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It was late summer, I’d been moved to the city two months, didn’t really know anyone yet. Just working every job I could get, set-building on a day rate basis, stacking as much as I could before classes started and I’d have much less, if any, time to take day rate jobs. Tail end of a week I worked each day of. Capped by a three-day build building flats, like 50 of them, for an Amazon commercial shoot.

The job had gone smoothly once I got the hang of things, no longer having to be hypervigilant, constantly asking how to do what, like I’d been the first day.

And once I got the hang of things, becoming as much like a machine as possible, by the waning moments of that Day Three Sunday, out front the warehouse loading and Tetris-ing the last of the flats into the chock-full box truck, to be shipped out to the commercial shoot site, no longer even considering things like whether I was exerting my allotted energy amount; just loading shit in, demanding people tandem shit with me. Unbothered by the more withdrawn last-minute call-ins, friends of regulars, off in the corner of the lot covertly smoking cigs while pretending to do things, so as to slide by.

That shit didn’t matter to me; all that mattered was trading being a temporary machine in order to become a human again.

When deprived of the ability to be a human, how invigorating those first moments when you were allowed to be one again.

If I’m honest, the only other time I’d ever worked this physically and constantly, maxing myself out for whole workweeks, such that I was tired out enough at the end of each day to actually sleep, was the summer I worked as a camp counselor. Way back when.

With Leah, whom I’d recently, upon moving to the city and discovering she lived here already, reconnected with.

With similar elements, that summer, of: Completing a task that needed to be completed—the growing sense of fidelity to the project, now; and the sense of responsibility to the kiddos who looked to you to show up each day, then. Also similarly: Having that workplace crush to perform for—Zoe, on this job, who I knew from previous jobs, always charged energy, how adeptly she moved around puttying and painting, exercising the same care she brought to the set design movie work she generally did, edges of her fraying shirt encasing full maternal breasts all paint-streaked up.

Not that I was over here ogling. Just that awareness.

Eye out for each other for when we were about to pop out for a smoke. Syncopating these breaks. During which she’d look at me like… You. And then tell me all about her washed-up aimless ex she’d just, after a year of aimless cohabitation, finally kicked out.

This energy. This reciprocal workplace sexualizing.

This was generative. Was what pushed me, during the lull while waiting for the box truck to arrive, once all the walls built, once only cosmetic tasks left, to hop into the assembly line, putty tub and scraper tool in hand, to once-over all the scuffs and unintentional perforations in the walls we’d built—that our carelessness had made—to instill them with a facade of blemishlessness.

So I could work near her.

And that shit wasn’t easy, to make it not glob.

Took a different kind of wrist finesse. A different type of touch.

And just like that we were back. Quick texts back and forth, holding space for each other.

But Leah must have sensed something, how much I’d been reminded of her. Because she reached out that week.

I was at my street-facing fifth-floor window in Harlem, two tallboys in, chain-smoking out the window fan.

And just like that we were back. Quick texts back and forth, holding space for each other. Inviting continued communication by our insistence on never saying a thing straight. To avoid ever saying the actual thing. She’d been living in the city the past two years, with her boyfriend from undergrad.

Teaching English to kids in the Bronx. Only she was moving. Back to California. To apply to law school.

And she, too, had just kicked her boyfriend out. Of the spot they’d gotten together.

How you mean. He ok? Where’s he live now?

No he’s good. He’s at his parents.

In the city?

In a brownstone. In the village.

We decided to meet up later that week. I didn’t decide where we would meet, I didn’t take the lead, I still didn’t know anywhere. Just went where she told me to. Random outdoor beer garden up by where she stayed, 145th-ish. On the water. In this vestibule area between the highway, sorta under it, and the waterside biking path.

By this part of Washington Heights—seemingly sleepier than Harlem, some parts hillier-seeming, winding side paths and schools—where it dipped down sharply, all abruptly, to the water.

We were the only ones in the outdoor patio area. It was a weird time, like 2 p.m. Picnic tables interspersed throughout at weird angles. Umbrellas over some, but not ours. Off to the side, far out from the open-walled indoor area but not all the way out. Not streetside.

I was facing inside, my back to the street. It had been seven years to the summer, we realized.

“Which is so weird,” I said, coming in hot like, “I’d just been thinking about seven-year cycles, my mom is always going on about them. How they’re tied to the world-kingdoms, age 1 to 7 being rock; 7 to 14, plant; 14 to 21, animal; and 21 to 28—where I’m at now, am about to end—human,” raising my eyebrows like Right?

Seriously giddy but ramping it up some in case she shut me down.

She just stared at me across the table, scrutinizing me.

Like Why are you like this.

So you’re still like this.

