Near Missus

By Kevin Jay Lindsay

The day I met Lucy, my wife had been dead for exactly two years. 

There was a cafe around the corner from our old apartment, and my wife and I used to go there all the time. It started life as a firehouse, or an auto body shop a million years earlier (I can’t remember which) and the building had kind of a look, kind of a feel. It had these huge garage doors that had somehow survived the numerous renovations and facelifts throughout the years, and when it was hot out, the kids running the place opened them up. 

One night a few summers ago, we were coming home from the bar, a little half-cocked, and there were these two guys playing jazz inside—just a guitar player and a bass player with an upright—and with those doors wide open, the music just kind of flowed out onto the sidewalk. My wife and I stood there watching them play, awestruck, until we were almost sober.

After that, we started going in the morning, and most nights too.

On the anniversary of the night she died, I had a dream about the place. It was the kind that ends on the wrong note. It wasn’t a nightmare, but it wasn’t a good one either. Just sort of odd, and open-ended. I couldn’t remember what it was about when I woke up, except that the café was involved, and those kids were in it too, sending sleepy, achingly beautiful Chet Baker songs out into the summer night. Towards the end, I had the feeling that something was going to happen, was just about to (you know how you get that feeling in a dream, that sort of staticky intuition). My wife was dead in the dream too, which… she usually isn’t. 

When I woke up, it was still two hours before my alarm was set to go off, and I laid there, trying to remember anything else I could. By the time the alarm actually did go off, my eyes were on fire, so I pulled myself out of bed and puttered around the apartment, making breakfast and doing all sorts of unnecessary chores until I was so late I decided not to go in to work at all. I hadn’t really been working much lately anyway. 

#

At noon, I walked down to the café. I still can’t really say why, though I’ve thought about it quite a lot since.

I stood there for a minute on the sidewalk, just looking at the facade for a while. The garage doors were closed—because it was February—and the windows were all fogged up, the yellow light inside a warm glow. It was a charming picture, and I didn’t realize how much I’d missed even the sight of the place until I was there. I hadn’t been back since my wife died.

Actually, that’s not true. But it’s nearly true. I think I went every day for about a week, maybe, after it happened. In the morning, like normal. 

The first day, the girls asked where she was. I’d had quite a long, uneven debate with myself that morning in the mirror over whether or not to tell them the truth. I eventually decided I would, and I did. They registered shock—like everybody else—and said all the usual things, the nice things you’re supposed to say. But after that, I didn’t like the look in their eyes when they saw me coming. I can’t say whether that look was more for me or more for her (they loved my wife, everybody did) but it burned a hole in me, and after a couple days, I couldn’t go back.

So, it had been about two years, minus a week.

I had to summon a kind of unexpected amount of courage to finally go inside, and when I did, a narcotic relief washed over me as I scanned all the faces and didn’t recognize a single one. All of the twenty-year-old college kids that I remembered, that I had known and gotten kind of close with (as much as you can in that kind of setting) were gone. It was like they’d all graduated, and a new class had arrived, buzzing around amongst the clinking of cutlery and hissing of all that steampunk machinery they kept behind the counter. The fresh ground smell of the place and the natal-warm air inside were intoxicating, and for a second, I almost burst into tears. 

And then I saw Lucy.

Lucy had that short, white cotton ball of Marilyn Monroe hair; white-blonde, not yellow-blonde like Kim Novak or Grace Kelly. She was standing behind the counter, and you could see her eyes from the door, could probably see them from space. Her hands moved all over the place while she talked, and she smiled at everybody—the person in line in front of her, her co-workers weaving in and out between them, putting drinks on the counter—everybody. I realize I must have been standing there quite a while to notice all this. I realized it in the moment too, got a little embarrassed, and walked up rather stiffly to get on line myself.

Now, some people don’t realize how good looking they are. Sometimes—maybe most times—that’s a side effect of some kind of abuse. Some people’s physicality, alluring as it might be, comes with averted eyes and a nervous smile. And when it’s like that, it’s sad. My wife was like that.

Lucy, however, was not. In fact, her grin was so full, was so uninhibited that it made you feel exposed. I watched her serve the two or three male customers ahead of me, and I watched each one of them fall in love with her, immediately and completely. I watched her wholly unaware of the effect she had on them too. The girl was like a cat, rolling over on her back for everyone who walked by, like no one had ever been mean to her in her life.  

