Tonight the Streets Are Ours

Miranda texted me in the morning and asked what I was doing, and I said I had work at the store until two and then I was going to go to a coffee shop to write. Miranda told me to blow off work and screw writing and meet her in Prospect Park for a day of sunbathing and gossip. I said I am a professional bookseller, and professionals do not just “blow off work,” and also my skin doesn’t tan, but I would meet her after work anyway as long as she brought wine juice boxes. She said done. Miranda’s father is a liquor distributor.

(I wonder if you can get in legal trouble for referring to your own underage drinking on the Internet? Let’s assume not.)

I found Miranda in the park a bit before three. She was lying on a picnic blanket in nothing but a bikini and sunglasses.

“You’re already pretty tan,” I told her.

“It’s an art,” she replied.

This is a line from some marketing video that our school issued last year. The video showed kids painting and playing cello, and there was even a shot of Miranda pirouetting, and then various voice-overs said, “It’s an art!” I don’t know if this video resulted in more applications to the school or not.

“Still pining after that unavailable chick?” Miranda asked, rolling over to give me room on the picnic blanket.

“It’s an art,” I answered.

“That’s true, actually,” she said.

We hung out for a while and I drank wine through a little straw and Miranda described her summer dance program, which sounded exhausting and made me glad that my art isn’t the sort of thing you have to go to summer camp for.

Then my phone rang.

It was a New York City number, and I didn’t recognize it.

“It’s her!” Miranda shrieked. “It’s her, it’s her!”

“Or maybe not,” I said.

It was her.

“Hi,” I said. “What are you doing right now?”

“Calling you,” Bianca said. “Why?”

“Come meet me in Prospect Park.”

I heard her breathy laugh through the phone. “Now?”

“Yes.”

“It’ll take me, like, an hour to get there.”

“I’ll wait.”

Then I had to get rid of Miranda, which she pouted about, but I didn’t need to be getting to know Bianca in front of a friend of mine who was dressed like a model out of Sports Illustrated’s swimsuit edition.

About twenty minutes after Miranda had taken off, Bianca showed up—alone, fortunately. I had wondered a little, what would I do if she showed up with Leo? But deep down, I’d known she would come alone. I’d known she wouldn’t tell him what we were doing. Not that we were doing anything, but …

We sat in the park and talked for hours. I don’t know how, but we just kept finding things to talk about. Either we’d agree on things, which felt amazing, like she somehow got me, or we’d disagree on something, which felt equally amazing, like she was opening my eyes to a way of looking at the world that had never occurred to me before.

Here are some things I learned about Bianca today:

1) Her mother is from England, so she’s spent most vacations in Bath, and she can fake a flawless British accent.

2) She’s lived in New York her entire life, but as far as she’s aware, she’s never seen a movie star.

3) She daydreams a lot, so she admits that it’s possible she’s seen lots of movie stars and just didn’t notice them because she wasn’t looking.

4) She’s trying to read her way through the Modern Library’s list of the 100 best novels ever written. (Then we pulled up the list on my phone and she told me which ones she’s read so far and I told her which ones I’ve read so far, and she’s actually three ahead of me, but I’d never seen the list before today, so I’m sure I can get caught up.)

5) Her favorite place in the city is Times Square. (She’s the first New Yorker I’ve ever met who actually likes Times Square. As far as I’m concerned, Times Square is tourist-land, and let them have it. But Bianca swears that she loves it there. “Do you even go to watch the ball drop on New Year’s?” I teased her, and she answered—totally honestly—“I used to go every year! Now I just watch the whole thing on TV. It’s my weird little obsession.”)

6) She hates romantic comedies. (“Because you hate romance, or because you hate comedy?” I asked her. “Neither,” she said.)