“So… What does that mean for now?”

“I mean… I’m a human now! I’ve just finally become one.”

She wouldn’t tell me what had happened with her boyfriend directly. Seemingly waiting to see if any of it was worth telling. Or waiting to see which parts, what version was.

She wouldn’t tell me till we started walking.

I’d do this thing with the kiddos that summer with her, seven ago. There’d be this stretch every afternoon, just after lunch, where there’d be this lull, ideally it was nap time. How young the kids I stuck with were, the five- to six-year-olds. The least desirable age, was the consensus, given how incapable they were of doing anything on their own. Or—the period was actually the “games” period. Which, if done effectively, could lead to a nap. If you tired ’em out. But kids that age, they were too young to play any games. Too young to organize themselves into sports. Not to mention, at that time of day, after lunch, they’d start to get cranky. Without finessing this right, this could lead to kids crying, hurting themselves, a nightmare.

But kids that age, they were also so unformed. So malleable. So what I did was, I’d take ’em on these romps. Into the woods, down to a creek, back again. The whole while holding their attention with this ongoing saga I off-the-cuff riffed. “The Adventures of Purple Purple Bunny and…” some other colored animal. Telling them they, this made-up creature-duo, went here, did this, got into that snafu, only… Then they got out!

She wouldn’t tell me what had happened with her boyfriend directly. Seemingly waiting to see if any of it was worth telling.

But stalling, holding off, on when they got out.

Checking every nook and corner of their world, to see what they could find, before they did.

The kiddos dangling off of me, begging me to tell them what they did next.

What happened after that?!

Doing exaggerated lament-yells when I went “Nope! Didn’t make it home free yet!” ensnaring Purple Purple Bunny into yet another rigmarole.

Like NOOOOOOO! falling to their knees.

Withholding what happened till just the moment they needed to before losing interest.

But then always having the path, the one we were walking on, to revert to, when it came to it. To direct their attention back to. When they got too excited about what was happening in the story and forgot we were still moving around, in the world.

One fortnightly session I’d done with Leah. What started us. How suddenly her watching me with them made me want to perform myself in a way that was good to them. Knowing someone you cared about was watching…

Pushed you to do things you never considered you could.

She seemed happy about this, my endless riffing. Since, no matter what weird god complex I was playing out, manipulating their imaginations like I was, she didn’t have to partake.

She could rest.

Chiding me when I made some euphemism that was inappropriate to them, but that they couldn’t understand.

That only she could.

Affronted at the irreverence. But also not wanting me to stop.

We sat in the beer garden bantering. Sharing some things but not really sharing anything. Seeing what seemed OK to share.

Baffled at the time passed; about how, in some ways, things were so different now; yet how, in others, they were exactly alike.

I was excited. I tried to sip slow, talk slow, ask thoughtful questions, and nod encouragingly when she spoke. To show “I listened.”

Probably putting a strain on her by doing so, by not just unselfconsciously, belligerently taking the lead.

I didn’t do that. Overthinking everything, convinced this was more thoughtful.

No one else entering the garden the whole time we were there. Squinting in direct sun. Basking. The elevated highway humming steady on one side. And the water, on the other side of the other highway on the opposite side, giving us periodic gusts. Beckoning.

But the part that didn’t blur, the part that mattered, that got seared onto the mnemonic epitaph of that night by her look. Leah’s.

About halfway to where we would walk, about a mile north, where the riverside path opened up into a field, a baseball diamond, with direct shore access, picnic tables pocking the lawn, Leah looked at me darkly, distantly, sorta scoffing but cryptically.

Withdrew. In a way I genuinely couldn’t understand the meaning of. What feeling it conveyed. The feeling it made me feel reminded me of the feeling I felt late that camp summer, at some end-of-summer counselor hang that one of our co-counselors hosted, some secluded spot up Highway 9, deep into the mountains, limited if any service, the stress of the daily example-setting, collectively, and the accumulated energy of a summer’s worth of stop-start flirting between us releasing suddenly, puncturing, flowing forth once the booze, the 30-racks, the handles we’d hauled up there in caravanned cars started flowing.

Something childish and giddily juvenile about a hang like that, all mobbing up together, gossiping/hearsaying about who was or wasn’t staying over.

Our turn to be the kiddos now.

All that night leaving it open whether I would mob back with Ryan, my main guy that summer. Who lived in San Jose. So sorta outta the way, to drive me back.

We’d see.

The night blurring like nights do when that sauced. But the part that didn’t blur, the part that mattered, that got seared onto the mnemonic epitaph of that night by her look. Leah’s.

In some side room, probably the bedroom of whoever’s house we were at. That we were, at a certain point, no longer viewing as someone’s house. That we were using as if it were ours. That we’d wandered into.

