the habit of being

We had been to a show, a performance. There was a girl and then a boy on a stage being more than what they were. People sat on pillows at their feet, wanting to get some of what they had. I sat in a chair next to him, wanting the same.

He had brought along his wife and two of their friends. This was the first time his wife and I had seen each other since the affair. There was that one time I came over to their loft, but she had stayed in her room. We did not speak to one another, but sometimes she looked at me and sometimes I looked at her. I had forgotten how pretty she was. She was wearing red nail polish, which made me wonder why I never paint my own. Later he said the color didn’t work for her.

After the show was over the wife and the two friends vanished quickly. It was just him saying hi to all the people he knew and me taking pictures of all the people I didn’t. Mostly just their feet and the pillows they’d been sitting on. I shook hands with the girl who had been on the stage but she wasn’t anything more that what she was by then. I was still nervous, because what she was was a lot. When it comes to meeting people I don’t know, what I am shrinks to almost nothing.

Outside it was Chelsea and it was cold and it was raining and neither of us had any umbrella. It was my first day wearing a scarf and I wrapped the scarf around my head. He put something yellow and plastic on his, something that came out of his backpack and looked ridiculous but sortof went with his cat-hair-covered fleece.

A convenience store appeared and he wanted to get the least girly umbrella but got the most girly by mistake and gave it to me. I said he could get under the other side but it was a pretty small umbrella. We went to Union Square on the L. We went to Coffee Shop and he gave the man my name. At the table I ate Ceasar salad and we kept touching hands and he said my chi was different, it was more and it was cute. I did not like the idea that my chi was cute.

He said he had had an epiphany yesterday. A revelation about who he was. At first he couldn’t say but then he managed to explain and he was still explaining when we were out in Union Square again under the girly umbrella. After he had finished telling me the epiphany he said he felt like kissing me, and I said What are you, resisting? So he kissed me and we were kissing and people were walking by but it was okay because we were under the umbrella.

We had to go home and he got on the N with me even though it’s not his train and we kissed some more on the N until we got to Lex. He got off to transfer to his real train and I took out my book and read it.