New York

I’m in the JFK Airport continuously putting the same four quarters into the payphone and ejecting them as soon as her voicemail comes on. It’s been two-and-a-half hours, and I’m confused, for Melissa isn’t the avoiding type and we wrote about this visit weeks ahead of time. The phone is no longer ringing: it’s off or she’s on the Subway. I don’t want to miss her, unless it’s off. At 10:30 I’ll find a hostel.

At 10:26 she picks up. “Hi, it’s Adam,” I say, “I’m coming to visit you, remember?” “Yeah,” she says in a tone that is surprised, but always warm; “I thought you were coming on the third or the fourth.” “No, it’s today,” I insisted, before ascertaining the details of how to travel the two hours on the Subway to her house in Manhattan where I check my e-mail and…

Ratfarts.


The story changes: after a long day of traveling, good friend Melissa Gail Pancoast kindly invites me into her home, despite the fact that it is past midnight on a work day, and substantiates the peanut butter I’ve eaten on the Subway with Indian food and good wine. Kate Libby is there, another friend from college, basking in the warmth of her friend’s home after a successful grad school interview; she’s leaving tomorrow (April 2nd), right before Melissa is expecting a friend whose e-mail read: “Would you like a visitor April 3-4?”

Yeah, after 24 hours awake in the company of so kind people, I put on my Guatemala pants that I use for pajamas and turn around several times, tamping down my part of the Big Apple, before I curl upon the couch, letting my hound ears down, descending heartily into the ensconcing darkness.