I guess it's only fitting that I see someone from my past before embarking on a life-changing voyage. Too bad her boyfriend was with her, but I guess that's how it gets, I guess friends are just meant to pass the time until you find “the one.” The one that makes the future so bright that it obliterates the past in a brilliant flash of hope. What a bunch of bullshit. I don't even have anything against the guy, he seems like a good guy, but God damn it.
So she leaves me to ride the subway by myself. I'm a competent young man, the subway is a triumph of human ingenuity, robotic efficiency, the future. Cake. Shit cake. Nessa, it's raining, it's New York, we grew up in a little beach town, I'm lost.
Pounding the blood out of my legs as I run down the unfamiliar street I tear the map of Manhattan from my back pocket and try to get my bearings. Two blocks over should be Amsterdam Ave. then a couple blocks over to Broadway and somehow I end up at the Union Theological Seminary where a bunch of people I don't know are waiting for some jackass they never met. I shove the map back into my pocket and keep running. I'm going to look ridiculous, all sweaty in that suit.
“HEY! Ya dropped something!” A man yells at me from his car. Idling in the middle of the inconceivably empty New York street, half-hanging out the window; it's as if the car is a hunting snare and he's been trapped.
I pat myself down. “Huh, seems like everything's here! Thanks anyway!” And I take off again, just a couple blocks this way...
“Looked like a piece of paper or somethin'...” He trails off in the distance.
Rising out of the ground, erupting, is Colombia University, of 60's fame, now standing in nobody's way but mine. There wasn't a college in the middle of the road on the map, and when I go to double-check it I realize that's what I dropped. A stranger points me in the right direction and I continue my marathon for a few blocks before I have to slow down to catch my breath. Well, might as well get out my cell phone and see how late I am. Fifteen minutes and counting.
“Hey man,” a big thugged-out brotha says to me, “I just got outta jail and I need some money to get me back on my feet.”
“Sorry, I don't have anything.” I slip my cell phone back into my pocket, next to the hundreds of dollars I've brought with me for the trip.
“Anything, a couple bucks, a cell phone...” New York.
I pick up the running again and leave the ex-con behind. The seminary comes into view miraculously, and a group of people are milling about in front of it. A professor I met earlier waves me down and all the students turn and look. Well, at least I'll make an entrance.
“There he is!” Grant Franks exhales, visibly relieved to see me. I can't believe they waited.
“Sorry, I-”
“Just get changed.” He smiles, but an edge of impatience sends me running again.
I burst into my room throw on a button up shirt and grab a tie, reluctantly leaving my suit, I really wanted to wear that suit. I look really good in it.
“He cleans up nice!” Grant Franks says, smiling nervously, “Off we go!”
Struggling with my tie as we walk, I look around at the other students. Everyone's anxious, and waiting for me probably didn't help. Good. I like a level playing field.
“Hey Justin,” Kim kinda chuckles as she says it, “glad you could make it.” Kim's the only person I know, well, that is to say she's been in a couple of the same art classes as me. The rest of them are from various different colleges across the states, I guess this is kind of a big deal.
“Yeah sorry I hope you guys weren't waiting long,” now I'm kind of glad I was late, the more I think about it, maybe I seem like a pretty cool guy. I've got more important things to do. Yeah.
“Your mom called me,” so cool, “she said you were lost.”
“Yeah. I got off at the wrong stop.”
