Page 37 of The Getaway List
“So when do you, like—talk to her?” I asked.
“Oh, you’ll see when she gets back,” said Tom, helping himself to another vaguely wildlife-shaped fruit. “She does parenthood like it’s an Olympic sport and tries to cram a month’s worth of it into a day. It’s actually pretty funny. And definitely means we’ll get taken to some kind of fancy lunch spot for steak.”
It didn’t sound funny at all, but we’d had such a fun day teaming up on a few of our nonoverlapping deliveries and planning how to go about our remaining Getaway List items that I didn’t want to poke too many holes in him and ruin it.
“I shouldn’t intrude on your guilt steak,” I said instead.
“I am humbly begging you to intrude,” said Tom. “That steak comes with a side of a hundred rapid-fire questions about what I’ve been ‘up to,’ and you’re the only one I know who has half a chance of keeping up.”
All this to say, my mom wasn’t exactly wrong in emphasizing just how “unsupervised” we’d be when we last spoke. Our lives feel a little bit like one of those dystopian novels where all the adults disappear and the kids are left to run the show. And apparently, left to our own devices, Tom and I will do any number of reckless things like binge-watch reruns, take turns grocery shopping from the list we put up on the fridge, and commiserate over the unideal states of our relationships with our moms.
Not to be outdone by the recklessness of “lunner,” during which we order a literal tower of tater tots, chicken wings, potato skins, and french fries, and put ourselves into a food coma before most of New York is freed from their nine-to-fives.
“I am more potato than man now,” Jesse declares, leaning back into the shiny blue booth we settled in earlier.
I take it upon myself to eat the last of the wings, since everyone else is out for the count. “That can be the band’s new schtick. The first-ever potato front man.”
“The first ever front man to fall asleep during their own show,” says Jesse, referring to the band’s gig tonight at a hotel rooftop lounge.
Mariella snaps in Jesse’s face. “You are disrespecting the institution of lunner. We did this so we could go adventuring while the rest of the city is eating dinner, and also to sustain our organs until dinnert.”
Luca blinks, then says, “Dinner dessert?” Which is encouraging if only because it means one of us still has a brain cell left. I’m pretty sure I dipped my last one in the ketchup twenty fries ago.
“Precisely,” says Mariella. “I’m giving you all five minutes to digest and then we’re up and at ’em.”
Jesse has to duck out to prep for the show, but Mariella leads me and Luca down and across a few blocks to Chelsea Market. The area is teeming with groups of friends and families and dates walking up and down the stairs to the narrow, raised walkway of the High Line above us, but Mariella sweeps past them all and says, “We’re going to Little Island.”
“We’re already on one, last I checked,” I say in mild alarm.
But Luca perks up instantly and says, “I haven’t been yet! I heard it’s— Whoa.”
We cross the street and there, just off the Hudson River, is an island built with narrow pillars that bloom upward to create an insulated little world with all these different levels of compact, winding paths, bright flowers, and play structures. It looks deceptively tiny but once we cross the pedestrian bridge to get in, it feels like there are too many paths to decide on just one. Luca and Mariella are similarly overwhelmed, Mariella with her camera lenses and Luca with his notebook, which he’s stopped dead in the middle of everything to start scrawling in.
“It’s been two seconds and you’re already spitting out a whole novel about this place?” Mariella teases, looking over his shoulder.
Luca beams and says, “I hope you get some good shots to send later. Otherwise I might just have to move here to keep soaking it in.”
“Well, my shots aren’t going to be half as good without your cute face in them. Stand there,” Mariella demands, pointing at a cluster of bright flowers.
Aforementioned cute face instantly reddens like a five-alarm fire. “Oh, I don’t want to—I mean, I’m not like—your shots will come out better without me in them, trust me.”
Mariella puts an arm around Luca’s shoulders and physically moves him over to the spot where she wants him to pose. “Aw, don’t tell me you’re camera shy, ace.”
“I’m most objects shy,” Luca bleats out.
Mariella stops him in place and puts a hand under his chin as if to pose him for an oil painting instead of a quick shot. Luca just watches her, transfixed, and lets her nudge him this way and that until she’s satisfied.
“We’ll work on that,” she tells him with a smirk, lifting the camera up to her face. It’s clear from the direction of the lens that there’s not much other than Luca in the shot.
Luca blinks like he’s forgotten not just the conversation that’s happening but quite possibly his own first name. “Work on what?”
Taking this adorable exchange as a promising sign in Mariella and Luca’s potential courtship, I wander off on my own, higher and higher up the little peak of the island until I can see the sweeping view of downtown Manhattan. It’s a balmy night, the early-evening shade starting to cool off the heat of the sun, with a strange golden kind of magic seeping in between. I can’t stare too long before I’m jostled by other people trying to get pictures, but there’s this moment when I’m not just staring at the city but it feels like it’s staring back at me. Like even stepping off it as far as this man-made island is far enough for me to understand the future ache of leaving it behind. Like I’m not just pushing myself into this place, but it’s got ahold of me, and it’s pulling me back.
Eventually we wander back up to the hotel rooftop where the Walking JED is performing. By then night’s starting to fall and a cool breeze has settled in. I’m uncharacteristically quiet as we stand at the edge of the roof with our sodas—partially because Luca and Mariella are swapping stories about growing up on the Upper West Side versus in the East Village that have all three of us in stitches, but also because it feels like the words are stunned out of me. Like I’m coming up on some kind of understanding about this place and the person I am in it. Or rather, the person I’m not. Like somehow being here has done nothing to clarify what I want to do or who I want to be, but has opened so many doors to possibilities that I feel like I can safely shut the ones that made me unhappy for good. Like New York isn’t a place where I have to make myself fit, but a place so constantly shifting that I’ll fit in anywhere, if I’m willing to leave the old possibilities behind.
It’s not just the city, though, but the people in it. It’s Mariella with her tongue sticking out in concentration as she tries to get good angles for shots of the band. It’s Luca with his legal pad stuffed to the brim with words poking out of his bag as he bops along to the music. It’s Jesse and Eddie and Dai sweat-soaked and grinning into each other’s faces, giving every inch of themselves to the crowd like they’re playing Madison Square Garden instead of a rooftop with a cluster of tourists who seem surprised but pleased to have stumbled on it.
It’s the way none of us really know what we’re doing yet, but the city is such a wide, forgiving canvas that it doesn’t matter. There’s magic here. Too much of it to walk away from so soon.
