The Wonder Spot (43 page)

We are quiet for a while, walking. I begin to see where we are now. We pass the Miss Williamsburg Diner. Little bookstores I could spend my life in. We pass a gallery with mobiles hung above a reflecting pool.

Then we're standing in a parking lot, outside of what Seth tells me is Bob's restaurant. I'm saying that living in Manhattan gives you a heightened appreciation of parking lots when Seth takes something out of his pocket and puts it in my hand. It's a dollar. “For the gift shop,” he says. “Don't lose it now.”

With my dollar hand, I squeeze Seth's about thirty-seven times, telling him everything I feel.

He says, “What does that mean?”

I say, “ ‘I'm hungry.' ”

What I feel is,
Right now I am having the life I want, here outside the Shiny Diner, Bob's, or the Wonder Spot, with my dollar to spend and dinner to come.
We will try everything on the menu. Then we will drive through Brooklyn and cross the bridge with the Manhattan skyline in front of us, which looks new to me every time I see it, and we will drive right into it. We'll find a parking space a few blocks from my apartment on Tenth Street, and we'll pick up milk and tomorrow's paper. We will undress and get into bed.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author's Imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

 

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