“Hi! How can I help you?” she asked when I got to the front, her eyes leafy green, her grin full of sparkling white teeth.

“Hi, I’d like…” On autopilot, I almost ordered what I always ordered. I decided to make a left turn instead. “Give me whatever has the most caffeine, please.”

Lucy smiled, taking in my bloodshot eyes and the bags underneath them.

“That kind of morning, huh?” she said.

“Mmm. That kind of year. Or two.” I thought for a second. “Or ten.”

She laughed.

“I feel you on that.”

I had trouble believing she did. Ten years ago, she was probably just starting high school, I thought.

Right away, I didn’t like that thought.

She called over her shoulder for a blonde roast with a shot of espresso, and I paid, put a dollar in the tip cup.

“Thank you,” she said.

Now, at the café—like most cafés—somebody works the register, and everybody else kind of runs around them, getting the orders together. Since I was the last guy in line, Lucy and I were facing each other with nothing to do for the moment, until my drink showed up. She was the one brave enough to break the ice.

“I’ve never seen you in here before. This your first time?” she asked.

Oh, the joy of being anonymous.

I think everybody has time travel fantasies, on occasion. The idea of going back and starting all over again… at school, in a career… in a relationship, or a marriage… it has to have some appeal to everyone. I don’t think it matters, even if you’ve done most things right. I’ll bet even Paul McCartney would like to blot out some of the seventies, maybe take a Mulligan on most of the eighties too. And he’s Paul McCartney. (I’m talking about the records, of course. I’m talking about Ebony and Ivory.)

Anyway, there in the café, where nobody knew me again, I got just a little taste of that. Of a Reset. 

“Well, it’s been a while,” I said. “In fact, I don’t recognize any of you guys. Everybody’s brand new.”

She nodded.

“Yeah, I think Tommy’s been here a couple a years, but he’s off today. The rest of us are all pretty recent hires. When they sold the place—the guys who used to own it—it was shut down for a few months.” She shrugged. “I guess they had to hire all new people.”

I didn’t know who Tommy was, and I didn’t know that the café was shut down for a while either—or that it was under new management—and took it as kind of a shock. I felt like somebody should have told me, even though that made no sense.

It seemed the place had been doing fine without me.

“How long have you been here?” I asked.

Lucy grinned again.

“Two weeks,” she said. “Well, almost. About ten days, actually.”

“Mmm. How’s it going so far?”

“It’s going great!” she said, and her eyes lit up. This close, I could see all the darker flecks in them, orbiting her pupils. “Everybody here’s really nice. The customers, too. It’s a hip neighborhood,” she said, nodding approvingly. “And since I just started, I’m working the register. They haven’t taught me all the drinks yet, so I just kind of hang up here and talk with all the people that come in, which, it seems, is just about everybody in the neighborhood.”

“You’re the registrar,” I said. “The town registrar, working the regi-star.”

I felt how painfully stupid that was as soon as I said it, but Lucy laughed anyway.

“Yeah, kind of. It does seem like anybody who lives within a five-block radius has to come here, like it’s a rule or something. I mean, it’s really, really busy most of the time. Actually, I think this is the slowest it’s been since I started,” she said, looking around. The tables were in fact pretty empty. “I don’t know, I guess I’m just enjoying being new still,” she said, coming back to me with that same smile, the same fearless eye contact.

And that’s what it was about her. That’s what it was for me, anyway. She seemed new. Not just new to the cafe, but new in general. 

I thought of all my friends my age who’ve had affairs, almost all of them with younger women (much younger) and had been wondering about that ‘newness’ for years, about how much that has to do with it. What I mean is, I’ve always suspected that wanting to sleep with younger women wasn’t just about sex purely, because the truth is, girls that age might be better-looking, but they’re usually not as good in bed. At least, not from what I remember. Girls are still figuring themselves out in their twenties, still plagued with self-consciousness, no matter how attractive they are. 

In fact, I’ll go out on a limb here and say something nobody wants to hear from me: I think the best median age for a woman in bed is almost exactly thirty-two years old. Reason being, by that point, she’s had plenty of experience, and she’s likely gotten comfortable with herself physically (at least, as comfortable as she’s ever going to get). Maybe she’s even given up trying to get comfortable by that point, and she can just forget about it and enjoy herself. Which is the best you can hope for, with any partner.

What I’m saying is that by then, to be sure, she’ll at least let you leave the lights on for it.

