It was agreed that their daughters would eat first and then be off to school. Two of them were in high school so that would be easy.
But the youngest was just ten and she seemed to sense things before they happened. Or maybe she was just a really good listener. Or maybe she pressed her ear against the door and eavesdropped on her parents’s conversations.

This particular daughter began crying into her oatmeal at breakfast. The two older sisters looked at their parents and said “This is all your fault, isn’t it?”
For it seemed the other two daughters were aware of their parents marriage troubles. The parents came clean and said yes, and they were also getting a divorce.

The younger daughter cried louder; she was inconsolable. The two older daughters picked up their books, oatmeal untouched, and decided against taking the bus to school. They would walk instead, they announced. Which was fine by the parents who didn’t had enough problems without starting an argument about their daughters modes of transportation. Which if they were walking, would be no mode, technically.

The rain slapped against the kid and the kid slapped against the rain and there was some struggle that almost seemed, for an instant, where the kid would win against Mother Nature.
But then he got distracted by a rainbow in the east. And it was too high and beautiful to rail against.

We met at Starbucks.
We were only in line for a few minutes when I turned to him and said, “Can I be honest? My heart is pounding in my chest.”
He smiled, but only with his eyes, and said, “Mine too.”

We actually met much earlier, a few weeks ago. At holiday party that Mark and I were throwing at our apartment. Which I called a Christmas party. Which I remember saying to him when I saw him for the first time, as he walked into the apartment: “Merry Christmas!”

“Happy holidays!” he retorted, evidently eager to play along with my outlandish political incorrectness.

“I like saying Merry Christmas.” As if I needed to explain my greeting.

“Good for you,” he said, with a wink. And that was the first hint I had at his personality. That no only was he willing to go along with a whim of mine, but maybe me altogether. Immediately I started molding an image of him, in my head. Things were gelling, gaining texture and speed…

…When a woman came up behind him and said “Hello.”
The man then said, “I don’t think we met,” he extending his hand. “I’m  Brian and this is  Haley.”

Despite my deflating mind, body and soul, I manage to shake their hands, and invite them in. I managed somehow to ask for their coats. When I got back from the bedroom depositing them, there married status was so flagrant like a fast-growing flowers, petals aflame. They were sitting close together, talking to my husband, Mark.

And yet, somehow after that rocky start, we made it to Starbucks:

As we sat down with our coffees. He said, “Well.”
And I said, “Yes?”

When it was clear he wasn’t going to continue my prompt, I jumped in with, “I guess neither one of us done this sort of thing before?”

He kinda shrugged.

“Oh,” I said.

“One other time,” he said. “But it was with woman.”

“So are you gay or bisexual or…”

“Bisexual. You?”

“Gay. Pretty much.”

“Pretty much,” he repeats and takes a sip of his coffee.

*************************

I am wrong about Haley, and have suspected all this time that I was. She is a good woman. She doesn’t deserve to have a cheating husband. Neither does my husband deserve a cheating one. And Brian and I haven’t done anything yet. But we want to.

***********

The sound of a coffee brewing machine whistled and farted up through the air. I thought of the word fetid, for some reason. It wasn’t word that even remotely described what was going on between us. Brian smelled of aftershave. And I of a lime cologne I hadn’t worn in decades but found at the last minute at the bottom of a dresser drawer, deciding to wear it to our first encounter. Fetid does not refer to our personal smells but the situation we find ourselves in. The situation stinks. We are both on the verge of being unfaithful to our spouses. We need a miracle. A good-smelling one.

We need tennis. Or some otherwise outside activity. Or better still we need to leave each other alone.

The old man who normally sits on the stoop at the building I run past, on my way to Central Park, no longer sits. He’s used to be there all the time, at all times of the day (and sometimes night).
I see that next to the stoop is a sign that that’s been screwed to the railing that reads: No Smoking. When he used to sit on the stoop, he smoked. I want him to show up some day on that stoop, with his pack of Marlboro’s. I don’t know that he’ll break the ordinance. But I hope he does.

People talking. People arguing. No one reading.

Her name was Diamond. She died at the ripe old age of ninety-five. Her name was a difficult one to live up to. But in her long life she did manage to accomplish three things:
1. Publish a paper hypothesizing that some animals pondered their future.
2. Named Metropark, New Jersey the best place for barbecue.
3. Loved her great-grandchildren so fiercely that they all moved to Mars. (Accomplished by hugging them tightly and telling them to reach for the stars,)

Deep canyon-like voices, conveying tiny truths, while sunlight streams, light that is impervious to its irritating effects on me. Too much light makes it hard to read in this particular corner of the stacks. I want to know what Agatha Christie has come up with. But the light doesn’t give a fuck. Which then has me thinking that the sun doesn’t give a fuck either. Which concludes that Universe doesn’t either. The murder has yet to be solved.

But the books surrounding you are like friends. And that helps. And of course I can move to another part of the library. But there are so many people occupying the other tables and you are just taking more a chance with their idiosyncrasies than the rest of the Universe.

I turn the page, having given up on the current one. I squint on, finding phrases that lead me forward, toward other truths.

I’m at Morningside library and a homeless woman sits across from me and I have to move because she smells. I wish I could stand bad smells. I can stand the smell of horse poo. I can see that others can stand it too–people in Central Park who are actually paid to shovel it. How much do they pay? I might be willing to do it. That might be a good sign.

The next time I go to the library, the homeless lady is busy having a conversation with herself.  I decide to sit next to her. In doing so, I startle her, but only for a moment before she reconvenes her own private conversation. I try not to breathe.  I wonder: How long can I go on like this? No one is paying me to be here, I remind myself,  my face contorting. Finally, desperate for breath, I start to move away. But she is quicker. She bolts up and leaves. I breathe as much for a oxygen as for a sigh of relief.

But then, moments later, I am aware of another smell–one I haven’t noticed before.

How much would this one pay? 

It’s around this time that she put away her faith. Purposely she folded it up and put into an old Dartmouth folder that held a jury summons and a old ticket stub from an Avengers movie. Faith could easily be found there, when–if–she needed it. Christmastime was one of those times. She retrieved it from the folder and examined the abuse of its non-use; it looked as flattened as a flower smashed into between the pages of a book. Still recognizable, but with no smell, she hung faith up on her tree. The final ornament. She then then turned on the Christmas lights. The lights outshone faith of course.

It was a Christmas party I threw every year. And every year my friends told me I should say “holiday” party. Nevertheless they came, with their children. Some of the children I liked okay but some I just couldn’t stand. There was one little boy who always demanded I open one of my presents that sat underneath the Christmas (holiday) tree. I told he, I’d rather wait until Christmas. He then stomped off to his father to tattle on me. The father came sauntering, drink in hand, asking “Hey, what’s the big idea?”

To which I told Benjamin that the present was mine and I would open whenever I goddamn chose.
Well.! The father exclaimed in shock and dismay.
But his response wasn’t good enough for me. I told him and his kid to get the fuck out of my house. The little boy cried out the door, startling the other guests.
I do not consider myself a Scrooge or a Grinch. Somewhere in between.