It’s the glowing storefronts that always catch her eye as she walks past. In the dim indigo of a December evening, the warm light that spills out onto icy concrete feels like an invitation.
She’s bundled up under layers of thermal wear, breathing into a scarf that fogs the lens of her glasses. She pulls them off – they’re just for reading anyway – and places them into her coat pocket. Her book lays heavy in her bag, draped over her shoulder, and the heat of her coffee seeps through her gloved hands. She blows into the lid, watching the steam curl out into the cold air.
There is so much to see through these windows.
She makes her way down the sidewalk at a pace that would be commendable in any other town, and yet is an inconvenience in these streets. People push past her, bundled in their winter wear, as she peers through the glass. Bookshelves and overpriced clothing and antique accessories lie past entrances decorated with wreaths and garland. But it’s not the items that she finds interesting, it is the people.
She watches the families try to reign in their rowdy children, weaving through the racks of small boutiques. She watches the teens chatting in fluorescently lit bodegas, piling sweets and snacks onto the counter. She watches couples sitting out on restaurant patios under heat lamps, holding hands across the table.
And then she sees herself.
Well, not herself, but a girl just like her. A girl sitting alone, right up against the window pane with a slice of deli pizza and a sudoku book on the table.
She wonders if the girl is there alone, or if she is waiting on someone. She wants to stop at the window and wave, to acknowledge this girl’s moment of solitude, however brief or permanent it may be. She wants to say, hey, you’re kind of like me. But in New York City, the best thing to do is keep moving onward.
Last week she had walked through the halls of the MET alone, past Greek statues and weathered armor, observing handmade antique jewelry intricately designed by the ancient Mesopotamians. She’d felt the weight of her own necklace on her collarbone and marveled at how the sheer act of adorning her body with gold automatically connected her to a group of humans whose bodies had turned to ash thousands of years ago. And yet, despite the time and the culture and the distance, she felt they were the same.
She had left the museum and sat on the steps, shivering in the cold, when she realized the necklace had come loose and fallen off. She couldn’t retrace her steps, not when she had made her way through multiple exhibits, and the sheer volume of people made it impossible to search. Instead, she sat on the steps and cried.
Not a single person batted an eye at a young woman weeping on the steps of the MET. That was the beauty of this city. She already knew she had a forgettable and unassuming nature– people introduced themselves to her twice, sometimes even thrice, before realizing they’d already met. And here, she could really be invisible, because she was one average face among an influx of more unique, interesting faces. She could sob on the streets for hours and not be bothered. She could stand up and do jumping jacks and scream and yodel, and nobody would notice, or care, or remember. And if they did, they’d forget within minutes, when the next strange person did something even stranger.
Now, she continues down the street. She can smell the yeast and sugar from a bakery and, despite her best efforts, cannot stop herself from entering. It is crowded with people lined up out the door, huddling for warmth to avoid the chilly air for a few moments longer. Once she is inside her sinuses begin to leak and she sniffles, rubbing her nose, covering herself with her scarf.
An attractive boy with wire-rimmed glasses stands as the cashier, ringing up people’s orders, smiling and making conversation. She pulls her scarf tighter and thinks, I’ll seduce him. I’ll seduce him with just my eyes and the curl of my hair and my freshly made eyebrows.
The fantasy overtakes her as she makes her way down the line, but once it is her turn to order, she lowers her gaze.
Now she has a coffee, and a croissant, and the thought of a boy to wonder about for the next few blocks. Because the truth is she’s not interested in him so much as she is interested in spinning a narrative, or making something out of nothing. She finds it all so fleetingly romantic, like a feather in the breeze that you can’t quite catch.
She likes men, or at least the idea of them. She likes to imagine that there exists a creature out there that is stronger and bigger and gentler than her, and perhaps even half as intelligent, emotionally or otherwise. And she likes their attention, when it is so rarely given, but she doesn’t know how to hold it. She can’t look at couples for too long without a creeping reminder that there is a massive, defective bug within her that will not allow her the experience of romance in the way that other people seem to experience it – quickly, and easily, and inevitably. And she ignores it, this absence of love, much in the way that one might ignore a gaping bullet wound. By sticking a band-aid on it and hoping it doesn’t infect.
Her friend had told her, recently, how much she envied her independence, her singleness, her drive, shortly before excusing herself to get dinner with her partner. And she didn’t want to point out the irony, or explain how an excess of independence can start to feel, sometimes, like loneliness. Because what can she really say, and what can anybody really do, other than unscrew her brain out of her skull and switch it out with a replacement more agreeable? The sentiments are given with good intentions, even if they are lies.
She doesn’t know if she believes in the concept of love, or whether it will ever exist for her. She doesn’t know if she believes in a higher power. But she believes in the Mesopotamian’s handmade earrings, and the indomitable human spirit, and the lives of the people rushing by through these windows. She believes in her ability to peek into another person’s experience through a glass shield, if even for a moment. She believes in the flakes of croissant melting on her tongue and the cold breeze nipping at her skin.
There’s a crowd around her pushing past, and she realizes too late that she’s wandered closer to Rockefeller than she intended. She pauses to admire the decorated window fronts. This one in particular is illustrating an idealized version of Manhattan set in the 1920’s, young women in dresses and men carrying briefcases, surrounded by miniature Christmas trees on their way to wherever they were going. And then a little Yorkie barking on a leash, a dog that looks so similar to her friend’s evil puppy that she laughs and turns to tell someone, forgetting she is by herself. The laugh dies on her lips.
She is surrounded by families, by friends, by people who are laughing and talking around her, taking pictures, a conglomeration of tourists and locals and transplants like herself. And she feels a familiar, terrible pang. She has friends, yes. Sure she does. Plenty of them, but now she doesn’t know why she is by herself, why she is always by herself. She doesn’t know who she can call.
This was the life she had always wanted, this freedom, this big city dream, this lack of inhibition and familial responsibility, this desire to see something newer and bigger, to meet the kind of people she’d never find in her hometown.
But she had never expected it would feel so much like this, like floating in some endless space, like trying to find a foothold in a pitch black void.
Perhaps true freedom didn’t exist. Or perhaps nothing really came for free, not even freedom itself.
She watches the people for a moment longer, not knowing what she is looking for, and turns to head back toward the train.
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