So why do all my forty-year-old friends find a college girl, or a just-out-of-college girl, to throw away a crumbling marriage on? Well, maybe it’s got something to do with that newness. Maybe the real reason they go for girls Lucy’s age is because they’re as yet unencumbered by all the tiredness of routine and boredom that sands your edges off by middle-age, after thirty. After settling into a career, after constructing a Life. Maybe after having kids. But Lucy hadn’t settled for anything yet, or given up on anything either. And things—even simple things, like the opportunity to meet every hipster in this neighborhood—were still fresh and exciting to her. Perhaps something in that is contagious, and that’s what the whole thing is really about.

You could call that naiveite, and muse about seeing the world with, or without blinders. 

And I could be talking about her, or about me.

Honest-to-God though, I wasn’t thinking anything remotely sexual while Lucy and I were standing there talking. Not consciously, anyway. Sure, any straight male couldn’t help some back-of-the-mind stirrings when confronted with her, but in that moment, I was just kind of drinking in her newness from a safe distance.

I didn’t realize my mind was going in all these directions until Lucy broke into my thoughts.

“So, what do you do?” she asked.

“Oh, I’m uh…” 

I didn’t like to talk about what I did for a living, because it always brought up all kinds of questions I didn’t want to answer. I worked with famous people, and it always turned into a guessing game of who I did and didn’t know. 

“I’m kind of on a sabbatical right now,” I said, which was sort of true. I thought Lucy would try to follow that up, but she just nodded instead.

“Cool. That sounds fun.”

I laughed. I hadn’t thought of it that way.

“What about you? Is this your full-time gig?” I asked, just to say something. I almost asked if she was in school and what her major was, but that felt like an old man question.

“Nope,” she said, and pointed to a pin on her enormous, sherpa-lined flannel. The pin was black and said ‘Soji Zen Center,’ in white letters, with a white silhouette-Buddha sitting in the lotus position underneath.

“You’re a Buddhist, eh?”

She shook her head, and her curls ruffled in the breeze.

“Well, I’m a pretty shitty one, if I am one at all,” she said. Something that looked like defeat took over her face temporarily, but it didn’t have much weight to it. “I’m trying, though. I’m trying,” she insisted.

I liked that.

“So what do you do there? They don’t have a cash register, do they?”

She laughed, took no offense.

“No. I’m more than just a cash register, you know,” she said. “I teach meditation.”

“Really?”

“Really,” she said. “Don’t act so surprised,” and did look offended this time, but it was a feint: Her mouth was closed tight, her eyes were narrowed, but it was intentionally over-the-top. I could tell.

“I’m just teasing you,” I said. “That’s really interesting, actually.”

And it was really interesting.

“What kind of meditation?” I asked, and she straightened up, her smile reflexively brightening.

“Well, we do Vipassana at the Zen Center, of course, but I do TM on my own. They won’t let me teach that there, though. I’m not certified for it anyway. And besides, even if the Roshi would allow me—which he wouldn’t—TM is very business-oriented, and they don’t let people teach it for free. Which is a shame, because I think it’s a much better model, if you’re looking to…” She shook her head like she was embarrassed, but again, it only went so far. “I’m rambling already. I tend to do that when I get talking about this stuff. I’m sorry. Do you know anything about meditation? Have I lost you already?” she said, wincing. 

Oh, man.

She had these thick, dark eyebrows that any other girl would have shorn off and penciled in as whisps—those cartoon eyebrows girls her age walk around with these days—and when she said that last part, about whether or not she lost me already, they curled way upwards by the bridge of her nose, and dipped over her eyes in the middle at the same time, giving her this look of temporary, yet absolute tragedy. Lucy was also the only girl in the café who had any real makeup on, besides the requisite cat-eye bit with the eye shadow. She had that too, but hers were more subtle, in contrast to the blood-red lipstick, perfectly applied, that only she wore.

But to her question: Of course, I knew about as much about meditation as any other middle-aged, irreligious, left-leaning white guy who lives in my neighborhood does. They practically hand you a manual on eastern religions when you move to New York, even if you’re a Catholic, and especially if you’re a Jew. Everybody tries it at least once. You feel compelled. It’s like pot used to be, and mushrooms are now. 

I realized I still hadn’t answered her.

“No, no. You haven’t lost me,” I mumbled.

“Oh, good,” she said, and the cloud was gone from her face, replaced again with that open look of curiosity.

