Jackson Bliss

Parallel Universe

Through the windows of the W train, she saw the man she was supposed to love. Dressed like an Armani disciple in a tight navy suit and tight baby-blue button-up, he was there working every morning when she went to Midtown and every evening when she returned to Queens. He talked on the phone with a sexy arched brow and expressed a boyish intensity when he got excited, raising his arms in the air and laughing into the receiver. From his tan and baby-blue striped socks all the way up to his ocean-blue double Windsor knot dangling just below his jaw line, he was a work of art. Always working harder than any New Yorker she’d met in the city. And Jesus, did he look gorgeous doing it. In the bleariest morning until the most pestilent night, he was always in his office without fail, sitting at his desk, his legs crossed, reading the Wall Street Journal or writing emails with blurry finger strokes, his manicured fingernails, more lunar and delicate than her own. With his alternating black and blue suits, he could have been a traveling exhibition of American realism surrounded by the steel frame and protective glass cover of the skyscraper. Every morning, afternoon, and evening during project deadlines, she took the W back to Queens. Sometimes alone. Sometimes with her colleagues. But she always remembered to look Northwest just before the Queensboro Plaza turn through the windows of the subway that rose above ground level and became a train by metamorphosis. She’d peer into the third floor of the Queenstown Building and spot the GQ delinquent she was supposed to marry and live in Park Slope with someday. She saw him from the train more than she saw her college friends in person. The Mediterranean forty-something stranger was supposed to fill her emotional void with his musical language, his sensitivity to art, language, and beauty, and three Italian-speaking children that would celebrate Christmas but also follow the Sabbath just for her, remembering to avoid light switches, Olive Gardens, elevators, and overrated pizza joints.

            The fantasy wasn’t just in her head either. Every once in a while, he would smile at her as she looked at him from the train, halfway between billboards for H&M and hasty graffiti tags written on rotting steel platforms. She would think, I could love this man if only he would give me the chance to forget him once in awhile, if only I was beautiful enough to inspire an I Saw U ad, a brash window-to-window striptease, or a garden variety wink that was both hunky and conspiratorial. But he never gave her anything tangible except a little twinkle in his eyes and a subtle smile on his lips ambiguous enough to be for anything. She felt doomed by circumstance, and by that, she meant glass.

            Tonight, because she is riding the subway by herself, she sublimates her sadness into her lust. She pretends that her loneliness can be wiped away by dirty sex, sushi takeout, and a clumsy twelve o’clock shadow. It’s all in her mind anyway, she tells herself, so what does she have to lose? In the reflection of the subway window she adjusts her hair, accentuating her side part. She pats her forehead with the tips of her fingers and touches up her lipstick, carving up fresh slices of wet cinnamon with her lips that overpower her exhausted eyes. She feels like a button that has been pressed too many times.

            As the W train slowly makes its way out the dark tunnel and takes a sharp turn into the cow-bellied sky, patchy clouds and all, she exhales nervously and turns around, looking through the window and into the Queenstown Building. But when she finds his office window, there’s another man dressed in a grey double-breasted suit and yellow power tie. The man (who is not her man) is sitting in her future husband’s desk, holding a newspaper in one hand and a phone in the other propped against his ear. He nods, turns his paper inside-out, and holds it close to the window. She leans forward before she can decide if the message is for her or not. In blue marker it reads:

TI CERCO.

TURN AROUND.

