Time of My Life_ A Novel - Allison Winn Scotch [27]
I am listening to Matchbox Twenty, and I am mulling over that very destiny, when the doors of the bus open at Twenty-eighth Street, and a wave of passengers presses forward. Bodies clog the car, which wafts with a mixed scent of fresh cologne, hot coffee, and body odor, and I tuck my legs underneath my seat to make way for the tangle of people. A heavyset woman who has sweat pooling behind her ears elbows me on the side of my head, then glares when I don’t apologize.
After watching her move beyond me, I shift my eyes back toward the front and brace my weight for the lurch of the engine as we start again. Looking forward, I see masses of bobbing heads, swaying in rhythmic time to the clanking and churning of the bus’s wheels. I’m examining a tight French braid on a girl who appears no older than thirteen, and flushing away thoughts of the mornings I’d spent parked on Katie’s floor braiding her hair meticulously over and again until she and I would concur that she was the embodiment of follicular perfection, when I feel someone’s eyes, heavy and direct, gunning toward me like a spotlight.
I refocus my attention to return the gaze, and right as the jolt of shock and recognition runs through me, the bus careens to an abrupt stop, and the masses are hurled off balance. Everyone reaches for a pole, a neighbor’s arm, or a hardened blue plastic seat to steady themselves. The doors squeak open, and just as quickly as the wave pushed forward, it now ebbs; the hurrying people rush on toward their offices, their days, their lives. Though it’s not my stop, I stand urgently and follow them, getting caught in the flow, so I’m ushered down the steps of the bus before even realizing that I’ve consciously moved. I turn and look, perplexedly at first, then frantically and more fervidly. Halfway down the block, I spot a sky blue shirt and hair the color of damp sand, and I weave through the foot traffic to try to reach him in time.
But when I finally land at the corner, breathless with both anxiety and anticipation, he is gone. I spin around and then around again, staring up the avenue and down the perpendicular streets, but there is nothing. So, reluctantly, I head uptown toward my office, toward the route that I was carving out for myself, for my future.
Henry, I think. It was Henry.
Had we done this before? I wonder. Had a water main break steered us on to a bus on which we’d noticed each other in passing, only to let the tides of commuters pull us away? Were we fated to meet, regardless of this map that I was intent on following?
Another bus roars by me and blows a hot blast of exhaust as it goes. With heavy feet and a racing heart, I plod on, turning back one more time, though I know that there is nothing there left to see.
Henry, I say to myself once again. But then I realize that if he isn’t my destiny, there isn’t much use in saying his name at all. I wash it from my mind and watch the buses barrel up Madison Avenue until they reach the horizon line, and then, it is as if they were never there at all.
HENRY
Henry proposed almost a year to the day after we met. And like just about everything else about him up until that point, his proposal was perfect. So quintessentially him, and still entirely perfect. Planned but not rushed, poignant but not effusive. Unexpected but not a surprise. Perfect.
We were on vacation in Paris and everyone—Megan, Ainsley, Josie—was certain he’d do it then. “Right under the Eiffel Tower,” Gene suggested one day when we were splitting turkey sandwiches at my desk. “Or at twilight along the Seine,” Josie sang out from the hall when she overheard the conversation.
I was so swollen with anticipation that I’d nearly ruined the vacation—every meal, every site was a potential landmark to highlight the culmination of our love. And yet, there was nothing. Because, of course, I understood in retrospect, Henry realized that I’d already envisioned the entire Parisian proposal in my mind, and that there was little he could do to catapult his efforts above my imaginary ones. That’s how well