“I know a little about Vipassana,” I said, “watching your thoughts and all that. And Transcendental Meditation too, mantras and stuff.” I looked around the room, as if someone from TM might be listening. “And you’re right. Those bastards will sue you if you try to teach it on your own.”

She giggled.

“Don’t I know it. They have an army of lawyers.”

“Warrior monks, they call them in the East,” I said.

She laughed a lot at that. She covered her mouth when she did it. I don’t even think it was that funny. I don’t think it even made sense. It must have just been the way I said it.

At that point, a young guy who is probably a socialist despite his Duck Dynasty beard came out from behind the espresso machine and handed me my coffee. “Cheers, mate,” he said, and I thanked him, and then he disappeared again. 

That, officially, would end this transaction. 

A second of awkwardness passed between Lucy and me, and I sensed a flicker of something like doubt, like disappointment, in her expression.

“Well, it was nice to meet you…” she said, and let it hang.

“James,” I said.

“James,” she said back. “And I’m Lucy,”

“Lucy,” I said, and let it ring for a second. “It’s good to meet you, Lucy.”

 I reached out my hand to shake. She took it and smiled, but it was more of a smirk again, and caused a whole constellation of dimples to explode around the corners of her mouth. I took my hand back, she dropped hers to the counter, and a little bit of the awkwardness creeped back in.

And I felt like I couldn’t let it end like this.

“Well, I hope you come in again-” she started, and I interrupted her.

“Can I ask you a question?”

She blinked.

“Sure.”

I waved my free hand thoughtfully—my coffee in the other—like I was conjuring something.

“Were you, maybe in a past life, an… um… an esthetician?”

She cocked her head, her mouth falling open, play-dramatically.

“How did you know that?” 

A feeling of consummate victory overtook me. Not that I’d guessed right, but more that I’d caused that look on her face. I had to work hard to look like I thought nothing of it. 

“Come on, how did you know?” she asked when I didn’t respond right away. 

“Well, it’s just the, uh…” I hesitated, because it was very tricky waters I was about to enter, especially for a girl her age. “It’s the makeup, and the hair.”

She burst out laughing.

“Yeah, I do tend to over-do it, don’t I?” 

“No, no. No-no-no,” I said, waving my hands in protest. I spilled a little of the coffee in the process. “No, it’s not over-done at all. That’s the thing. It’s just-done. It’s done just right.”

She picked up a cloth—one of those ones it looks like they swaddle babies in in the hospital, with that Mother Teresa stripe pattern on the edge—and absently wiped up the dribble of coffee on the counter. Her smile twisted into the left side of her face, her eyes narrowing just slightly. It was a little like the mock-offense look again. She was waiting for me to explain.

“Look, most hair-dressers end up testing the dyes on themselves, right?” I asked.

She nodded.

“Yeah, we’re maniacs, and obsessive-compulsives, mostly. Sometimes my hair is, like, five different colors at once.” She shrugged. “But how did you know that?”

“About hair-dressers being their own guinea pigs?”

“Yeah.”

“I used to date one.”

“Hmm… interesting,” she said, eyes narrowing further.

Dated one, married to one… what’s the difference?

“You went Marilyn Monroe this time, huh?” I said.

“Yeah. I saw Gentleman Prefer Blondes last weekend. Kind of struck me, ya know?”

I did.

“And the makeup,” I said, “It’s probably a lot of work, but it doesn’t look like a lot of work. I’m mean, you’re probably wearing more than any other girl in here, but it doesn’t look like you are.”

Her eyes narrowed to slits.

“Are you making fun of me, James?” 

This was the trickiness I was talking about.

“No, no,” I said, hands-in-protest again. “God, girls are so touchy about this stuff.”

Now the eyebrows go way back up in the air.

“Girls?” she says. 

She was playing, but I was embarrassed anyway. Calling her a ‘girls’ and not a ‘women’ only highlighted the age gap here that I would have very much liked to avoid. Her smile changed—lingered still, but became slightly distant—and I couldn’t tell if she was thinking about that difference in ages too, or if she’d figured something else out about me. Either way, I had to race to cover the distance.

“No, listen. It’s like…” I decided to switch gears to do it. “Good craftsmanship is in hiding the craftsman, right? Have you ever heard that?”

She shook her head.

“No, but I like it. Who said that?”

“I think I just made it up, but I’m not sure.”

She laughed.

