As You Wait For Him

Back in March--maybe April, I can't remember now--Coach held a contest as part of their Poppy campaign to write the ending to a story about a Saturday in New York City. It was written by Irina Reyn, who I took my first writing class with at the University of Pittsburgh. I have no idea if she read the submissions, but I decided to write an ending, mostly for kicks, but also because there was a little self-centered, irrational voice that kept telling me Irina would read it and remember me and my story about gay, high school cross-country runners, persuade whomever chose the winners to pick me, pick me, and then I'd be famous and rich and world-renowned, etc. Oh well. I didn't win. But I liked my entry, nonetheless.

(Irina's story: A woman walks through New York on a Saturday morning, shopping, eating, drinking. In the evening, she ends up at a cafe eating olives and red wine and gets a call/message from a man. She waits for him.)

As you wait for him—no, you are not waiting for him. You haven’t waited for him since the end of September. Still, your fingers remember how to pick at the pale grey polish on your nails and you feel the minutes passing, silent and slow.

You choose a fat, purple olive. Its flesh is sour and salty and you savor it. You roll the pit with your tongue, you dare it to break the skin of the roof of your mouth.

As a trumpet hovers again above the hum of early evening, the door of the bar opens with a whine and silences it. You wonder if it's him and you smell the sugar and the pine of his skin, the sweat and the warm air he used to carry after biking across town.

You look, it is not him. You leave the bar and begin to walk. A drummer busks a block ahead and when you fall into rhythm with him, your heels hit the concrete with the control of a metronome. You let New York carry you.

I read this again, and it's not perfect, I want to change it, but I am so excited about New York.