It was melting in New York. Or we were, rather. We were a few blocks from the park, the sky an ultraviolet haze. Summer. Strangers were everywhere with secret lives, but looking up at people in windows, I kept seeing faces I thought I knew. We had tickets for a show later, how would we ever find our way back to Broadway… I wiped my forehead with the back of my hand.
It seems so rare in real life that anyone on the street randomly breaks out into song.
Well, as it happens… We used to go there sometimes as kids. The hell with love, everyone only wants ice cream! Someone standing nearby nearly died laughing.
There was a hotdog vendor and a sign hanging overhead that read Validation. It could have been the company name or referring to the psychotherapy practice across the street. All we knew for certain was that there was nowhere left in America with free parking. We bought ice cream.
I remember you feeling safe in my arms lying in bed late in that New Orleans hotel where we stopped over to wait out the rain coming back from Houston. Here, it seems, September 11th could happen at any moment. How far are we from the Chelsea Hotel?
I remember you always saying how you wanted us to be the difference between travelers and tourists. New York was the one place neither of us had ever been.
Fucking tourists.
In the park, voices descended upon us in whispers, a cacophony. It reminded me of Speaker’s Corner in Hyde Park in London, the Tower of Babel in the Bible. We stopped. The concrete breathing underneath our feet. All the voices in all the world – more terrifying than clouds like angels departing the earth for heaven. Wait, where did you go? You were right here a second ago. Slowly, they (the voices) started making sense.
