Chapter Five
New York is every single thing you said it would be,” I say to Druv, and I sound so excited he chuckles. After spending most of the night tossing and turning because of the way I left things with Rumi, I’m determined to focus on Sak’s words and look for the universe’s magic. It’s surprisingly easy in a city that seems to buzz with human energy. Even the buildings seem to be whispering to each other as they reach for the sky.
“I’m so happy for you, babe.” Druv sounds exhausted, and my heart squeezes. Here I am, walking down Broadway, munching a bagel that sticks to the roof of my mouth like a yeasty cloud slathered in cream cheese with little bits of crunchy garlic. And everyone I love is in pain.
“Have you been doing your shoulder exercises?” I ask when I know the answer. Druv is as bad at being a patient as he is good at being a doctor. Ever since he injured his shoulder while wrestling in high school, it’s been achy. Being a gym rat in college (his words, not mine) didn’t help. He keeps all that under wraps because who wants an orthopedic surgeon with an achy shoulder?
He grumbles something about not having time. The thing about pain management is that treatments work better when the person in pain is the one doing the work to make it stop. This usually involves walking right into your pain to get to the other side. Often sitting on the edges of your pain, with the discomfort you’re used to, is easier than digging into the unknown root of it where its unbearable intensity lives. My patients can be divided into two groups: the kicking-and-screaming ones, and the let’s-do-this ones. When it comes to his own ailments, Druv is most definitely a kicker-screamer.
“You just did a seven-hour surgery, Druv. Did you at least stretch before?” Our first date was a coffee setup orchestrated by our mothers after Druv and I ran into each other at a wedding and spent some time talking at the open bar. That was it. That had been enough encouragement for the Two Moms: us having a twenty-minute conversation, making lame jokes about the floral notes in the wedding wine, while politely catching up on our college experiences after having been casual acquaintances through middle and high school.
On our coffee date, Druv seemed to be holding his shoulder at an uncomfortable angle, and I asked him about it. He was surprised that I noticed, but seeking out pain in people is my superpower. Then he was even more surprised at himself for telling me about his injury and the constant pain.
“I need you to be here to do your woo-woo poke-me-like-a-pincushion thing,” he says. “I miss you so much.”
“Me too,” I say, irrationally happy that acupuncture helps him enough that he’s asking for it after how hard I had to work to convince him to try it. “I can set you up with someone else at the pain center.”
“I’m not letting anyone else stab my shoulder, Mira. I can’t risk my arm. And, well ...” He clears his throat and whispers the next part. “You know I’m a big baby about needles.”
I laugh. He is. He slices through the human body like a machine, but he can’t watch needles go into his own shoulder. And he lets me see that vulnerable part of him without a whit of self-consciousness.
“Druv,” I say. “I can find you someone who will help you through the trypanophobia.”
“I already have someone who helps with it, and she’s coming home to me in five days. We’ll do it then. Now tell me your plan for today.”
I don’t push anymore. I know he won’t trust anyone else with this, and I’ve been dying to tell him about my plans for today. “The top of the Empire State Building,” I say, and I can’t keep the excitement out of my voice.
It was supposed to be our trip’s romantic kickoff, to start out with the most iconic part. I’ve never been up on the 102nd floor, with its 360-degree view of the city, but I feel like I have. I know the crisscrossing diamond-patterned railings that prevent people from flinging themselves off. I’ve looked through the binocular-viewers shaped like alien faces and identified the city’s landmarks. I’ve felt the wind in my face as I waited like Meg Ryan for the man she’s never met but who makes her feel exactly the way she was meant to feel when she was put on this earth.
Druv’s chuckle brings me back to our conversation. He knows I’ve floated away. “God, I wish I could see your face right now,” he says. “Go have fun. Take lots of pictures.”
“You know I will. I’ll try not to blow up your phone with them.”
“Please please blow up my phone,” he says. “I need something to sustain me through a triple spinal fusion.”
I imagine him in surgery, every cell in his body focused on his work. I’ve observed him in the OR, and I think it’s the hottest thing about him. “Deal,” I say. “It is my duty to have fabulous experiences so I can share them with you and sustain you through your work.”
“Such a giver,” he says.
“Acts of service. It’s how I show love.”
He laughs. “I miss you, Mira. You’re not allowed to love New York more than you love me, okay?”
“Never. New York doesn’t look as hot as you in surgical scrubs.”
“To be fair, who does?”
