“Wren.”
I startle back to the moment, to Jax. “Earth to Wren. Where did you go?”
Home, I think. I went home.
“My point is,” Jax goes on. “Just take it slow. See him again if you want. But date a few other people. Have some fun, you know. Things don’t always have to be—so heavy, so serious.”
She’s talking about my work, our work, but more than that. She’s talking about me.
I watch the blackbird peck at his seed. He cocks his head at me, then flaps away into the gunmetal-gray sky.
three
I wait near the corner of Seventy-Ninth and Broadway, leaning against a light post, people watching. It’s rush hour, the sky a bruised blue and the winter air biting.
A flustered young woman clutching a big tote and wearing a bright red coat races past, leaving a waft of perfume. “Are you out of your fucking mind?” she shouts into her cell phone, face pulled taut with anger. Then a svelte man with salt-and-pepper hair, dressed in a slim black suit seems to glide past, lost in whatever he’s listening to in his AirPods. The placid expression on his face tells me he’s on another wavelength, lifted out.
A river of traffic moves slowly in each direction, horns bleating pointlessly, intermittently, manhole covers rattling, busses hissing to a stop. A taxi driver shouts angrily out his window in a language I don’t understand.
As I stand on the busy city sidewalk, maybe a hundred people—more—every color, nationality, gender variation—a beautiful, chaotic mosaic of the world we live in sweep past me. I let the energy wash over me, listen to three different languages being spoken. Shabby or stylish, rich or poor, conservative or wild, a mingle of everything a person can be. That’s what I love the most about this city, it’s acceptance of all the layers of humanity.
And that’s just the surface—what’s underneath is impossibly deep, rich, complicated. I can almost hear all their voices—their worries and fears, hopes and dreams, the problems that keep them up at night. That’s what I do. I help people solve their problems. My superpower is listening.
I glance at my watch. I’m early as usual. And I’m starving—as usual.
According to my favorite food blogger, the best pizza in New York is in New Jersey, at a place called Razza. Of course, the snobbish New Yorker in me is sure that this cannot be true. Is there anything better outside New York? Still, since we’ve basically been on a food tour of the New York area since we met three months ago, we consider ourselves obligated to find out. Hard duty ahead of us tonight, to head out of the city limits. But we’ll bear up.
I guess we’re a “we”？ What do you think, Adam?
Since our Torch date, there hasn’t been a day that we haven’t seen each other. A meal, a coffee, a midday assignation at the art cinema, a stroll through a Soho gallery, a walk along the High Line, wherever. Each outing is usually just a preamble to long nights （or short, stolen afternoons） of lovemaking—sometimes gentle, sometimes desperate, always leaving me moved, spent, shaken.
Things have happened fast. Too fast, according to Jax. Robin doesn’t like it much either. She has always been a worrywart.
Wren, what do you really know about this guy? He’s, like, taking over your life.
I’m getting to know him. That’s what a relationship is.
Robin is just jealous. Ever since we were little, she hasn’t liked competition for my attention.
What Jax wanted—for me to be lighter, have more fun, get out more often—she was right. The truth is: I’m happy. Does it sound weird if I say I’m happy, maybe for the first time?
Another few minutes pass, I gaze up and down the street looking for your towering frame in the crowd. I’m embarrassed to say that I don’t remember the company name. Black Vault? Locked Box? Something like that, evoking security. You told me. You said it was a black awning, gave me the street address. But I quickly forgot it since we agreed to meet on the corner. Should I poke my head into one of these nondescript office building lobbies? I’m sure I’d know the name if I saw it on a directory.
No, better to wait on the street. Keep a little distance.
Though we have seen each other almost every day since our Torch meeting, we are taking it slow. I don’t know much about your work, just the broadest strokes; much of it is confidential because of its nature and the kind of clients who need private cybersecurity.
We have not met each other’s friends.
Jax is full-scale nagging, but I’m not ready. As for my work, well, all you really know is the boilerplate, that I am a writer and that I have an advice column, written under a pseudonym, that has done surprisingly well.