Entering the City

The bus ride was surreal. I’d never been there, or to any city that big. You know how it is. First, there’s endless suburbs, the houses getting smaller and closer together, then they’re replaced with apartment buildings. After the suburbs, we went through an industrial wasteland, like right out of a dystopian sci-fi where the future is ruined by industry supporting upper-class greed. Then it’s roads, crisscrossed and twisted like a bowl of noodles dropped on the floor, full of strip malls and offices and too many cars and not enough parking.

            After the suburban nightmare, we cross the river, and then it’s just concrete and buildings, then bigger buildings, glass buildings, people piled up on top of one another, stacked like blocks so high it’s about to topple over. There’s just too many damned people in the city, all crammed together like ants. That’s what the city is, a human ant colony, except ants take care of each other. With humans, it’s all competition and war.

            It felt like I was riding the bus into a trap. Really, where are all these people going to go when the shit hits the fan? How will everyone get out of the city if disaster strikes, like a tornado, or an earthquake? What happens when the water supply shuts off, or the sewage system fails? What then? Where does everyone go? What if there was no longer enough food to go around? Or a massive riot, or an invasion? There’s just too many people all too close together, and there’s no getting around it. That’s what I think, or at least what I felt then. I’m more used to it now, I guess. But I hate the city for different reasons now.

            The bus was like a sick animal vomiting people out into street, only to take more in and do it again somewhere else, cursed with human bulimia. It was a relief at first, to have a bit of space around me, but then I had to get on a train, which was worse than the bus. It was crammed with so many people that I had to stand. I felt like a cow in one of those livestock trailers you see on the highway. The disoriented animals are all packed in and can’t move, just resigned to the fact that they’re going wherever the truck goes, even though it’s probably taking them all to the slaughterhouse.

            Sometimes I think that’s what the city is, a slaughterhouse, where people go and do as they’re told, working to make someone else’s fortune, not even sure what they’re doing, while they grind themselves, piece by piece, into meat for the rats. We’re all just rat food in the end, right? They’re all down there, beneath the city, waiting for us, and the people in the city don’t care. They act like they don’t see the rats, but the rats see them, and the rats are patient. The rats are always there.

            Breathe in, breathe out. Just let it go. I never liked crowds, man, and this sort of thing will drive you crazy if you let it. All those people standing and sitting right next to me, so close we could hear each other breathe. Some of them talking on their phones like they’re not surrounded by people who don’t necessarily want to hear their conversation, talking into headsets that you can’t even see, looking like crazy people talking to themselves, unaware how they look. Maybe they just don’t care. Maybe living in the city makes you like that, numb to other people and their irrelevant opinions.

            Not only did I have to listen to them talk, I had to breathe their air. There’s no way to avoid it; if you put a bunch of people in a confined space, they all have to breathe each other’s air, like some big orgy. His exhale becomes my inhale; my exhale becomes her inhale. It’s gross, and none of them even noticed it. I wanted to scream and hold my breath at the same time. I stood there with my shoulders pulled in, trying not to touch anyone, but they all just bumped into each other, and me, people touching me. I hated it. Nobody touches each other where I come from, unless you know each other, or else there’s going to be a fight, and I wanted to punch someone, a lot of people, actually, but I didn’t. I just held it all in. I really felt like that was progress. My life was changing for the better, and it was all worth the effort.

            Anyway, the train station, where we all got off, was full of people too, of course. Looking back on it, I don’t know why that surprised me. It’s the city, you know? Everything’s full of people. Another thing I didn’t expect was that the station was underground. I didn’t like it one bit. The air isn’t clean down there. It’s all train fumes, the faint smell of sewer gas, and people’s breath. I don’t mind the fumes so much, but other people’s breath, and any suggestion of sewer gas, makes me want to run. We don’t have to smell that where I come from. The air is clean where I come from, and the people don’t have to stand like pigs in a pen on a train.

            Finally, I found the escalator that led out. I’d have rather walked up stairs, but it wasn’t an option, so I got on. Naturally, I left a step between me and the person in front of me, not like everyone else, who were taking every step, sometimes even two to a step. I wanted some space. But it didn’t last. A guy behind me stepped right around me and took the step in front of me, and then everyone else crowded up behind me. I wanted to choke that guy. I was packed in again, and the escalator was so long, I could hardly believe how deep underground we were.

