Tonight the Streets Are Ours

“How old are you?” she asked. “Seventeen?”


“Yes, actually. I got divorced when I was fourteen. So I’ve moved on now. Don’t worry; you will, too.”

It’s possible that I think I’m funnier than other people do.



June 23

I was working registers today (again). It’s so interminable. No matter how many customers I check out, no matter how quickly, eventually another customer will always come along. It’s impossible to feel like you’re making any actual progress because there is no finish line. If this is what actual full-time employment is like, I don’t ever want to get a job.

I said this to Julio, and he pointed out, “Dude, you don’t even need to have a summer job. Your family is richer than God. You have a maid come over, like, every day. If you’re that bored, just quit.”

But I want to be a writer. And the best way to become a writer is to surround yourself with words.

Today I checked out a man about my dad’s age. He was buying a copy of Corduroy. I said, “I remember this book! I loved this book when I was five. Let me guess: do you have a five-year-old son?”

The man looked at me with a combination of sadness and resignation and anger. “My son is fifteen,” he said. “He’s developmentally delayed. I don’t need a receipt.” And he walked away.

I should really stop expressing my opinions on customers’ purchases, maybe.



June 24

Something amazing happened today. Or maybe not. Maybe it’s nothing at all. It felt like something, though.

If you want something to be amazing, if you really want it, do you think you can somehow make it become that way? Like you somehow imbue it with amazingness, even if it doesn’t have anything special inherent to it?

Let me back up.

Today I was working registers. Again. It’s a beautiful day out, the sort of day we get here in NYC only a handful of times a year, when the skies are clear, and it’s hot but not muggy, and the air doesn’t even reek of garbage. If I were a tourist in NYC today, I’d think to myself, Yeah, I could live in that city. Anyway, because it was the most beautiful day of the year, the bookstore was vacant, which meant there didn’t need to be three of us hanging around behind the registers. So I offered to shelve some books to kill time.

That’s when I saw Her.

She was standing next to the poetry display table, thumbing through a copy of Sonnets from the Portuguese. She was the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen in person. She put that sunshiny day to shame.

It’s hard for me to pick out what the specific thing is that made her so breathtaking. It’s something about the way all the parts of her body fit together, not just any one in isolation. Her hair was long and silky and the shade of red where I couldn’t quite believe that it was natural, but I also couldn’t ask if it was dyed because I’m sure everyone asks her that. She was wearing a bright yellow sundress that made her look like a daffodil, with thin straps accenting her delicate shoulder blades, and a little bit of lace at her, you know, décolletage. (Shame on the English language for not having a word for décolletage. This is why the French are better than we are.)

I saw her and I wanted to … I don’t even know. I know that she inspired me to want to do something. I just don’t know exactly what that something is.

I walked over to her because I couldn’t stay away. She seemed engrossed in the book—I don’t think she noticed me. When I was next to her, I said, “How do I love thee? Let me count the ways. I love thee to the depth and breadth and height my soul can reach, when feeling out of sight for the ends of Being and ideal Grace.”

She looked up from the book, and her long eyelashes fluttered. I’d had no idea that eyelashes could be sexy.

“I’m sorry, what?” she said.