“Hmm… well, it’s pretty good.” She put down the cloth down on the counter, chewed her bottom lip. “Could you elaborate?” she asked directly.

Distance covered.

“Well, do you know Paul Simon?”

“Of course,” she said. Thank God. “I think he lives around here.”

“He does. I’m surprised you haven’t seen him in here yet,” I said, and barreled on. “Do you think he’s a good guitar player?”

She thought for a minute.

“I don’t know. I don’t think I ever noticed. I think of him more as a songwriter.”

“Right,” I hissed. “That’s because he buries it in the craft. He’s actually a brilliant guitar player—classically trained and all—but you’d never know it. I mean, if you saw him doing an acoustic gig you could tell, because it would stand out so much. Especially if he was playing with other people, like, at an open mic or something.” I don’t know why the hell Paul Simon would play an open mic, but I kept going. “On the records though, it’s balanced. He has so much other finely arranged instrumentation and harmonies and everything on all the songs that you’d never home in on how versatile and layered his playing is itself, unless you were looking for it. Er, listening for it.”

Now I was rambling.

“So… how am I the Paul Simon of makeup then?” she said, her voice lilting at the end.

I laughed.

“Well, the reason the makeup and hair stands out in here so much is that you’re the only one doing it.” I swept my hand around the café, to the cat-eyes and pink, lipstick-free lips all on all her female co-workers (pouting mostly, as this kind of scene seemed to require). “In a room full of other good-looking girls who know what they’re doing with makeup, I might not notice it. In that context, I’d probably only see that you’re just really, uncommonly, beautiful.” It slipped out, before I could even think about it. “I mean, you’d probably stand out there too, but… well, just for that reason instead.”

At that she blushed. She looked truly self-conscious for the first time.

“What I’m saying is, you’re good at it. Your cosmetics-game is on-point,” I said. She laughed at that bit of young-person slang, but it was kind laugher. 

“Thanks,” she whispered.

“Well, it’s true. You’re good.” Then I said, after a second, “Why did you give it up?”

“Beauty stuff? I just… wanted to do something a little more meaningful, I guess.”

“Mmm. So the Zen Center called to you.”

“Yeah.”

“Well, that’s cool.” I looked around the café again. “And this place helps pay the bills?”

“Has to,” she said, and shrugged. “Enlightenment’s not cheap, but it’s not free either.”

I smiled. The metaphor was a little jumbled, maybe. Maybe not. I got what she was saying, either way.

“Why not stay at the salon though and meditate at night? You have to make better tips if you’re doing hair than you are here, right?” I asked.

Now she frowned for the first time in earnest. I didn’t know what I said, but I regretted it immediately. She went quiet for a long time.

“I like the people here better,” she said, eventually.

And the thought of mean girls at the salon came over me. This only further complicated my image of Lucy: The notion that somebody was actually unkind to her at some point in her life (and in fact bad enough that she left a job to get away from it) yet she still presented in this way to strangers just added to the thing that she had. I felt immediate flashes of anger for whomever these hairdressers were, and imagined jaded, middle-aged women from Staten Island who hated Lucy on sight for how good-looking she was, and over time, for how likeable she was.

I wanted to go find them, and chase them into the fucking street.

“Well, if this is a better fit, I’m glad you’re here then,” I said, trying to put it away.

“It is,” she said. “And I am too.”

A crowd started coming in the door next—a whole herd of customers all at once—and I began to feel it was time for my exit. I didn’t want to leave just yet, but I’d run out of things to say.

“Well, Lucy. It was good to meet you.” I jerked my head toward the door. “I think I’d better get going.” I started stepping back, turned to walk away, and she blurted out,

“So wait, do you meditate, or what?” I stopped. “You never answered.”

“Oh. I uh… I used to, but I haven’t for a while.” Or rather, I hadn’t since my wife died. 

This could be a little unqualified, amateur self-analysis (it absolutely is that) but for a long time, I think I was afraid that if I sat down and got empty—that if I tried to still my thoughts—a sort of dam would crumble and I’d drown in whatever was on the other side. I knew it was probably something I’d have to confront at some point, but back then, for that part of my life, I was content to live in its shadow. I didn’t feel brave enough to blow it up just yet.

“Why don’t you come to the Zen Center sometime, then?” Lucy asked, her face lighting up.

It was too good to hear to take it straight.

“What, are you fishing for customers?” I said, affecting a skeptical look. 

She giggled again.