But not just us. It was a bunch of us. In my head mainly girls. And not with any erotic intentions. But playfully.

Like Let’s all lie down here! Let’s crash here—I’m crashing here!

Everyone lying, side by side, like peas in a pod play-napping.

I hesitated; then, when told to by another counselor, joined at the end.

Behind Leah. Big-spooning her. In a way I think she wanted.

Head against her neck, that was all good, she held my head against hers. But when I expanded and pressed up against her. And she felt that.

She might have wanted that, too.

But it was how tangible that made it. What we were doing. No longer under the guise of workplace banter.

That her boyfriend was her boyfriend and I was me all too real.

That’s when she turned and looked at me darkly like that, like she was hurt I’d done what I’d done. Had let what happened happen.

Like We can’t do…that.

I drove home with Ryan that night.

And that was the closest we ever got.

So when she looked at me like that this time, upon my asking how things were with her boyfriend, why she was leaving him, I thought, Same as before.

She wanted something but, ultimately, at the last minute, was unable to take it. To allow herself to be taken.

Little proper Leah, tied to her propriety, her Catholic roots.

And when she got called out on the dissonance between her talk and her walk—when looked upon patronizingly, if sweetly, for holding back at the last minute, just like last time—she went dark, withdrawing.

“You followed through this time,” the “this time” hanging in the air awkwardly, metallically, till she caught it, unflinching, and went, “Yeah, I followed through.”

Was what I thought she felt, this time, walking along the river path, dodging joggers, when I jabbed her about her breakup.

“So you guys are living together, in New York City, everything is good till…Things get too real and you kick him out?” laughing. Transposing her old self, my perception of it, directly onto her current one.

Only, when we finally got to that clearing and stopped. To rest a sec. Sitting on top this picnic table moored randomly, at an angle, on a shoreside slant. Feet up on the benches. Facing out onto the water.

That wasn’t what it actually was.

“What it actually was, why I kicked him out, was,” she said. “That wedding I told you about? That I was bridegroom at?” I nodded, those wedding photos being one of the first I saw, on her profile, when I initially thought of her and looked her up.

“So there was this guy there. And. Yeah.”

“No.”

“Yeah.”

“You followed through this time,” the “this time” hanging in the air awkwardly, metallically, till she caught it, unflinching, and went, “Yeah, I followed through.” Knowing exactly what I meant.

Like she remembered all I was remembering.

“And you told him? Your boyfriend?”

She hadn’t. Nor planned to.

She’d be back in California in a fortnight. Once she was, she’d told him, he could move back in.

Feeling mystified by this version of her, who’d do that. Like How could she.

Almost.

Not; but almost.

And seemingly involuntarily.

But this was good. Seeing that. That that Leah was no longer this one. That people could always act outside of how they previously had. How you’d previously perceived that they could.

That extemporaneousness of a relationship with a clear timeline, akin to the one-night-only passing-throughness of the Traveler. That was a thing. The convo excitedly frantic, the texting electric, that next week. The penultimate week.

A week later, we linked where we ended up—where the river path spat us out—last time. Waterside state park up on 145th, that’s just somehow there. A state park. In the middle of the city.

Continued from where the path left off, last time.

This time prepared with a sixer and plastic cups.

Copping shit-beer tallboys for myself, getting her some kooky high-percentage IPA I assumed her “type” would like. I assumed right. She liked it.

The circumstances of course totally different, naturally, because time and space, but also totally identical: Me totally open, unbound, romantically; she one-foot-out with a boy she was nonetheless still domestically connected to, about to skip town to pursue a higher level of education, that her sort-of boyfriend wouldn’t be moving with her to (though nor, either time, would I be).

Undergrad, last time; law school, this.

Sitting same as last time, butts on the picnic tabletop and feet on the benches, she told me, breathlessly, about how, if she’d learned anything teaching, literacy was everything.

Literacy the ultimate leveling plane.

I got excited by this, and encouraged her to keep going, thinking about where this line of thinking had led me, that I agreed, literacy was everything, only a problem with the most obvious solution to this problem—fund more literacy! through school!—was that this assumed a static standard for what literacy entailed, for what language was legitimate, and so the higher-level move was to play with that, let other modes of speech into domains they weren’t permitted previously, were deemed too low to be, by learning both languages, the infiltrating one and the one being infiltrated, so fluently that the integration was seamless, slippery, undismissible…

Thinking all this, but not saying it.

If I cut her off and said it, she would then know it. And might even think me more impressive for articulating it. For showing that I’d spent time thinking about something she, clearly, felt to be central to her purpose to an almost, and an inspiringly, spiritual degree.