            I was hoping for fresh air at the top, but you know what I got: the smell of exhaust, trash, and piss. What is it with this city and the smell of piss on the sidewalk? Do people just hose wherever they happen to be? People don’t do that where I come from.

            Be flexible, I told myself, observe, make like a chameleon. I watched the people around me. They looked straight ahead, not all around like an overwhelmed tourist. They walked fast, didn’t smile, didn’t make eye contact. I became like them, and after a couple blocks, the smell of piss and exhaust was replaced with burritos and tacos.

            My stomach started talking, but I had to see Azalea, so I walked right by the Mexican restaurants, the delis I heard so much about, and even the street vendors. I wanted to see my girl. All the excitement had built up inside me for weeks, talking to her on the phone, texting with her, exchanging pictures, and now it was about to happen.

            It was a long walk through the city, an alien landscape and hive of people like nothing I’d ever seen. We were supposed to meet at a café near her building. It was in a little brick shopping center that overlooked a canal. Her building was on the other side, connected by a walkway across the canal. The water was brown, and the trees along the banks scraggly and unhealthy. Young people from the university walked by carrying backpacks and notebooks, every one of them in a hurry. Glass tables under blue umbrellas sat next to a stone wall above the banks of the canal below. Every table was full except one, where she sat alone.

            I can see it all now. It was the best day of my life.

There she is, sitting at a table by herself with the sun shining down on her like God wants to light her up so I can find her, like an angel descended to the city, not of this world, too pure for mankind. She’s looking straight ahead, oblivious to my approach. I’ll never forget that moment. She’s waiting for me, not for any of the other million or so men in the city. This angel is waiting for me, and in this moment, I know that someone above is looking out for me. She’s a connection, an ambassador from someplace better, a bridge to paradise.

            She’s wearing a black skirt and a white long-sleeve blouse. Her hair is perfect. Long curls drape over her shoulders, down her back, like she stepped right out of a salon. Her hair is almost alive, like an aura. I walk beside her. Her beauty is infective, just like in college. It gets inside me, moves me, commands me, and I want her so bad and the little machine in my head comes alive and my chest tightens, expands, and I float a few feet above myself and I can see us from above, and it’s beautiful, man, it’s just beautiful.

            “Azalea?” I say. She doesn’t respond, but keeps staring ahead. I’m a bit confused. I’m sure it’s her, and this is where she agreed to meet me.

            “Azalea?”

            She looks at me, squints, cocks her head. I smile.

            “It’s me, Chris. I’m here.”

            Slowly, she smiles, as if coming out of a daydream, stands up. “Chris. Is it really you?”

            “It’s really me babe. We’re finally together, after all these years.”

            I step closer. She reaches out her little hand and touches my face, smiles, and looks directly into my eyes. I can still see that moment, those green eyes with little streaks of brown, piercing, like she’s looking into my head, probing my mind.

            “You’re real,” she says.

            It’s so damn romantic, like it’s too good to be true. I feel immortal, like pure light, transcendent, weightless.

            “I’m as real as it gets, Azzy.” I put my hand on her cheek, then my other hand behind her head, in that soft hair. I move in, we embrace, kiss, and I’m floating again.

            It’s not just any kiss, man, this is the kiss. You know what I mean? It’s the kiss that lets you know it’s all happening just the way you hoped and dreamed. All that emotion I’d been holding onto since college, like I didn’t even know it was there, or I did, but I didn’t realize how much was there or how powerful it was, and it all comes out at once and hits me like an injection of pure euphoria, like a fix.

            Nothing exists but me and her and the aura that surrounds us, like we are ground zero and the rest of the world went up in the mushroom cloud. All the pain and misery from my divorce vanishes in that moment. Gone, man, just gone. All the bad stuff is gone and in the past, my old life is gone, and the future is going to be all roses and ice cream, man, candy time, and it was all in that kiss.

            When we finally have our fill and put a little space between our faces, people are looking at us. People don’t look at you in the city unless it’s something special, you know what I mean? And they all know it too. Man, it was that good. It was that good. I’m not kidding.

