I thought it was junk mail at first. The subject line was “Hi there Alex,” which is my name, and because it was in my spam folder surrounded by asterisks and capital letters and promises of great sex, I figured it was one more crazy thing, undeserving of a second glance.
Still, I was having a blue, lonely night, so I decided to click on it anyway. I braced myself for a popup window to appear, asking me to download some virus. But a popup didn’t appear. Inside the email was a message of just a few lines:
“Meet me at the spot where you had your last kiss. You know the place.”
#
It was cold that night in New York, so I put on my new furry-hooded jacket.
I hoped something interesting would happen. Something that would show me a way out of New York and to somewhere else. My life there had stagnated: Same job, same friends getting drunk every weekend. I needed a change.
The place I’d had my last kiss was Tompkins Square Park, in the East Village. So that’s where I went. I hopped on the subway from Brooklyn and rattled a few stops north.
I looked around, hands shoved in my pockets. The first person I looked for was Mark, my ex-boyfriend. Maybe somehow he’d sent me a crazy email from an account my Inbox didn’t recognize. Maybe he still wanted to get back together. That wouldn’t be much like Mark, though. He had a lot of pride and didn’t like to appear desperate.
That last kiss between us had happened on a bench close to Avenue A and E. 12th Street. We’d just made up after our most recent fight.
But Mark wasn’t on the bench. A young Asian woman was, dressed in black and eating a furtive burrito while she looked at her smart phone.
“Excuse me,” I said. “My name is Alex.”
She looked at me like: so what.
“Uh, I was told to meet someone here? You’re not expecting anyone are you?”
“No,” she told me.
I decided to be bold. “Because I got an email saying to meet you here.”
“You didn’t get an email from me, because I don’t know you. And actually, I’m kind of weirded out by you right now.”
I decided to step away before she called the police. I positioned myself under a sycamore tree near the kissing bench. Not too close because the woman was still there eating. She was glancing back and forth now between me and her smartphone. I tried to smile innocuously, not looking at her.
She took her last bite of burrito and picked a bit of lettuce up from the deli wrapper. She ate it. She put her phone in her pocket and crumpled up the wrapper. She sat there for a few seconds as if she were trying to decide something.
Then she stood up, tossed the wrapper in a trash can, and came toward me. For a second I thought she might be planning to slap me.
Instead, she regarded me warily. “You said your name is Alex?” she said.
“Yeah.”
“Because I just got a message from someone named Alex.”
“Like a text message?”
She shook her head, looking embarrassed. “No. On, uh — a web site.”
“What web site?”
She nuzzled her mouth and chin into her scarf, which was also black. I could see her breath. “Singles.com,” she mumbled.
“Oh.”
“Your photo looked a little like him, is all. So it’s not you?”
“No — I’m not on Singles.com. Must be a coincidence.”
“Weird coincidence.”
“Yeah. What’s your name?”
“Esmerelda.” We stood there awkwardly for a few seconds. “So anyway,” she said. She nuzzled further into her scarf and hiked up her shoulder bag, getting ready to go.
I desperately wanted her not to leave. Maybe this was the person I was supposed to meet. Maybe we’d become best friends and leave New York together in a vintage Volkswagen Beetle, pop music blaring out the windows.
I cleared my throat. “Uh — I’m gay? So this wouldn’t be a date. Not that you’d want to go out on a date with me — Anyway. Do you want to get a drink or something?”
And she said yes.