“Maybe. But the first lesson is free,” she said. “Plus, you’re interesting. I’d like to pick your brain a little bit.”

“Ah. Open my mind so you can peek inside it.”

“Yeah, sort of. Sort of like that,” she said, and clicked her tongue, holding her hands out like she was cracking a coconut.

I took a deep breath at that point and decided not to think, because if I thought any more about it… well, it wouldn’t have helped.

“Okay, yeah. I’d like that. Maybe I could really use that.”

“Great,” she squealed, and stole a business card for the café from a little cradle on the counter. “I’m on at nights—like I said—Wednesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays.” She said it in a rush, writing the address for the Zen Center on the back.

“So, you’re on tonight?”

“Yeah,” she said, looking up. “Are you free?” 

I almost said ‘Not yet,’ which would have been my third or fourth stupid joke by that point, and an enlightenment joke, no less. Thank God I stopped myself.

“Yeah, I am. What time should I come?”

“Seven o’clock,” she said, smacking her lips and handing me the card. When I flipped it over, it had her last name and her phone number scrawled on it too.

“In case you get lost,” she said.

I nodded.

The accumulating hipsters behind me were beginning to shift on their feet, the male ones in particular. I imagined each one of them quietly planning a peaceful protest around my apartment later, or else organizing some kind of a hashtag campaign against me.

“All right. I’ll see you tonight at seven, Lucy,” I said, pointing at her with the card. “This’ll be good. It’s a good thing I came in here today.”

“Well, when the student is ready, the teacher appears, right?”

It was corny, but I was glad she said it.

“Right. That’s what they say.” I put the card in my pocket and backed away. “Bye, Lucy.”

“See you tonight, James.”

#

I’m not going to say I didn’t prepare. 

What I did was, I got the least old-man-looking thing I could find out of the back of the closet. My nieces bought me some jeans and some shirts last year, around my fortieth birthday, and I don’t know the last time I went clothes shopping before that. I also didn’t like thinking about how my nieces were just about the same age as Lucy, but… well, I just hoped they had similar taste in fashion.

I tried stuff on and looked at myself in the mirror. With a sport coat on, I looked too much like Jack Nicholson (seventies Jack Nicholson). With sneakers on, I looked too much like Jerry Seinfeld (nineties, sitcom Jerry Seinfeld). So they were both out, and I decided to go with black boots (old and weathered-looking, like me) and black jeans instead. Black shirt, black jacket too. Simple enough. 

It’s hard to argue with black.

I thought of things to say too, and that’s worse than trying things on. Much worse. The good thing was that Lucy was going to be the teacher, and I was going to be the student, so she would do most of the talking—I figured—if we talked at all (we were supposed to be meditating). Point is, I didn’t have to sweat bringing up any interesting topics to discuss. It wasn’t a date.

It was not a date.

At twenty to seven I left my apartment and it was snowing. It had been snowing ever since I left the cafe, mostly a light dusting, but after dark it really started to pile up. I walked the five blocks to the Zen Center and still got there early, because there was no traffic and almost nobody on the streets, and I was just in time to see Lucy get to the door before me. She was wearing a dark jacket that would have been too big even for me, and a ludicrously large scarf to compliment it. All you could see was her eyes, and her hair. She saw me coming from twenty feet away and started waving. She held the door, and as I got closer, I could see a fine dusting of snowflakes on her hair. It was hard though; they were almost the same color.

“Where’s your hat?” I yelled over the wind, taking the door. 

“Aw, man. I think I lost it on the train,” she said, shaking some of the snow loose. I made a mental note to give her mine before I left.

“Come on, come inside,” she said, and I followed her in.

The silence inside the Zen Center was jarring. It was dark too. Not quite movie theater dark, but close to it. The only lights were little candles in the corners (the LED kind with the fake, flickering flames) and a faint glow from an overhead chandelier in the middle of the room that looked comically out of place. It looked like they rooked it from a plantation house.

“What did this space used to be?” I asked, hanging my coat next to hers on the rack.

“What do you mean?” she said, folding up her scarf, taking off her jacket and boots, and nodding at me to do the same. 

The undressing ritual from coming out of the cold in the northeast is a little awkward sometimes, especially when you’re standing right next to someone, watching each other do it.

“It’s an old building,” I said, taking in the room.

She nodded appreciatively.

“Oh yeah. I think it used to be a firehouse or something.”

Jesus. Everything in Manhattan used to be a firehouse or something.