She stops reading and turns her head and then feels his eyes sticking to her like body paint. She doesn’t know which direction to look. She looks around the train in the acceleration of desperation and desire. She turns around propelled by dread and fascination. And there he is in his tight blue Armani suit and tan Prada shoes, looking at her from across the car with his perfect Roman nose, virgin olive oil skin, and impeccable stubble. His eyes are filled with boyish affection that reminds her of chocolate fondue. She smiles at him. Her lips tremble. He walks over to her and grabs her hand. Just like in the movies. Just like in her recurring daydream. She is about to freak out, faint, maybe even pee on herself. She can’t believe it. It’s really happening. Her fantasy is actually coming true. Her life is about to make a major turn. She can’t wait to call her girlfriends and tell them about the Rom-Com she is the star in. They won’t believe her. She’s gonna take a hundred pictures of him on her phone as documentation. Maybe tattoo his face on her breast as evidence. Her mind starts spinning in delirious circles about their three bilingual children, about their winters in the Amalfi Coast and their summers in London. She swears she hears Kiri Te Kanawa, the famous lyric soprano, singing Verdi in her head as he rubs her fingers. A warm electricity shoots through her body. She knows how absurd these details sound to a cynical listener, but as their eyes meet and harmonize and his hands caress her hands, she actually hears an Italian fucking aria inside her head filled with lush orchestration and a piercing soprano voice. She feels like the last four months, the last thirty years of her life, are all collapsing into a perfect and singular moment. Suddenly she sees something sparkling out of the corner of her eye. Something she ignores at first, pretending to be blinded by pure delirium. But eventually, she knows what she sees. She sees its radiance and its circumference, which are both dazzling and unmistakable. She sees the wedding band on his finger and her heart collapses like a building demolition. She doesn’t believe it. She can’t. She won’t.

            The beautiful forty-something man in the tight Armani suit smiles at her with a slight blush. He is still holding her hand, but now he holds it like it’s a dead baby bird. —You are bellíssima, he says, and I wish to say that though in this life I am married to another woman.

            —Do you have kids?

            —Si, signora.

            —How many?

            —Two.

            —In my head we had three.

            He smiles again and nods.

            —Why are you here? she asks, trying to hold back her tears. —Why are you doing this to me?

            —I wish to tell you that in this life I am stranger.

            —And married.

            —But in other universe you and I start this beautiful life together. In other world we start our love today. He kisses her hand softly.

            She starts to cry. He apologizes and hugs her, but not like a lover. Like a victim. She buries her head into his neck that smells sweet and musky and strong and unknown. She digs her nails into the pockets of his sports jacket and fondles his keys and scratches his phone. She licks the tears off her lips and closes her eyes and takes the deepest breath of her life.

Bird Sanctuary

As the red streetcar moved again through dense sheets of mist, he rolled his eyes because he got the impression she liked smartasses. —Okay, then what do they do?

            —Well, there’s like a million scientists who’ve studied this, she explained, because the seasonal migration of birds tells us a lot about life on earth.

            —And?

            —They just keep flying. That’s what’s so amazing.

            —Like, forever?

            —Depends. If they’re lucky enough to spot a boat, they’ll sleep on the deck for a few hours. A little nap like that can be the difference between life and death.

            —I like naps. Naps are good.

            She turned to the window, misty and streaking, as the streetcar passed the café of Powell’s Books. White Portlanders in anoraks and thick wool sweaters played Go, reading books and sipping coffee, their lips lingering on café mugs, their words turning into little dialogue bubbles in the air as they talked. Suddenly, she spotted a handsome, slightly disheveled mixed-race man, probably Latino, skimming through a book in the window called The Miseducation of Jessie Hayashi & His Cosmic Dictionary of Loss. He could have been her long lost cousin. For a brief moment their eyes held each other and she felt a flash of desire spark inside her chest. She made a mental note to go to Powell’s tomorrow after work and buy that book.

            The streetcar glided past until it came to a sudden halt. She turned back to her date and watched him in the reflection, noticed the way his eyes kept touching her erogenous zones: they crashed down on her grey pencil skirt at the place where the fabric met pronounced thigh muscles coached in advanced Pilates and weekend Cardio kickboxing, but only she knew that. Only she cared about the origin of her curvature. His eyes traveled up her torso, resting on the soft vowels of her body, highlighted and protected by a fuzzy purple V-neck and buttoned-up seersucker blouse.

            She looked at him and batted her eyelashes for effect in mock flirtation and tried not to think about the mixed-race man reading a book about cosmic loss. —Anyway, she said, adjusting her skirt and clearing her mind, —birds are amazing. Did you know they can fly for weeks if necessary?

            —That’s some crazy stamina, he said.