But then I’d miss out on anything she might say, intuitively stumble into, that would add to this, my stock spiel on it.

That might complicate it.

I stayed silent.

She continued.

Jersey skyline across the way lit up waning-day orange and burning. A young couple, high school–looking, at an adjacent table, he sitting on the head of the tabletop, feet dangling, she standing and leaning up against him, between his legs, playfully declining his nuzzle-cajoling.

“There’s actually this specific group of Oaxacans, a bunch of them, in Watsonville…” Santa Cruz–adjacent town that’s almost unanimously Mexican migrant farmer, agricultural. Strawberries and artichokes, mostly. Where everyone besides me and the coach’s son on the Santa Cruz County Class 1 traveling soccer team I played for from sixth through eighth grades were from, and whose parents unanimously called me mijo, assuming I was Mexican, I thought but didn’t say. “And their literacy, their path to attaining it, is even more complicated because their language, under a hundred people still speak it. It’s not just about learning English. This boy I worked with, who’d just come over here, the language he grew up speaking, within his lifetime, will no longer be a spoken language.”

Raising my eyebrows at this, realizing here why something had told me to stay silent earlier.

Not even a possibility to integrate the language counterintuitively and subversively into other linguistic spheres when literally no one no longer spoke the language.

Damn.

“And that boy. The things he needs to overcome to just join the conversation—”

“To just even join the conversation!”

“I want to help him be able to.”

“Through law now.”

“Through law. Through changing laws.”

Noting, again, where her path, despite its overlaps, deviated from mine.

This faith in the system. In top-down change.

Whether or not you believed in the benevolent government-father.

The great divide. You either did or didn’t.

Had to have had something, if not everything, to do with whether or not you believed in yours.

Whether you had one to choose whether or not to believe in, I mean.

“And so you’re writing about that? About that boy? For your apps?”

Her eyes lighting up when I said that.

Like How was I unable to see something so obviously urgent as the most urgent thing.

She admitting halfway through our chicken tikka masalas, our second bottle, that her apartment was basically upstairs from here.

“Send me something about that,” I said, doing the deciding for her. Since she’d said her app essays were a mess and would I help her.

Unable to resist reentering into the private intimacy of shared writing. Not to mention. Seizing an opportunity, finally, to decisively guide her.

We met up one more time. Before the decided future moment that had bound all that time we’d been spending, that had filled it with all its meaning and urgency, came crashing violently and abruptly into the present.

This last time felt different. No longer protecting herself, testing her trust in me, with a casual attitude/attire, unembroidered appearance. I biked up to where she was, that part didn’t change. To a corner on 145th but inland, up top the hill that led up from the state park to that first north-south thoroughfare through Washington Heights there. To find her waiting for me.

In a summer dress. Holding a purse. Looking, smelling like a damn flower.

Looking beautiful.

She said there was this Indian spot. Her Indian spot.

“No one’s ever in there. We can have it all to ourselves.”

The talk, the energy the same, the escalation steady.

The time had come. At long last. After all that waiting that came before.

Everything inexorably headed one way.

She admitting halfway through our chicken tikka masalas, our second bottle, that her apartment—her boyfriend’s apartment that she’d kicked him out of—was basically upstairs from here. From this restaurant.

A couple spots over.

Empty and accessible.

Going slightly shook at that. Excited and shook.

Wondering whether actions could change fate’s course.

Wondering whether I’d even want to change it, if I could.

Out front after paying the check, forestalling the decision. Newly observing something masculinely athletic about her, out on the sidewalk, in the shadows of a storefront nook, out of light-shot of the adjacent deli further down, in how she stood watching me, hand on her hip, waiting to see what I decided, whether or not I would. Despite all the girl clothes.

I was the one who had to react to her advances now.

Stalling over a cig, sorta going towards my bike, fiddling with the lock key, then standing and presenting myself to her. Then advancing on her assertively. Before falling back and muttering “I shouldn’t,” and turning back to my bike.

“We’ll kill all this. Kill something. If we do,” I finally said.

She shrugged like Your choice. Your loss.

Like Now who’s cowering, smiling like she’d won something.

“Send me your writing!” I said. “About the boy. The lost language.

“We can keep talking that way.”

She sent me her essay a couple months later, well into the semester. Long after she’d left. I read it immediately. I thought of a whole slew of ideas that first read, heart beating, locked in. I started to jot ’em, but then said, No, I’ll print this and do it thorough. Do it completely. Do it perfect.

I never did it.

I stalled a couple times, texted excuses that I was gonna.

Then she submitted it.

And got in!

She didn’t need me.

But she could have. By stalling, faltering, not acting on that initial, truest impulse, I’d lost out on the chance to find out if she did.