He saw her walking in the opposite direction, far away until she was close, so close that she passed him within an inch, nearly touching his shoulder. His shoulder. She smelled of strong perfume carried on the wind. Gardenias and fabric softener. He turned to watch her go, her hair undulating like water, glinting gold in the winter sun.
Mark continued, walking for a minute further before he spun around, compulsively turning to follow her and her bouncing hair and her gray tweed coat with absolutely no concept as to what to do once he caught up to her.
She was still within sight, walking with a hasty purpose towards 7th. Mark quickened his pace, knowing that she was likely headed towards the Bedford stop and once she was gone, she was gone. He passed thousands of people a year, never to see them again.
Hi, I’m uhh….
Hey youuuuu…
I’m from…my name is…uh hem.
Even in his head’s casual rehearsal he sounded like an idiot. If he couldn’t manage to have an imagined conversation in his head, he dreaded the moment he actually caught up to her. Secretly, he wished she would disappear and save him the embarrassment of being himself. Awkward. Stilted. Totally mortifying.
The light turned and Mark stopped for approaching cars, feeling the numbness in his hands when he stood still. Oh, miserable winter. Oh, miserable cars. Get the fuck out of my way, he thought, frantic as he watched her turn the corner to where the entrance of the subway was. He pushed his way in between a car turning right and the impatient car sitting against its bumper.
Why, hello.
Why, hello there.
Why, you. Hello, me.
Jesus Christ. He was a fool for continuing on this compulsive journey towards disaster. Such pursuits were for confident men who liked staring at themselves in the mirror, proud of what their parents had long ago accomplished. It wasn’t that Mark was ugly; in fact, he was rather nice to look at. He was just aware he was painfully strange – an undesirable self-awareness that made all human interaction totally uncomfortable for all parties involved.
He wished she had dropped something that he could pick up and chase her down with, something aside from his lonely desperation, terrible intangible thing that it was. A scarf would have done nicely, or an iPhone or a twenty dollar bill. In the few minutes he had, he contemplated buying something in a bodega and just pretending she dropped it. Gum, cigarettes, a macrobiotic bento box.
She was too far ahead; he would be too late. He rounded the corner, expecting the sidewalk to be filled with various anonymous cool people and not his beloved stranger. But there she was, standing on the sidewalk fiddling with her phone in the shade. He stopped, there in the middle of the sidewalk, barricading free passage for kids wearing beat up Converse and glasses that were ironic three years ago but now just reeked of victimized trendiness.
Mark stood, frozen, while she looked up once, then twice, with a look of brief familiarity and then concern. She knew that he had followed her. Mark thought she hadn’t noticed him as he walked passed before; she seemed fully engrossed in a song, in the day, in something else. He wanted to run, but stupidly, he walked forward.
“Hey,” he started.
She looked up from her phone, her face attempting some contorted friendliness.
“Hey?” she responded, her voice turning up in a way that wondered if she was supposed to know who he was. Of course she didn’t know who he was. No one knew who Mark was. No one was expected to.
“I like your glasses,” Mark continued.
She removed them from her face, propping them on her hair.
“They’re just cheap whatevers.”
Mark laughed and then said nothing, and continued to say nothing for some crucial moments afterward. She was waiting for him to continue with some sort of purpose or punch line, of which there was neither. He looked down at her hands that had begun to clutch her phone in a nervous, anxious way that he had been the cause of.
“I’m Jean,” she said, sticking out her hand.
Shit. He had forgotten about that, which made his strange standing-around-saying-nothing thing even more pointless.
“Mark,” he responded, embarrassed to the point he thought about making up another name just in case he ever ran into her again. James. James would have been a good choice. “Hey. James?” she would ask, having seen him from across the bar, her hair messy in a 2 a.m. three-glasses-of-wine type of way. And Mark would correct her, telling her that his name was in fact Mark, but it was a pleasure to meet her. He could start all over again. He could be handsome or just charming, witty perhaps to a fault. Now he would have to bank on the fact that he was an entirely forgettable human being and this would be some distant memory for Jean by 4 p.m.
“Well, it was nice to meet you,” Jean said. “Have a great day!”
She was nice, too. A forgiving spirit incapable of outright maliciousness. Girls as beautiful as her were allowed such wretched behavior. But she didn’t even laugh at him. He knew he was being strange and she hadn’t accosted him with the, “Yeah, dude. What the fuck do you want?” He’d heard that enough times before. She waved with the hand she held her phone in, a picture of a white puppy waving in front of him behind her thin fingers. Mark was in love.
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