It’s my turn to laugh. “I wish you were here,” I say before I can stop myself.
There’s an aching sweetness in his responding silence, and it’s like we’re both acknowledging something essential, another stitch we’re weaving into the fabric of each other’s lives and hearts.
“Mira.” His voice is quiet now. “I promise we’ll go back again, together. Maybe we’ll make it a tradition. New York every spring.”
“That sounds perfect,” I whisper. Then I let him go and I speed up. The Empire State awaits.
I watched An Affair to Remember for the first time in my junior year of high school, when Rumi took a film appreciation class. The teacher was a fan of iconic romances, and Rumi and I became obsessed with them. Buona Sera, Mrs. Campbell , From Here to Eternity , Pillow Talk , Come September , Roman Holiday : we watched them over and over again, lost in the grayscale and comic-book-toned color images moving slow and intense. The deliberate movements, the close-ups highlighting every nuance of the large, hyperfocused emotions, all of it so pure and heartfelt and undistracted by the complex background imagery of today’s movies.
I’d been especially felled by Deborah Kerr’s simplicity and playfulness and how Cary Grant saw her. Like really saw her all the way down to her soul. I think Druv sees me that way, the way I want to be seen. It’s why when he first showed an interest in me, I didn’t run and hide, the way I’ve always done.
Suddenly the air around me tightens with energy, and a rightness fills my chest. I make my way across the intersecting crossroads that make up Times Square. The gigantic flashing billboards pull my attention in all directions at once. A smoky-eyed model winks as she bites into the plumpest strawberry with the glossiest, reddest lips. A bobtail rabbit does a cartwheel, and a vintage bottle of cola pops open as bubbles fizz and overflow down the thick, frosty glass. I turn a full circle like an enchanted princess in a Disney film, the billboards spinning magic around me.
In my head Cary Grant smiles knowingly at me as I hop onto the sidewalk over a manhole. My long knit skirt swishes around my cute leather boots as I leave Times Square behind and stride toward the Empire State Building. Meg Ryan tendrils of hair dance around my face as I walk and walk, skipping to dodge the crowds. I can feel it getting closer. My eyes sparkle like Deborah Kerr’s when it comes into view. My gaze travels to the very top, where the ornate concrete rises in a steeple and crescendos into the iconic antenna. Christopher Reeve as Superman winks at me as he replants the antenna at the top of the tower.
I’m walking on air. Saket’s words from yesterday spin in my head. The magic of the universe feels strong inside me. It spins like a tornado. I’m flying. Falling into myself. Then I’m actually falling. Knocked off my feet as something hurtles into me. A child. He comes at me out of nowhere, a torpedo that hits me above the knees, tipping me back on my butt, then tripping and landing on top of me.
Instinctively I wrap my arms around him, protecting him from hitting the pavement. I sit there, winded, my arms full of a strange child, my heart racing in my chest. He’s laughing, black curls spilling around his face, big brown eyes crinkling in glee. He touches my face, and I pull my arms away. A sick sensation wobbles in the pit of my stomach. I usually avoid children. I’m not a fan of their smell, or the grime that sticks around their noses, or their fragility.
I don’t take them on as clients. Their pain feels different, like I’m not enough to handle it.
A woman scoops him up, and relief floods through me.
“I’m so sorry,” she says. “Kyle! I told you not to run. You hurt the lady.”
The child throws his head back and tries to free himself from her hold. He’s evidently not done with his sprint across New York City. “Kyle run!” he yells, completely unaffected by his mother’s scolding, and the fact that I’m sitting on the pavement and a crowd has gathered around us.
“I’m fine,” I say, trying to stand up. Pain shoots through my ankle when I put weight on it, but when I wiggle my foot, it eases.
The crowd starts to dissolve, disappearing like the possibility of this being any sort of real tragedy.
“You sure?” the woman asks as she squats in front of a stroller and tries to strap a wiggling Kyle into it. “That’s enough! You stay in there until you calm down.”
She’s wearing a beige trench coat and red heels that I’m amazed she can squat in so gracefully.
“I’m sure,” I say. “Those shoes are gorgeous!”
She smiles, and we both stand all the way up. Kyle starts screaming again. “Out! Out! Out!”
I can still feel his weight on me, and I try to push the feeling away.
“I really am sorry. He’s usually not like this. He’s just overstimulated,” the woman says as Kyle’s volume rises. “Let me help you?” She looks at my bag lying on its side on the ground.