            She swatted away his sexual innuendo. —Did you know that some birds fly six thousand miles in one trip. Just to survive?

            —If I had to fly that far, I think I’d kill myself.

—That’s just it, humans don’t have that kind of devotion, she said, shaking her head.

            He knew his job was to contradict her, but instead he laughed.

            —This is 11th and Alder, the automated voice announced, next stop is Galleria.

            —Are we getting off here? he asked.

            —We can if you want to, she said chromatically, her words, rising up like a scale of whole steps.

            —Okay, let’s do that, he said, nodding for emphasis.

            She looked at his clean-shaven, tech bro face and followed him to the door before suddenly realizing this guy could care less where birds slept or how they survived. He just wanted to know which bed he was sleeping in tonight. God, men could be so one-dimensional. At least in this city filled to capacity with shy, self-aware, and complex men, she knew her script beforehand. —Oh, remind me to call my roommate, okay? The last time I was out late she was like, I was so worried about you, so I need to give her a ring.

            —Oh, you have a roommate.  

            —Yeah, she’s a little overprotective but a wonderful person at heart, she said, slashing the air with her hand like David Carradine. The image of the handsome mixed-race man reading a book about desire in the café flashed before her eyes again. His beauty felt familiar to her. He felt familiar to her.

            —Oh . . . that’s cool, he said.

            The streetcar stopped and the doors opened wide, peekaboo style. On the wet sidewalk, she waited for him to open his umbrella. He fiddled with the release button and she pictured him fumbling with her bra strap like a bakamon. Small freckles of rain stained their cheeks, magnified their pores, and trilled the pavement. The umbrella popped open in a dramatic superhero swoop and she entangled her arm in his, using his body heat as shelter. The rain seemed like a perfect excuse for intimacy. A perfect way to erase each other. She’d fucked people for worse reasons. Hadn’t we all?

            Her date smiled, placing his free arm around her shoulder. He looked across the street towards the bookstore before looking at her eyelashes again. —So, um, they just keep flying, huh?

            And then something broke inside. Later that night she would describe this feeling of brokenness to her overprotective, white roommate, like this: it was like the first homemade ceramic bowl she’d ever dropped, cracking into little cerulean continents on the kitchen floor. Years later, this date would become one of the seminal moments of her life, the moment when she decided she would never sleep with a guy who didn’t feel her. He didn’t have to love her, but he had to feel something for her besides lust or attraction or the cheap adrenalin of a challenge. He had to feel affection for her idiosyncrasies, like the way she gulped when she got excited or her morning ritual of drinking green-orange-Fumiko tea with a spot of honey and lavender syrup or the way her hapa eyes blinked slowly when people got too close. He had to recognize her smell from fifty blocks away, an interplay of mango-pineapple hand lotion, notes of green tea, burnt clay, and shea butter, which she polished her skin with after every bath. He didn’t have to love her, but he had to love some part of her. But this dude didn’t deserve that knowledge. It was obvious he was used to putting in the bare minimum while expecting women to be exceptional. To him, dating was just a game. The way women removed guilt from sex like security tags in designer sweaters.

            He didn’t know the origin of her marble calves. He didn’t know she had no middle name, was half Japanese, or that he could buy her ceramics at the Tao of Tea. He didn’t know it had been one year, four months, and two and a half weeks since she’d gotten laid and that she cried every time she watched a teeny-bopper flick on Netflix. He didn’t know she called her otōchan in Omotesando each and every Sunday, always asking him about his bonsai trees and his bird sanctuary in the backyard. Her date didn’t even know how to hold her hands in the streetcar—soft, but with pressure. But all of this is in retrospect. That night, she simply called a Lyft and then hopped inside, closing the door and locking it in one instantaneous beat. When her date tried opening the door to join her, she lowered the window and pointed: —Powell’s is that way. Try the Rose Room, bro.

            The Lyft disappeared and he stood there in the persistent mist, transfixed by the open space, images of birds flashing through his head. There was a sudden coldness on his chest where she’d been breathing moments before and it stayed there until the next morning when he showered, listening to her story through the open window.