiding jury duty) and would be leaving in the morning. But how are you? Are things good?

A few years ago this would have been the kind of interaction that I would heap sorrys upon and see how high I could get them to stack. But I don’t apologize anymore and so, as the conversation got to the point where I might have offered my condolences, things fell quiet. It felt like you were searching for something. I wasn’t going to be any help and so as we pulled into Grosvenor you said that this was your stop and you got off. The doors announced themselves to be closing and then there was metal and plastic between us and then I was pulled away. And I wondered what it was that you were up to in Grosvenor and what your life was like there and who you had become. And then I went home and went to sleep.

Eventually I stopped coming home, or would come home with more thought and attention to detail, and wouldn’t have to ride the red line late at night. I’m pretty sure you didn’t change the way I lived my life back then but I don’t know for certain. At a certain point if you want to stop lying to the people that you love you have to stop coming up with lies. I didn’t love you anymore so if I stopped riding the red line late at night it was because I was protecting my parents, my brother and sister. I was also protecting myself.

I’m not sure what I was trying to tell you when I showed up unannounced and uninvited at your 23rd birthday party, but if I was trying to tell you something I can only hope that you got the message. Your girlfriend was singing karaoke: “She Used To Be Mine” by Sara Bareilles. (Your girlfriend just calls her “Sara.”) It’s possible that I mumbled, “Hey, you were a good friend once and I miss that and so let’s start over,” and I also could have said “This was great and thanks for the invite but I’ve really got to get going.” You leaned in to hear better as I repeated it a second time and then you nodded and gave me a big hug and said that you hoped that we would see each other soon. I think I remember saying “For sure” or “Definitely” or “Yeah man!” but I had crossed you off my list of things to worry about. Six months later I would stumble upon a Facebook photo album of you and your fiancé’s trip to Rome and the worrying would begin again because I’m fucking great at worrying.

And then you got married. And then you moved to my city to study accounting (I think it was accounting - whenever you talk I day dream about sweaters and boats) and the one time that I saw you in that little dumpling shop in BedStuy, you were pink-cheeked and glutinous and I promised that I would see you again but I never did.

And in a few years I’ll get a Facebook invite to your going away party and I’ll tell my therapist that I am going to go. He will be understandably skeptical. You’re moving to just outside of Branson, Missouri to build a psychiatry practice and you will say that you want one last chance to say goodbye. I will worry about this because I’m fucking great at worrying and what else would I do with my time? (What do you do with your time?)

I will get off at Myrtle-Willoughby and I will walk up to the front door of (what I believe to be) your apartment building and I will hear noises up above and the hissing in my head will get louder. I will step up to the buzzer and look for your name. It won’t be there. You’re moving out in the morning and the superintendent has already put the next tenant’s name in: M. Goldberg. I’m will be relieved and then I will remember that the Facebook invite had an apartment number on it. I will also have your cellphone number from that trip to the dumpling shop. So many ways of getting an answer that I don’t want. I will take another step back.

I will look up and notice someone leaning out of the window, surveying the city through the apartment building across the street. It will be you. You will now have glasses and dark hair that, I will notice from a great distance, now has flecks of grey. I will stare for a moment, marveling, and then fear will snap me back and I will look down at my phone and pretend to be busy. I will scurry away.

“Scott? Hey, Scott! Is that you? Is that Scott?” I will think about stopping but I will not stop. I will not look up. I will keep going. I won’t breathe.

I will be back at Myrtle-Willoughby soon and you will think that it was someone else. And then you’ll move on to other things. You’ll think of me fondly and that will be fine. A fitting ending. “Remember Scott? I wonder what happened to him.”

Your psychiatry practice will grow and then one day you will retire and you will wonder every decade or so about whether or not that was actually me on the street on the night of your going away party. It certainly will have looked like me. Or your memory of me. Or your memory of the top of my head and my shoulders and my fraying pea coat. Couldn’t be.

What kind of a person comes down from Queens (on the G!) to the doorstep of a party that they were invited to and then turns around and goes back to their apartment? What kind of a person does that?

I do.