Oh no! My stuff has spilled out. It’s touching the gross pavement. “I’m fine,” I say, again throwing a look at her shrieking child. “Please. I’ve got this.”
She senses my discomfort at Kyle’s screaming and leaves.
I’m still a little winded from the fall, but I squat next to my bag. Not a single person stops to help me. I should be offended, but there’s something freeing about feeling this invisible. In Naperville I can rarely ever leave the house and not run into someone I know. I straighten the bag and dust it off. It’s a beachy thing that Druv’s mom got me for my birthday, made from plastic fished out of the world’s oceans.
I pick up the lip balm and granola bars that have fallen out and toss them into the trash can next to me. My water bottle, also made from recycled aluminum cans, has rolled off and lodged itself against a lamppost. For a moment I consider not retrieving it and throwing the bottle away too. But what’s the point of making the effort to buy recycled things if you’re going to treat them the way people treat the things that cause the need for recycling, as disposable?
I can wash the bottle. I can take it to Rumi’s place and run it through a dishwasher to disinfect it. I try not to think of all the gross things the ground it’s lying on has seen. I try not to imagine dogs peeing and humans throwing up, but my mind takes a sweeping dive into all the unsavory visuals I’m trying to avoid. I steel myself and reach for it. My skin crawls when I pick it up. Then I forget everything else, because there’s something shiny lying right under it.
I lean closer. It looks like a piece of jewelry. I look around, but no one spares me a glance as they hurry past. It’s almost as though women in cute skirts routinely squat on the sidewalk and forage for things.
I try to pick it up, but it sticks. It’s a ring made of gold, and it seems to be tethered to the base of the lamppost with a gold chain. I jimmy the chain and tug at it. After resisting me for a second, it pops out. And just like that, a ring and a chain sit in the palm of my hand.
I stand and pour all the water in my bottle over it, scrubbing with my fingers until the layer of dirt washes off. Then I dab the wetness against my skirt. The ring is a thick polished gold band with a notched, swirling, flame-like bezel that forms a pointy end that catches in the knit of my skirt and rips a few threads loose. It seems to have a piece missing. I look around for it and find nothing more. Maybe that notch in the bezel is part of the design, because as I study it, I realize that it doesn’t appear broken. The workmanship is beautiful. I’ve never seen anything like it. The chain hanging from it is broken. Someone had to have been wearing it around their neck when they dropped it. Something about that image makes me melt.
The flashes of joy I’ve felt today, the ancient discomfort I’ve carried all my life, all of it pulses inside me in time with the slightly off kilter beating of my heart. I hold the ring up, and it frames the very tip of the Empire State Building’s crown just as the sun slides red and fiery behind it. My breath catches. The moment stops around me. I can feel the earth spinning beneath my feet.
“Your ring is beautiful!” a man with a camera hanging around his neck says as he stops to admire it.
“Thank you,” I say, pulling it back when he leans in to look at it more closely.
He reads something in my body language and backs up and walks away.
My heart is racing. “It’s not mine,” I whisper, but he’s already out of earshot.
Whose is it? The words whisper in my ears.
I squeeze it in my hand and look up and down Fifth Avenue as humanity whizzes past me in all its mismatched yet cohesive glory. Couples holding hands, solitary people speaking animatedly into their headphones, everyone moving with purpose around everyone else.
Everything that just happened already in the past. Gone. Was I really just sitting on the pavement on my butt? Did a child just knock me down? Here, in the least child-friendly place on earth. A place that should be no more than a concrete jungle but is filled with stories of romance and human connection. All these things that shouldn’t fit but do. The ring and chain dig into my palm. I open my hand and let the ring dangle on the chain. A ring on a chain: two more things that shouldn’t make sense together but do.
I squeeze my eyes shut, and every romantic comedy moment I’ve ever escaped into fills me. Something slides down my spine, something urgent and ravenous. The anger in my brother’s eyes when he talks to me, the love that spins around Saket and him when they’re near each other. The infinite chasm between those two versions of him.
The kind of discontent I’ve never allowed myself to feel scrapes underneath my skin.
Why did I find it? Why me?
The ring hangs from my hand, the oddest glow emanating from it, like an answer I can’t interpret.
I’m not someone given to wanting. Wanting things always leads to hurt. I’ve avoided it with all I’m worth my entire adult life. Now it grips me, fills me from the tips of my toes to the crown of my head. I want to know where the ring came from. I have to know.