            We sit down and start talking. We’ve got so much to say, so much to tell each other. It’s just pouring out of us both, like two waterfalls of word and emotion, combining, swirling, and flowing away, together, like a river. It doesn’t matter what we say; we’re falling in love again, hard, both of us, right there. No, it’s deeper than that, it’s like we’ve always been in love, since before we knew each other, and we finally found one another. It’s like we’re two pieces of a machine, finally coming together to make something beautiful, more beautiful than we could ever imagine before.

            “Chris, it’s really you,” she says. “You’re like a mythical being that I imagine and talk to from far away, suddenly here and real.” She makes me feel so good, like seeing me is the best thing in the world, like I’m something she’s always wanted to find. I need to feel this. I’ve been hungry for it, so hungry, but I didn’t know it, like I’d been living on bread and water all my life and then someone puts a steak dinner in front of me, and I don’t really know what it is but I know I need it, and I devour it without pause.

            “It’s really me, Azalea, me and you, together again, finally righting a wrong that happened to us in college. I never stopped loving you.”           

            “Nor I you, darling.”

            A beam of light, pure energy, runs through me, and I know it is her love. It’s that powerful. And I now know that she loves me just as much as I love her. There’s no more question. Up until this moment, I had worried that maybe it was lopsided. You can’t make a lopsided relationship work. One person can’t be psychotically in love and the other one just luke warm. That doesn’t cut it. But when both partners are crazy for each other, that’s when new worlds are built, and it’s happening right there at the café with the blue umbrellas and the muddy canal. I now know there is no going back. I have to have this woman, and I have to have her forever.

“How do you like the city so far?” she says, and I come out of my trance. We’re sitting there having this intimate conversation and now I realize there’s people all around us. Suddenly I can hear all their voices, and it occurs to me that any of them could be listening in on us.

            Well, the city itself is a big cesspool of madness, as far as I’m concerned, but I don’t tell her that. She lives here, and I want to be with her, so I don’t care where we are, really. I stay positive.

            “It’s nicer than I expected, but it was strange coming in. It’s such a big sprawling city. I felt trapped at first, but here, I like this place.” I look around at our surroundings. “I like the water, and the trees, and the brick buildings and the copper roofs, this café,” and then I look her in the eye, “and being with you.”

            “There’s a river too, just on the other side of my building. Boats go up and down the river all day. We can see it from my apartment, and from up so high, it’s like a continuous parade of toy boats going back and forth.”

            “I bet that’s nice.” Hearing about her apartment brings up images of domesticity, of us making breakfast together, sipping coffee in the morning, wearing bathrobes, looking out at the river, her helping me pick out clothes for date nights. Sleeping together. I feel drawn to it, to her apartment. I want to go there and unpack my bag and sit down and make myself comfortable.

            “You look so divine, darling, so strong and healthy, like a superhero. All these other men in the city are so skinny and pathetic, compared to you.”

            “And you, my angel, look like a dream, even better than I expected, and my expectations were high.”

            “I’m not the same girl I used to be.”

            “I should think not. You’ve grown into a beautiful woman.”

            “And you, you ride in like Gascon D’Artagnan, coming to rescue me from all these inferior males that surround me.”

            “Well, I don’t know who this Gascon is, but I’m here, babe, for you, for us, and if you need rescued, I’m the man for the job. Show me these men, and I’ll crush them.”

            “My champion, come from afar.”

            “My abducted lover.”

            She takes my hands in hers, puts them on her shoulders, wraps hers around me, touches my face. “Take me with you,” she says, but I don’t know where to take her. It’s her city.

            “Why don’t you show me your place?”

            “Come with me,” she says. We get up and walk across the footbridge over the canal.

            “Look darling, it’s just like Venice. Can you see the gondolas?”

            She stops and looks at me when I don’t respond. I take her face in my hands and kiss her. We kiss so long that we hold up traffic and someone has to say “Excuse me,” to pass by. He passes so close that I hold my breath. She looks out at the water again and says, “It’s so romantic, isn’t it?”