I looked around and saw there were only two other people there; two old ladies, both with short, white haircuts, and wearing something that looked pretty close to karate gi’s. It looked like they were tidying up. Lucy called out to them by name, waving. They saw her, grinned, and motioned for us to come over.

They received Lucy like they were both her grandmothers. Oddly enough—with the hair color the same—they actually looked kind of related. There were hugs among the three of them, thousand-watt smiles, and I wondered again if there was anyone who didn’t like this girl, besides those sociopaths at the hair salon.

The three of them talked for a minute, and then one of the old ladies told Lucy the Roshi wasn’t coming in, because the snow was worse in New Jersey. I guess that’s where he lived. Lucy looked at me when the old lady said that, as if she’d let me down in some profound way. I thought of another lame joke (‘Isn’t everything worse in New Jersey?’) but Lucy took the opportunity to introduce me before I could say it. This is how she explained me:

I’m James, her friend from the coffee shop (her friend, she said, already). No, we only met this morning. By chance, I came into the coffee shop—when I usually don’t anymore, she tells them—and we had a very interesting conversation. They ask me if I’m interested in Buddhism, or mediation, or both.

“A little of both,” I said, looking kind of sideways at the beautiful, elven blonde girl between us.

I’ll say it again, but at this point, I honestly hadn’t decided whether I was up to anything. However, if those two old ladies weren’t suspicious of me, they’d either been Buddhists for too long, or I’ve been a New Yorker so long I’ve forgotten what it’s like to be anything less than toxically cynical. But maybe it was Lucy. Maybe it was the field of optimism and good will around her. Or, maybe they were really just nice old ladies, and I didn’t look as old as I thought.

Anyway, if they were suspicious of me in anyway, they didn’t show it. 

On that note, I mostly wanted them to leave, but on some level, I didn’t. The more we stood there talking, the more the thought of being alone with Lucy seemed wrong, and suddenly, kind of frightening. Eventually, the old ladies went back to cleaning up, and Lucy led me over to the center of the room, instructing me to pick a cushion from one of the cubby holes on my way. I watched the old ladies still moving around the place, doing their thing, and it all looked like getting ready to leave for the night. I’d expected there to be a whole bunch of other people there—other students—and, reading my mind, Lucy said,

“The snow’s messed everything up.” She had that apology look on her face again. “There’s usually at least twenty people here on a weeknight and, as you heard Linda say, the Roshi’s stuck in Hoboken.” She sighed, blowing a whisp of hair off her forehead as she sat down. “What a bummer.”

I wondered if she was having similar thoughts. I wondered how much of the ‘bummer’ part was about being left alone with me. But I didn’t think that was really it. I think she was more disappointed that I wasn’t going to get the full Zen experience she anticipated for me, that she probably thought I anticipated. I wanted to say something to cheer her up, but couldn’t think of anything.

“Well, you can meet him next time. You get fifteen minutes with him when you come in for an introductory class.” She shrugged. “Tonight’s free, of course, but I’ll make sure next time is too, since this one won’t count.”

“Ah, come on. It’s gonna be good. It’ll be fun. I’m sure you’re a good teacher. And besides, we’re just sitting here, and getting still. Right?”

“Well, we’ll see,” she said. I didn’t know what that meant, but I think she was still referring to whether or not she would be a good teacher.

#

So, what got you into this?” I ask.

“Well, I started it to get my attention span back,” she says. “Then everything kind of spiraled into control from there.”

Into control. I like that line very much, and pray she didn’t rip it off from somebody else.

“ADD, huh?” I ask.

“Yeah, doesn’t everybody?” She rolls her head around on her neck, loosening up. Her legs slip perfectly into the lotus position that I hadn’t tried in years, and definitely was not going to try tonight. “I mean, social media bullshit is killing everyone’s attention span. I’m surprised I have any brains left at all. You know what I mean?” 

I’m old, and don’t live on my phone as much as she probably does, but I do know what she means.

She asks me again about my experience with meditation, and I tell her it’s pretty limited. I don’t tell her about the dam, and everything on the other side of it, either. I don’t tell her that that very fact—among other things—caused me to give up on the idea of ever meditating again, and that honestly, I didn’t think it was possible for me after all these years. That was the truth though. Holding it back was a lie, if only by omission, but I still felt bad about it.

“Why did you agree to come here with me tonight then?” she asks mid-grunt, adjusting her position on the cushion in front of me.

