The Geography of You and Me

“It’s how I impress all the girls I meet in the elevator.”


“Well, it’s working,” she said, amused. Watching him over the past weeks, studying him from afar, she’d imagined he must be shy and unapproachable. But sitting here now, the two of them grinning at each other through the dark, she realized she might have been wrong. He was funny and a little bit odd, which at the moment didn’t seem like the worst kind of person to be stuck with.

“Although,” she added, “I’d be a lot more impressed if you could get us out of here.”

“I would, too,” he said, shifting his gaze to scan the ceiling. “You’d think the least they could do would be to pipe in some music.”

“If they’re planning to pipe in anything, hopefully it’s some cool air.”

“Yeah, this whole city’s like a furnace,” he said. “It doesn’t feel like September.”

“I know. Hard to believe school starts tomorrow.”

“Yeah, for me, too,” he said. “Assuming we ever get out of here.”

“Where do you go?”

“Probably not the same place as you.”

“Well, I hope not,” she said with a grin. “Mine’s all girls.”

“Then definitely not the same one,” he said. “But I’d already figured that out anyway.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well,” he said, waving a hand around. “You live here.”

Lucy raised her eyebrows. “In the elevator?”

“In this building,” he said, making a face.

“So do you.”

“I think it would be more accurate to say I live under this building,” he joked. “But I’m betting you go to some fancy private school where everyone wears uniforms and worries about the difference between an A and an A-minus.”

She swallowed hard, unsure what to say to this, since it was true.

Taking her silence as an admission, he tilted his head as if to say I told you so, then gave a little shrug. “I’m going to the one up on One Hundred and Twelfth that looks like a bunker, where everyone goes through metal detectors and worries about the difference between a C and a C-minus.”

“I’m sure it won’t be that bad,” she said, and his jaw went tight. Even through the darkness, something about his expression made him seem much older than he’d looked just moments before, bitter and cynical.

“The school or the city?”

“Doesn’t sound like you’re too thrilled about either.”

He glanced down at his hands, which were resting in a knot on top of his knees. “It’s just… this wasn’t really the plan,” he said. “But my dad got offered this job, and now here we are.”

“It’s not so bad,” she told him. “Really. You’ll find things to like about it.”

He shook his head. “It’s too crowded. You can’t ever breathe here.”

“I think you’re confusing the city with this elevator.”

The corner of his mouth twitched, but then he frowned again. “There are no open spaces.”

“There’s a whole park just a block away.”

“You can’t see the stars.”

“There’s always the planetarium,” Lucy said, and in spite of himself, he laughed.

“Are you always so relentlessly optimistic, or just when it comes to New York?”

“I’ve lived here my whole life,” she said with a shrug. “It’s my home.”

“Not mine.”

“Doesn’t mean you have to play the sullen new guy card.”

“It’s not a card,” he said. “I am the sullen new guy.”

“Just give it a chance, Bartleby.”

“Owen,” he said, looking indignant, and she laughed.

“I know,” she told him. “But you’re sounding just like Bartleby from the story.” She waited to see if he knew it, then pushed on. “Herman Melville? Author of Moby-Dick?”

“I know that,” he said. “Who’s Bartleby?”

“A scrivener,” she explained. “Sort of a clerk. But throughout the whole story, anytime someone asks him to do something, all he says is ‘I would prefer not to.’ ”

He considered this a moment. “Yup,” he said finally. “That pretty much sums up my feelings about New York.”

Lucy nodded. “You would prefer not to,” she said. “But that’s just because it’s new. Once you get to know it more, I have a feeling you’ll like it here.”

“Is this the part where you insist on taking me on a tour of the city, and we laugh and point at all the famous sights, and then I buy an I?NY T-shirt and live happily ever after?”

“The T-shirt is optional,” she told him.

For a long moment, they eyed each other across the cramped space, and then, finally, he shook his head. “Sorry,” he said. “I know I’m being a jerk.”

Lucy shrugged. “It’s okay. We can just chalk it up to claustrophobia. Or lack of oxygen.”