Before We Were Strangers (2 page)

“I’m trying to keep you happy and productive, Matt.”

I swiped my Metro card. “Give me a raise. That will keep me happy and productive.”

The station was crowded. A train was pulling up, but we were stuck behind a huge group of people who were pushing toward the front like they had somewhere important to be. Scott was content to hang back and stare at a woman who had her back toward us. She stood near the edge of the platform, rocking from heel to toe, balancing on the thick yellow line. There was something striking about her.

Scott elbowed me and then waggled his eyebrows and mouthed “nice ass.” I wanted to punch him in the neck.

The more I looked at the woman, the more I felt drawn to her. She had one thick blonde braid running down her back. Her hands were shoved into the pockets of her black coat, and it occurred to me that, like a child, she was teetering joyously to the rhythm of the violin echoing against the station walls.

When the train finally pulled up, she let people rush past her and then stepped in at the last second. Scott and I stood on the yellow line, waiting for the next, less-crowded
train. Just as the train doors closed, she turned around. Our eyes locked.

I blinked.
Holy shit.

“Grace?”

She pressed her hand to the glass and mouthed, “Matt?” but the train was pulling away.

Without thinking about it, I ran. I ran like a crazy person to the end of the platform, my hand outstretched, willing the train to stop, my eyes never leaving hers. And when I ran out of platform, I watched the train fly into the darkness until she was gone.

When Scott caught up to me, he looked at me cautiously. “Whoa, man. What was that about? You look like you saw a ghost.”

“Not a ghost. Grace.”

“Who’s Grace?”

I was stunned, staring into the void that had swallowed her. “A girl I used to know.”

“What, like the one who got away?” Scott asked.

“Something like that.”

“I had one of those. Janie Bowers, first girl to give me a blowie. I beat it to that image until I was, like, thirty.”

I ignored him. All I could think about was Grace.

Scott went on. “She was a cheerleader. Hung around my high school lacrosse team. They all called her the Therapist. I didn’t know why. I thought she was gonna be my girlfriend after that blowie.”

“No, not like that,” I said. “Grace and I dated in college, right before I met Elizabeth.”

“Oh, like
that
. Well, she looked good. Maybe you should try to get in touch with her.”

“Yeah, maybe,” I said, but thought there’s no way she’d still be single.

I LET BRODY
, the seventeen year-old salesperson at Verizon, talk me into the newest iPhone. It actually costs eight dollars less a month to have a newer phone. Nothing in this world made sense to me anymore. I was distracted while signing the documents because the image of Grace, on the train, floating off into the darkness, had been running on a constant loop in my mind since we had left the station.

Over pizza, Scott showed me how to play Angry Birds. I thought that was a big step toward overcoming my technology phobia. The girl Scott was hoping to see wasn’t working so we ate our pizza and headed back to the office.

Once I was back at my cubicle, I Googled Grace’s name in every possible variation—first, middle, and last names; first and last names; middle and last names—with no luck. How was this possible? What kind of life was she leading that kept her completely off the internet?

I thought about what had happened to us. I thought about the way she looked on the subway—still beautiful, like I remembered, but different. No one would ever describe Grace as cute. Even though she was petite, she was too striking to be cute, with her big green eyes and massive mane of blonde hair. Her eyes had seemed hollow, her face a bit harder than when I last saw her. It had only taken one glance for me to know she wasn’t the effervescent, free spirit I’d known years ago. It made me crazy wondering what her life was like now.

Cheers erupted from the break room down the hall.
I wandered over to witness the tail end of my ex-wife announcing her pregnancy to our co-workers. It wasn’t long after my divorce that I became acutely aware of everyone around me carrying on, living life. I was static, standing on the platform, watching train after train go by, wishing I knew which one to be on. Elizabeth was already at the next stop, starting a family while I was slinking back to my shitty cubicle, hoping not to be seen. I was indifferent toward her and her pregnancy news. I was numb . . . but I shot her an email anyway out of some residual obligation still lingering from our failed marriage.