This would be the second lie by omission.

“Well, I’ve always been interested in meditation, but it was more about… Actually, I almost didn’t come into the coffee shop today at all. And then I met you and, ya know… it sounds stupid, but I just had a feeling. I felt like, I don’t know why, but maybe I should do this. Maybe I should just give it a shot and see what happens.”

Okay, so not totally a lie.

“I think that’s very good instincts, James,” she says, taking a deep breath. She has that same smile, but it’s a little less toothy, a little more subdued. “Sometimes things are confusing and strange. Sometimes things just fall into place. And in either case, if we think about it too much, we can really freak ourselves out.” Her eyes flutter a little bit, then close. “Sometimes we have to just shut our eyes and keep watching, trusting the dharma inside of us.”

 I don’t know why, but just then, the thought of my wife—the image of her young and beautiful—invades my mind so suddenly that I shudder audibly. I hadn’t thought of her that way in a long time. I still dream about her that way, but whenever I think of her during waking life, I always see her at the end. 

I see her in hospitals. I see medication bottles stacked up around our nightstand. I see the bags under her eyes, and the baggage she carried around with her whole life, for as long as I knew her. I see all the things she couldn’t let go of, all the things that happened to her growing up and wouldn’t let go of her, and all the good things I thought to say afterwards, because I couldn’t know the right words at the time. They were all obscured then. They were like little prescriptions, like little notes behind some opaque screen that maybe could have made something click, but that I couldn’t read because of everything that was going on. Of course, now they all seem so clear. 

Everybody tells you this kind of thinking is stupid, in some gentle way or another. Everybody tells you it’s not your fault, and you know that, but it still doesn’t fully convince you. 

“Are you okay?” Lucy asks, her voice almost a whisper. 

She must have heard me, and sensed me struggling to keep still. 

“Yeah. Yeah, I’m okay,” I say, eventually. I’d never been overtaken by a feeling, and by imagery like that, in my whole life—even on mushrooms—and it took me a little while to get it together.

I open my eyes and look at Lucy—still smiling, still breathing in slow, steady waves—and am grateful that her eyes are still closed. I become aware again of the Zen Center being empty, of Linda and the other grandma gone home, of the Roshi stuck in New Jersey. It’s just the two of us in here now, in the soft light, in the silence. I look out the window and watch the snow falling outside. 

“Eyes on me,” Lucy says. I look back at her and her eyes are still closed. I don’t know how she knew I’d looked away. I laugh, and say quietly, 

“See? You’re pretty good already.” She ignores it, but her smile widens just a little bit.

“Now, pay attention to your breathing, and try to keep it in your belly. Watch mine.”

And I do. I watch her belly fill up with air, decompress, reinflate. Her shoulders, under her tank top, rising and falling in rhythm. The sheen of her calves—her knees, in black leggings—totally still. I notice a little pendant hanging from a necklace she’s wearing, in the middle of her chest. I can’t make out what it is.

“Don’t try too hard,” she says. “Don’t get involved. Just let it happen.”

A few minutes pass. They seem impossibly long. I start to wonder if my stomach is going to make gurgling noises, and if there is still a hint of ex-smoker’s wheeze in my nostrils when I breathe out, or if that’s just my imagination. I think of my wife too, and how very different she was from Lucy. I wonder how different life would have been, if I’d found somebody like her first. Someone optimistic, somebody open. Somebody just… freer. I can’t tell you how awful that thought makes me feel, and I shoo it away, with all of the others. It’s really, really difficult, but I do my best.

“When do we start actually meditating?” I ask eventually, just to say something.

“We already are. We’ve already started,” Lucy says.

“Oh.” I think about it a minute. “Well, what am I supposed to do next?”

Lucy sighs, without any impatience. She’s drinking in the moment. 

“Well, I’ll give formal instructions in a minute, but for now, just settle in,” she says.

“Okay.”

I close my eyes, and after a few minutes, I hear her get up. She walks behind me and crouches down, touching the small of my back, then the back of my neck, pushing just so in either direction to straighten me up.

“Just breathe,” she says.

“And then what?” I ask, and can feel her next to me. I can feel her breath on my face, can sense her looking me over. And then she speaks, and I can feel the smile in her voice, too.

“You keep your eyes closed. You keep going, and you don’t try to predict the future. That’s how you see what happens next,” she says.

And it makes sense to me.

END