Tonight the Streets Are Ours

June 26

I’m sorry to keep harping on this when I know there are major events of real significance going on in the world, but—do you think Bianca might be my soul mate?

I know this is a ridiculous question. Contrary to what my father believes, I do listen to myself talk. I know ridiculous when I hear it. I know that Bianca is just a beautiful girl with great hair buying one of my favorite books on a sunny day. None of that makes someone your soul mate. If that’s all it took, then Bianca would be everybody’s soul mate. On that day she was wearing the sundress with the lace accenting her chest, maybe twenty people alone fell for her. They can’t all be her soul mates.

But it makes me feel better to imagine that she might be mine. Because if we were soul mates—if this was somehow ordained on a higher plane—then I wouldn’t have to worry about what the future might hold, because I’d know we were right on course.

I am worried, though. What if she never calls? What if the only time I see her is on Leo’s arm—what if she’s never mine? Why couldn’t I have met her first?

The problem is that there are a million different New Yorks, all layered on top of one another yet never intersecting. The girl of your dreams may live down the block without your ever seeing her, until it’s too late. Circumstance plays no role, and Fate turns a blind eye.

“Babe!”

Arden looked up again. Chris sounded frustrated.

“I like that one,” she said, gesturing at the newsboy cap on his head.

“I know. You already said that. What is going on with you today?”

“What do you mean?” she said. “Nothing.”

“You’re being super spacey. You’re not paying any attention to me.”

“Of course I am,” she snapped. “You’re trying on hats, Chris. There’s only so much I can contribute to that process. It’s not like you’re paying so much attention to me, either, by the way.”

Why doesn’t anybody love me as much as I love them?

“Well, that’s because you’re not doing anything,” Chris countered. “You’re just sitting there staring at your phone. On that gross old armchair. Which is probably infested with bugs, by the way.”

“It’s vintage,” said the sales clerk, who happened to be walking by.

Bianca didn’t do anything, either, Arden thought. Bianca just walked in the door, and that alone was enough for Peter to pay attention to her.

“I’m sorry,” Arden said to Chris. “I’m tired, that’s all. I didn’t get to bed until almost three last night.”

Chris shook his head and returned to his piles of hats, and Arden returned to her phone. He said, “You’re so crazy sometimes, babe.”



June 28

A lot of the time I don’t understand what I’m doing here. In life, I mean. I’m not saying that I wish I were dead or anything. Most of the time, I’m glad for the opportunity to be alive. I’m just not sure what I’m supposed to be doing with it. I think my purpose is to be a writer: to craft beautiful sentences that change the way people view the world, to create something meaningful outside of myself. That’s what I think a lot of the time. But then sometimes I wonder if I just made that up in order to make myself feel like I have a reason for taking up space.

Anyway, all of that is just a depressing, navel-gazing introduction to what I wanted to say here, which is that today, I had a rare day where I understood without any doubt why I’m alive.