            “It is, babe,” I say, but it’s really just an ugly canal with brown water and brick walls. She’s romantic and beautiful, the canal is not.

The city is loud, but when we step into her building, the noise vanishes. I know it’s full of people, the building, but I can’t hear a thing. I always thought apartment buildings were full of screaming kids and loud music, like a college dorm, or prison, but this is the opposite. I can hear our footsteps as we walk down the hall to the elevator. It’s clean too, like someone must have just vacuumed the floors and polished the door handles. I can see my reflection in the steel handles in the elevator, the round steel rail at about hip level that you can hold onto if you’re scared, or if you’re old. It’s all distorted because the rail is curved, of course, my face all stretched out and bent, but I can see it plain as day.

            Her place is a tiny little city apartment. We’ve got a corner, so we can see the river out one window, and an endless cityscape of buildings out the other. The building across the street looks like apartments with balconies that face us. It’s built atop a parking garage, and the top floor of the garage is almost level with us. Behind the garage and the building above it is the whole damn city. It just stretches on forever, like a building looking at itself in the mirror when there’s another mirror behind it, an endless repeat of buildings.

            This is a new world for me, but I am a chameleon. I can adapt, and, like I said, I am deep, deep in love at this point. She could’ve told me we had to live in a cheap little apartment next to the train, you know, like in the Blues Brothers, where the train goes by so often that you don’t even notice it after a while. She could’ve told me we had to live there, and I would’ve been like, sure babe, sure.

            Her apartment – I can tell it’s my new home when I walk in, no question about it, even though it’s nothing like anywhere I ever lived before. Unlike my old place, hers is clean and organized. Everything is vertical, or horizontal, parallel, or perpendicular to each other. Nothing is askew. There are no knickknacks, no pictures on the wall, clothes on the floor, empty bottles on the bar, or dishes in the sink.

            Her coffee table is an exercise in geometry. There’s a single pen parallel to the edge of the table, and equidistant from the nearest book. The three other books make a perfect square. Three notebooks are stacked on top of each other and bisect the middle of the book square. Below it is a yellow sticky pad, centered with the notebooks. Sticky notes cover most of the remainder of the table, and all are in orderly rows and columns. I stare at it and wonder, but there’s no way it’s a coincidence. A powerful mind is at work here.

            It’s quiet too.

            She’s got a small kitchen with a bar opposite the sink, which faces the living-room. It’s all one room, really, but the bar makes it feel like two.

            “No TV?” I say.

            She just shakes her head.

            “Is there one in the bedroom?”

            “Bedroom?” she says, and laughs.

            I open the only door in the living room, and behind it is a small bathroom with a stand-up shower.

            “Is there a bedroom?”

            “No, dear, it’s an efficiency.”

            “Efficiency?” This is new to me. Apartments where I come from have more than one room.

            “Yes, you know, a one-room apartment?”

            “I’ve never heard of such a thing. So there’s no TV and no bedroom?”

            “Clearly.”

            “Where do you sleep?”

            “Right here. The couches fold down into beds. I’ve got two, but they can be pushed together. It’s quite nice, really.”

            I’m a bit shocked, since I had already been fantasizing about staying here with her, permanently. I’m going to have to adapt, but like I said, I’m all in, and anywhere she is feels like home to me.

            “Give me a moment while I freshen up,” she says.

            Azalea steps into the bathroom, so I snoop around just a bit.

            One of the books on the table is a sketchbook. Another is some sort of textbook about economics. Each book and notebook has about fifty or a hundred colored tabs sticking out. I try to read the sticky notes on the table, but her handwriting is too small, and cursive. I can’t read it at all.

            I sit down on the couch and look out the window, at the buildings, all standing so still in such a busy city. Everything is quiet inside the apartment. It’s clean and it smells nice, and it feels stable, like home, and I haven’t felt that in a long time.

Looking back on it, I was blind, you know? No. Blind doesn’t do it justice. I was out of touch with reality. Nothing existed besides the love I felt for her. It dominated my head, my body, so much that the outside world was just a setting for it, like the theater when you’re watching a movie. The theater is real, but you forget it even exists while you’re watching the film. Just like that, all I saw was Azalea and me living together at last. Nothing else mattered.