Him: Good, then you can let them go early and come meet me for a drink
Him: Tell them you got hit over the head
Me: Or that I need to get head
Him: I’m good at that
Me: I bet you are
Me: Look, are you serious, or are we still in the giving me blue balls phase? Because if you’re serious, I’m free tonight
Him: Me too
Him: Let’s do this
He texts me the address of a bar in Chelsea, and we decide to meet at seven. Somehow, I make it through my lecture, which is one of those horrible last day of class situations where I have to tap-dance through every major development in U.S. history since the Cold War in about an hour and a half. At the end of a class session in which no one learns anything except perhaps that condensing any field of knowledge to a fifteen-week semester is a fruitless endeavor, I let them all go. Finally, I’m free to pace back and forth in my office for a few hours while I wait for the most promising hookupsituation that I’ve had in a long time.
I arrive at the bar about fifteen minutes early, so I have plenty of time to grab myself a Belgian-style tripel at the bar and find a booth with a seat that faces the door. It’s one of those industrial-type bars, with exposed pipes and Edison bulbs dangling over the tables and liquor prices that could qualify as a down payment for an apartment in most of the five boroughs. But I’m hoping that we’ll only be sticking around for one drink, and so I nurse mine, scrolling through my phone while keeping an eye on every patron who walks into the bar.
At five minutes to seven, my phone buzzes.
Him: Almost there
Him: I’m tall, blond, and wearing a pink shirt
Me: I’m not that tall, and I’m sitting right by the door so you can’t miss me. Navy blue shirt and glasses
My palms are sweaty as I pick at the corner of my beer mat, and I can’t tell whether time is standing still or speeding by, whether I’m holding my breath or gasping for air. All I know is the minutes pass, and then the door is opening and there he is, pale pink shirt over a white tank top that sets off his perfectly golden skin, blond hair falling to his shoulders, and when he sees mehe freezes, his blue eyes blazing, which is good because my thoughts are wordless screams —
Because it’s Cole.
It’s fucking Cole.
“Ezra, what the fuck?”
Four
Sandy
October 2012
“I THINKWE SHOULD GOup the hill and check on Sharon and her grandson —”
I nearly fell off my perch on the ladder, where I’d just finished nailing a sheet of plywood across the dining room window. “WHAT?! WHY?”
“We’re almost finished with our prep here!” Dad called up to me from his place on the lawn. “Sharon doesn’t have anyone to help except that boy — what was his name again?”
“Cole.” The name jostled against my senses just as perilously as the strong winds howlingup the hill from the water.
“Cole — that’s right,” Dad agreed, reaching out to steady the ladder as I climbed down. “I think it would be neighborly of us to make sure that she has everything she needs.”
“But we’re not done yet —” I protested. “We still have to bring some things upstairs, and I have to tie my bike to the porch —”
“And all of that will only take a few minutes.” Dad clapped his hand on my shoulder. “Come on, son — it would do you good to talk to someone other than me once in a while.”
And that’s how I found myself trailing up the hill behind Dad less than twenty minutes later, cursing myself for failing to come up with a better excuse to get out of it. Like a sudden onset of galloping pneumonia. Or corrugated stomach. Or ebola. I could fake bleeding from the eyes, couldn’t I?
It was midmorning on October 29, and we were all bracing ourselves for a hit from Hurricane (Extratropical Cyclone? Superstorm?) Sandy, a massive storm that was hulking just off the coast of New Jersey, waiting to smash us all into submission. Dad had been tracking the storm obsessively all week, watching the weather models as they had become worse and worse, but by now it was pretty clear that we were all royally fucked. Most of the low-lying areas of town had already been evacuated, and Route 36 had been tied up forhours yesterday as people left for points inland. Our house was far enough uphill that we were considered to be out of range of the storm surge.