Elizabeth,

Congratulations. I’m happy for you. I know how badly you wanted a child.

Best, Matt

Two minutes later, my email pinged.

Best? Really? You can’t say “love” after spending over a decade of your life with me?

I didn’t respond. I was in a hurry. I needed to get back on the subway.

MATT

I took the damn F train, an hour-long ride to Brooklyn from Midtown and back every day, at lunch, hoping I would run into Grace again, but I never did.

Things were bad at work. I had submitted a request to go into the field three months earlier but had been denied. Now I had to watch Elizabeth and Brad walk around in bliss as people congratulated them on the baby and Brad’s promotion, which came right after the announcement.

Meanwhile, I was still rejecting any forward motion in my life. I was a stagnant puddle of shit. I had volunteered to go back on location to South America with a
National Geographic
film crew. New York just wasn’t the same anymore. It held no magic for me. The Amazonian jungle, with all of its wonderful and exotic diseases, seemed more appealing than taking orders from my ex-wife and her smug husband. But my request hadn’t been approved or denied. It just sat in a pile of other requests on Scott’s desk.

I pondered the current state of my life while I stared at a blank wall in the office break room. Standing next to the water cooler, holding a half-empty paper cone, I tallied the insubstantial years I had spent with Elizabeth and wondered why. How had things gone so terribly wrong?

“What are you doin’, man?” Scott’s voice came from the doorway.

I turned and smiled. “Just thinking.”

“You seem a little brighter.”

“Actually, I was thinking about how I ended up thirty-six, divorced, and trapped in cubicle hell.”

He walked to the coffeepot and poured a mug full then leaned against the counter. “You were a workaholic?” he offered.

“That’s not why Elizabeth was unfaithful. She fell right into Brad’s skinny arms, and he works more than I do. Hell, Elizabeth works more than I do.”

“Why are you dwelling on the past? Look at you. You’re tall. You have hair. And it looks like”—he waved his hand around at my stomach—“you might have abs?”

“You checking me out?”

“I’d kill for a head of hair like that.”

Scott was the kind of guy who was bald by twenty-two. He’s been shaving it Mr. Clean–style since then.

“What do women call that thing?” He pointed to the back of my head.

“A bun?”

“No, there’s, like, a sexier name for it. The ladies love that shit.”

“They call it a man-bun.”

He studied me. “Jesus, you’re a free man, Matt. Why aren’t you prowling the savannahs for new game? I can’t watch you mope around like this. I thought you were over Elizabeth?”

I shut the break-room door. “I am. I was over Elizabeth a long time ago. It’s hard for me even to remember being into her. I got caught up in the fantasy of it, traveling with her, taking photos. Something was always missing, though. Maybe I did work too much. I mean, that’s all we talked about, that’s all we had in common. Now look where I am.”

“What about Subway Girl?”

“What about her?”

“I don’t know. I thought you were gonna try to get in touch with her?”

“Yeah. Maybe. Easier said than done.”

“You just have to put yourself out there. Get on social media.”

Will I find Grace there?
I went back and forth between wanting to do everything I could to find her and feeling like it was totally pointless. She’d be with someone. She’d be someone’s wife. Someone better than me. I wanted to get away from everything reminding me that I still had nothing.

“If you care so much, why haven’t you approved my request?” I asked.

He scowled. I noticed how deep the line was between his eyebrows and it occurred to me that Scott and I were the same age . . . and he was getting old. “I don’t mean the actual savannahs, man. Running away isn’t going to solve your problems.”

“Now you’re my shrink?”

“No, I’m your friend. Remember when you asked for that desk job?”

I walked toward the door. “Just consider it. Please, Scott.”

Right before I left the room he said, “You’re chasing the wrong thing. It’s not gonna make you happy.”

He was right, and I could admit that to myself, but not out loud. I thought if I could win an award again, get some recognition for my work, it would fill the black hole eating away at me. But deep down, I knew that wasn’t the solution.

