“Got it,” Pete said, looking relieved. “Bag for ten cents?”
Cary nodded, and Pete swept the items into a white plastic bag with I NY printed on it in red, over and over again. He handed it to Cary, along with his change, and picked up his highlighter.
“You around later?” he asked.
Cary shook his head. “Working.”
“Sunday then,” Pete said.
Cary grinned. “See you on the field.” Pete gave us a nod before going back to his book, and it was like you could somehow feel that even though he was still physically here, he had actually left and was elsewhere, probably in Austria or Switzerland or wherever Wittgenstein was from.
“Field?” I asked, following Cary as he made his way toward the door. He paused to scratch the head of the orange cat who was lounging in the window. I figured this must be a bodega cat—I’d heard about them, of course, but had never seen one in real life. My parents weren’t really ones for ducking into delis when we were in the city to see a play. I reached for my phone to take a picture, already debating the caption—meowdega!—before I remembered. I settled for also scratching the top of the cat’s head and was rewarded when it gave a low purr that seemed to rumble through its body.
“Yeah,” Cary said as he held open the door for me and I stepped outside, drawing in a breath against the cold air. “We play kickball on Sundays, then get brunch.”
“Kickball?” I raised an eyebrow. “I haven’t played that since third grade. At least.”
“And yet,” Cary said, smiling, with an overly patient air, “it’s still just as much fun. Maybe even more so, because you’re no longer constrained by the time frame of either recess or PE. Things don’t stop being fun just because you get older.”
“Is this like the grape soda thing?”
Cary laughed. “Possibly.” He pulled out his soda and candy, then handed the bag to me. “For you.”
“Thank you again,” I said, my stomach growling in anticipation. “Here,” I said, pulling out my hundred. “Please let me pay you back.” I was suddenly hopeful that maybe Cary could break it—maybe his plant-watering clients paid him in cash and he kept a lot of it on him for some reason.
“No,” Cary said firmly, even as he smiled. “It’s on me. But thank you.”
“Okay,” I said, putting the hundred back in my pocket.
“So what now?” he asked. A group of girls who looked like they were in their twenties hurried up the street toward us. They were dressed for a night out, you could see, even with their coats on—heels and makeup, a certain swaggery confidence in the way they strode down the sidewalk in a group. They were laughing and yelling as they walked, and Cary and I took a simultaneous big step back to let them pass. I watched them go for just a second, thinking with a fierce jealousy that that should have been me and Stevie right now, together, walking and laughing, cutting our way across New York City in triumph.
“Oh,” I said, when I realized that Cary had asked me a question I still hadn’t answered. “I’m actually going to see a play. My drama teacher wrote it.” I tried to say this like it was no big deal, but even I could hear I didn’t pull it off.
“Are you an actor?”
I nodded, not able to stop myself from smiling. “I am. And he teaches us in Connecticut, but he has his own company here in the city.” I felt a flush of pride as I said this. “The show starts at eight, and I have to get up to the theater district. And—would you actually mind googling the address for me? I don’t have a phone.”
“Of course,” Cary said, pulling his phone out of his back pocket. He shook his head. “I honestly don’t know how you’re even managing without one. It’s like you’re living in 1984.”
“Yeah,” I said, not wanting to admit my phonelessness was because I didn’t want my parents to track me. That would probably seem super juvenile to someone who lived in New York and was friends with deli guys and worked six jobs. “Luckily, cute guys in bodegas are helping me out,” I said. I saw Cary’s cheeks flush, but he had a small, pleased smile on his face as he unlocked the phone and handed it to me.
“Google away.”
I pulled up the address, but as soon as I did, another problem presented itself. Was I just supposed to memorize the address and hope I wouldn’t forget it? “You don’t have a piece of paper, do you?” I asked, feeling like I’d already asked him for too much. “And… a pen? Sorry about this.”
“It’s fine,” he said. He started to set his grape soda on the ground, but I reached out and took it from him. “Thanks,” he said as he slung his messenger bag off his shoulder and pulled out a black sketchbook, covered in stickers. He flipped through it—most of the pages were covered in drawings—before ripping out a blank page. He pulled out a pen and handed both to me.
“Thanks,” I said, scrawling down the address to the Echo Theater, which, it turned out, was on Tenth Avenue and Fifty-First Street. The paper was thick vellum, and the pen was much nicer than the ones I normally used; this felt like the kind you bought in art supply stores. While I was at it—because who knew when I would have access to another pen—I wrote down the address that Willa had told me. I needed to remember where to avoid. Just the fact that my parents were currently in the city was not good, and I knew I would feel better giving wherever they were a wide berth. 18 9th Avenue, I wrote quickly, then capped the pen and handed it back to him. “Thanks a lot.”
“Anytime,” he said, with a smile that crinkled the corners of his eyes. A second later, though, his expression turned worried. “Why don’t I give you some cash?” he asked, starting to reach into his messenger bag again. “I’ve got some smaller bills.…”
“No,” I said quickly. “I’m sure it’ll be fine.” Cary straightened up, but I could still see a question in his eyes, and I nodded firmly. “Really. But thank you. And for the snacks, too. It’s really nice of you.”
“Well, okay,” he said, slinging his messenger bag across his chest again. “It was nice to run into you. And I guess I’ll see Stevie when she comes for the keys.”
“Oh no, wait,” I said, suddenly remembering. With all the snacks and talk of moral philosophers, I’d forgotten that he needed to be updated on the current state of play. “Stevie’s phone… got broken.” I shook my head angrily, thinking about how all of this—our fight, Stevie leaving me behind and going back home—might not be happening if she hadn’t tried to grab her phone back from me.
“Oh no.”
“Yeah, it fell on the subway tracks… and then the subway kind of ran over it. So, to make a long story short…”
“Too late.”
I smiled at that; I’d seen Clue way too many times to be offended. “Nicely done. Anyway, Stevie doesn’t have a working phone. But she’s going to get the keys from her stepbrother, so she’ll be able to get back in on her own anyway.”
“Gotcha.” Cary walked over to a moped—or was it a Vespa? It wasn’t a full-fledged motorcycle, at any rate—that was wedged in between two cars on the street. He took keys from his pocket, unlocked the compartment over the back wheel, and took out a helmet.