Pug Hill - Alison Pace [15]
In the spirit of reciprocity, I head into the kitchen and start a pot of coffee. Yes, I am making the coffee for myself, too, but also for Evan. Surely the making of coffee for someone while they are still sleeping counts as something nice? I stand and stare at the coffee as it drips into the pot, and as soon as I’ve prepared a mug for myself, I bring it over to my desk.
I shuffle through the mail that has piled up over the week, not really expecting to find anything monumental, mail always being such a letdown. Then my eyes fall on a glossy postcard. Suddenly, I have this really fleeting feeling—one that’s already almost gone, which I guess is what makes it fleeting—that everything is about to change. I stare at the postcard: it has a bright blue background with green lettering that says, across the top, THE NEW SCHOOL. The New School is downtown, and I think they have an undergraduate program, but mostly it’s this great center, this Pug Hill if you will, of continuing education. I took a cooking class there once; Pamela has taken writing classes there; and I know that my boss, May, who likes to dabble in decorative painting, once taught a decorative painting class there. Really, you can take any sort of class you could ever think of at The New School: journalism, acting, French, basket-weaving, anything.
I pick up the card and turn it over in my hand. I focus on the smaller, white words: It’s not too late to register for spring classes! A thought fills my head, a thought I’m not entirely sure I want there. I could take a public speaking class. I turn the card over again, to the other side, to see if maybe the thought will go away. It doesn’t. I go so far as to wonder if there might be a public speaking class that hasn’t started yet. I mean, clearly there must be lots of classes that haven’t started yet, otherwise, why even send the postcard? And then, for a moment, I feel just the slightest bit peaceful.
I hear Evan getting out of bed, making stretching noises; I listen to his feet shuffle across the floor and into the living room.
“Hey, Hope,” he says sleepily, yawning, I notice, without covering his mouth.
“Hey, I made coffee,” I announce, gesturing proudly in the direction of the kitchen. Evan heads in the direction of the coffee, makes himself a cup, and brings it out to the couch with him. I swivel around in my chair to face him.
“What do you want to do today?” he asks. I lean forward quickly and grab the remote from the coffee table. I turn on New York One to check the weather: thirty-seven degrees. Damn.
“Well, maybe let’s go to brunch and then see a movie?” I suggest. “It’s really cold out.”
“Nothing good is playing,” he counters back instantly, “and I have squash at four. Want to get brunch and walk over to the Boat Basin and then down by the water? Or maybe,” he says brightly, a lightbulb popping up over his head, “there’s still some snow on the ground, maybe we could walk around the park and see if we can watch the kids sledding?”
“Watch sledding?” I repeat, with very little enthusiasm.
“Yeah, it’ll be fun.”
It occurs to me that if it turns out I’m actually more Catholic than I am Jewish, if the Catholic part actually wins out in the end and my eternal soul winds up in hell (for, let’s say, being a completely sulky and unenthusiastic girlfriend) then that hell for me will be to spend all eternity with someone whose idea of fun is to freeze his ass off in Central Park WATCHING OTHER PEOPLE SLEDDING!
“Ummm,” I say, “What about we get some brunch, and then maybe do you want to go to that place on Amsterdam where you can paint pottery?” I do not actually think this is something that Evan would like to do; I am more just trying to make a point.
Evan doesn’t say anything. Evan just looks at me in much the same way as he looks at me when I’ve just ordered a white wine spritzer. I look down at the card in my hand.
“What’s that?” he asks. “It’s nothing,” I say, tossing the postcard back