After work, I sat on a bus bench just outside the National Geographic building. I watched hordes of people trying to get home, racing down the crowded sidewalks of Midtown. I wondered if I could judge how lonely a person was based on how much of a hurry he or she was in. No one who has someone waiting for him at home would sit on a bus bench after a ten-hour workday and people-watch. I always carried an old Pentax camera from my college days in my messenger bag, but I hadn’t used it in years.

I removed it from the case and starting clicking away as people flooded in and out of the subway, as they waited for buses, as they hailed cabs. I hoped that through the lens I would see her again, like I had years before. Her vibrant spirit; the way she could color a black-and-white photo with her magnetism alone. I had thought about Grace often over the years. Something as simple as a smell, like sugared pancakes at night, or the sound of a cello in Grand Central or Washington Square Park on a warm day, could transport me right back to that year in college. The year I spent falling in love with her.

It was hard for me to see the beauty in New York anymore. Granted, much of the riffraff and grit was gone, at least in the East Village; it was cleaner and greener now, but
that palpable energy I had felt in college was gone, too. For me, anyway.

Time passes, life goes on, places change, people change. And still, I couldn’t get Grace off my mind after seeing her in the subway. Fifteen years is too long to be holding on to a few heart-pounding moments from college.

MATT

“Matt, I’m talking to you.”

I looked up to see Elizabeth peering over the cubicle partition. “Huh?”

“I said, do you want to get lunch with us and go through the new slides?”

“Who’s ‘us’?”

“Scott, Brad, and me.”

“No.”

“Matt . . .” she warned. “You have to be there.”

“I’m busy, Elizabeth.” I was playing the Sudoku game printed on the brown paper bag from the deli where I buy my turkey sandwiches. “And, I’m eating. Can’t you see that?”

“You’re supposed to eat in the break room. I can smell those onions down the hall.”

“That’s because you’re pregnant,” I mumbled into my sandwich.

She huffed and then turned and walked down the hallway, muttering something to herself.

Scott came up to my cubicle a minute later. “We need to go over those slides, buddy.”

“Can’t I just eat in peace? By the way, did you look over my request?”

He grinned. “You get in touch with Subway Girl yet?”

“I rode the subway to Brooklyn every day for a month and didn’t see her. I tried.”

It was true, I had been looking for Grace. After work, I would go to all of our old haunts in the East Village; I even hung out in front of the NYU dorm rooms where we had lived. Nothing.

“Hmm.” He scratched his chin. “With all the technology out there, you’re bound to find her. Maybe she wrote a Missed Connections ad. Did you look there?”

I set my sandwich down. “What’s a ‘missed connections’ ad?”

He walked into my cubicle. “Get up, let me sit there.” I rose from my chair. Scott sat down to pull up Craigslist on my computer, navigating over to the Missed Connections section. “It’s like when you see someone in public and have a connection but don’t know how to reach them. You can post about the experience here and hope they find it.”

“Why wouldn’t you just ask for their number when you see them?”

“It’s one of those sensitive-guy, new-wave things. Like, if you don’t have the balls to approach someone but maybe there’s an attraction, you can post here. If they were feeling it too, they might see it and respond to your post. No harm,
no foul. You write where it happened and what you were wearing and all that so the other person knows it’s you.”

I was squinting at the screen, thinking it was a stupid idea. “Yeah, but I actually used to know Grace. I might have said hello if I had more than a second before the train pulled away.”

He swiveled the chair around to face me. “Look, you’re not gonna find her on the subway. The odds are against you. Maybe she wrote one of these?”

“I’ll look. Although, I’m pretty sure if she wanted to find me, she’d have no problem. My name hasn’t changed and I still work at the same place.”

“You never know. Just read them.”

I spent the entire afternoon reading posts like,
I saw you in the park, you were wearing a powder blue jacket. We kept stealing glances at each other. If you like me, call me.
Or,
Where’d you go that night at SaGalls, you were talking about a cherry-drop martini and then you were gone. I thought you liked me. What’s up?
And the-oh-so-common,
I want to do nasty things to you. I thought you knew that when you were droppin’ it like it’s hot and grinding on my leg at ClubForty. Gimme a buzz.