You step into the crosswalk, a bounce in your stride, confident like someone accustomed to moving through a crowd without making eye contact with the numerous pairs of eyes on her. Your lips are moving. I don’t see a phone, but when the wind carries your hair, I see an AirPod tucked in your ear.
My usual move when I want to avoid someone—the phone. Plant it against your ear, duck your head like reception is bad and you’re trying to hear. I’ve avoided hundreds of conversations that way in the hallways of my law school.
But I don’t reach for my phone.
I should move, not just stand there in the middle of the crosswalk like a small inlet amid a sea of pedestrians passing me on both sides. I should walk toward you as confidently as you walk toward me, but I can’t. I’m on system shutdown. My feet not moving. My pulse pounding between my ears. My insides stripped raw.
I think I catch a whiff of your perfume as you pass me. You changed it.
You don’t notice me. Probably the swarm of people conceals me, or you’re concentrating on your phone conversation. Or maybe you wouldn’t have noticed me even if you saw me. I’m a distant memory to you. Am I?
I turn and follow you.
“Um, no thanks. It’s called having some dignity?” you say as a question that isn’t really a question. Then you laugh.
The laugh hasn’t changed. It’s you.
You’re wearing a pink dress that compliments your figure. You’re carrying two shopping bags. You have money. That’s no surprise. You have a big rock on your finger. That’s no surprise, either. You never had trouble drawing the attention of wealthy men.
Tap you on the shoulder, Hey, stranger, remember me?
Grab you by the arm, HEY, LAUREN, REMEMBER ME?
I’m too close, so I drop back.
People look at you. Of course, they do. Men and women. You’re a work of art. You must know that. You don’t break stride.
My legs like foam. Bile in the back of my mouth.
You cross Chicago Avenue and turn into a building.
If I walk into that building, into what I assume is the lobby of a condo building, I can’t be anonymous. People don’t casually walk into lobbies of private residential buildings.
But I don’t care. I push through the revolving door about five seconds after you do, just enough time so you won’t see me. I walk into comforting air-conditioning, a sleek, polished, ornate lobby of a fancy downtown condo building.
“Mrs. Betancourt!” says the man standing behind the desk. “Are you here for the weekend?”
“Just dropping some things off, Charlie,” you say. “How are the kids?”
Betancourt. Betancourt.
You got married, Lauren.
I head back outside into the searing heat, people crossing my path from both sides, jostling me, my foot dropping down off the sidewalk into the street, a car horn blaring at me—
I step back, narrowly missing the taxi heading southbound on Michigan Avenue.
I put my hand on a parked car for balance, the engine hot.
“Dude, what the fuck?” Another cabbie, idling at the curb, sticks his head out the window.
I raise my hand in apology, stumble back to the sidewalk, not sure which way to turn.
I shake my head and whisper, “Betancourt. Betancourt.”
Betancourt Betancourt Betancourt Betancourt.
? ? ?
Dozens of people with that last name in the greater Chicago area. But only one named Lauren. And it’s you. Your Facebook profile, in a tight white dress with an oversize fancy hat, like from the Kentucky Derby, raising a glass of sparkly and pursing your lips. Were you really that happy when you took that picture, Lauren? Or were you thinking all along, this would be an awesome profile pic for Facebook? Was it fake like it’s fake when people tell stories about something they did and make it sound a lot more fun than it really was? Do you worry more about how others see you than how you see yourself?
Thousands of friends, thousands of “likes” on your hundreds of photos, those tiny windows into your life over the last decade. The top of the Eiffel Tower, a safari in South Africa, drinks in Times Square, the polar ice plunge in Lake Michigan, a triathlon, some race that you did in mud, always surrounded by friends and handsome men, sun-drenched and happy, glamorous and sexy, fun and energetic and free-spirited.
You’re married to someone named Conrad Betancourt. But no kids.
And you don’t live in Chicago per se. You live in Grace Village, just west of the city. In the next town over from where I live, Grace Park.
You’ve come home, Lauren.
? ? ?
Deep breath. Calm, Simon. Use language games. Something. Deep breath.