Total pages in book: 117
Estimated words: 107949 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 540(@200wpm)___ 432(@250wpm)___ 360(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 107949 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 540(@200wpm)___ 432(@250wpm)___ 360(@300wpm)
“Yeah, you’re probably right. Okay, cool. Well, I guess I’ll see you guys. Sometime.”
The second I hung up I slumped onto the bed I’d claimed. It was the one next to the window because it seemed nice to be able to glance outside while I sat there and did work, but now I wondered if it’d be too distracting, so I flopped onto the other bed to try it out. From this vantage point, the room seemed completely different. Choosing a bed was choosing between two totally different experiences of the room. Of what the world would look like all year. It was too big a decision for the moment.
In fact, any decision felt too big at the moment, so I just grabbed my skateboard and took off. At the street, I closed my eyes for a moment. A blanket of noise lay over everything: traffic, horns, heels hitting pavement, dogs yipping, people talking in every language, music, and, underneath it all, a hum that seemed to rise from the ground itself. It was almost more vibration than sound, as if I were standing on something alive. A great slumbering beast guarding a treasure.
As soon as my feet hit the deck of my board a car nearly sideswiped me in a flurry of honking horns and yelled profanities, and I hit the ground hard, my board skidding against the curb. Within moments fear transmuted into humiliation, and I just hoped no one saw. But, of course, there were people everywhere. The chill of fear gone, it was oppressively hot, the air hanging humid and still, the smells of pizza and smoke, perfume and exhaust suspended.
Shaking off the near miss, I walked around Washington Square Park, and I could hardly believe I was really here. The white stone seemed to glow as it absorbed the sunlight. The soaring arch at the entrance to the park stood out starkly against the blue sky like it could reach the clouds, dwarfing the trees. People passed through like threading a needle, and you could tell the locals from the tourists by who walked by without even sparing it a glance.
I was most assuredly not one of the locals, since I was blatantly staring at everything around me, head whipping from sight to sight like I was at a carnival.
That was Resolution 2—Do not gawk at everything like a total noob—down the drain, then.
I passed leathery-skinned men and women with their belongings tied up in plastic bags sitting on benches, talking without listening to each other. Some asked for change, some ignored me, and one blew me a kiss. They sat next to men in the nicest suits I’d ever seen, subtle grays, browns, and blues that I could tell, even without knowing anything about fashion, were top quality.
These men sat, resting slices of pizza on paper plates, falafel in foil, and plastic cups of chunked fruit on their elegantly crooked knees, holding newspapers, books, and phones in one hand and eating with the other. The business-y women mostly wore black, and they walked quickly, heels clicking the stones, sipping iced coffees through straws, sunglasses covering half their faces.
There was a set of tables inlaid with chessboards where a surprising collection of people played, some in silence, others bantering with familiarity like they’d been playing together for years.
My favorite pairing was an immaculately dressed African-American man who must’ve been in his eighties, skin burnished and perfectly manicured fingers clawed inward with arthritis, playing with a white girl who couldn’t have been more than ten. She had light brown hair scraped into a raggedy ponytail, and pink wire-framed glasses, behind which she squinted at the board, her small hand with its dirty nails hovering above a piece.
As I walked by, she looked up at her opponent, clearly trying not to smile, and said, “Checkmate.” He interlaced his fingers over his stomach and leaned back, assessing the board before nodding once, one side of his mouth lifting. He took off the tidy bowler hat he was wearing and perched it on the girl’s messy head, tapping its brim so it slid her glasses down her nose.
Children chased pigeons up and down the park’s corridors and parents chased children. Bikers twined around pedestrians lost in their phones and groups of slow-walking tourists taking pictures with selfie sticks or iPads held aloft. Around the perimeter of the fountain, couples sat, hands entwined, or leaning against each other. The sun was directly overhead, sparkling in the droplets of water the fountain kicked up.
I settled in the shade, finally, taking a cue from the less well-dressed, of which I was definitely one. A group of twentysomethings in shredded band T-shirts and cut-off denim sprawled under a tree, heads on each other’s stomachs and fingers in each other’s hair. Under another tree a family was having a picnic, one of the kids complaining about the heat, the bugs, the food.