good luck

I meet up with this pediatrician from Brooklyn at noon. We meet in Union Square. I think I’m getting better at recognizing these boys from their pictures, but maybe I’ve just learned to recognize the look people have about them when they are waiting for someone they don’t know.

He’s a little awkward, a little shy.

He has a plan to go to some coffee shop, but it’s closed, maybe closed forever. We go to a different one. I’m not supposed to be drinking coffee, but I order a café au lait anyway. I figure there’s calcium in milk so it’s good for me. He doesn’t like coffee at all, so he orders hot chocolate. I’m not sure why we are here.

We talk. Mostly I talk. It’s like he’s never done this before.

“So. . . what do you do on the weekends?”

I think it’s the third time he’s asked me this.

And I’m hungry. He says he thought the other place, the closed place, would have food.

We walk back to Union Square. He says he needs to buy new shoes.

I wish him good luck.

~beatrix