Searching

I've been living in New York for some time now, comfortably separated, working a bit too much - as a refuge, I suppose. Dating just seemed weird, and I stopped looking for companionship years ago, just happy to stick to my routines, politely accept the dates that my friends set up, and otherwise enjoy my solitude.

Then, out of the blue, I met HER, in the deep freeze of the coldest winter we've had in decades. What a crazy city this is.

As you know from the news, it has been horribly cold, and getting colder. So cold, in fact, that last week Mrs. Laurel Robinson, 45, of Scarsdale, New York, froze to death one night after getting locked out of her home while looking for her cat. Her husband had long ago been banished to a second bedroom because of his snoring, and didn't realize she was outside until the next morning.

As the anchor on the local news intoned in an appropriately somber and deep voice, this tragic event turned a cold winter into a season of death. That night the temperature dropped to ten degrees overnight, and the next morning Ms. Robinson was found frozen in her backyard.

So you get the picture. A week ago this past Tuesday it was four degrees. As I left my apartment in Manhattan for the 30 minute walk to my office, gusting winds were stirring up the salt and ash that had been liberally spread on sidewalks to fend off slip-and-fall lawyers, much as garlic was once thought to deter vampires. Deter the bloodsuckers! I left at the usual hour, the wind stinging my eyes, my mouth half hidden by a scarf.

The last three or four weeks it has been so cold that I've been wearing whatever I want to the office - jeans, old brown shoes, a long wool coat like a western duster, collar turned up, and an Irish fisherman's sweater that smells like a sheep. If I were a woman my colleagues would cattily hiss behind my back and say "She's given up, poor dear, just LOOK at those shoes, it is so sad (cluck cluck), if she only TRIED a little bit..." Instead, I imagine I come across as an insouciant Ralph Lauren-like executive of a certain means and age, with an accenting touch of grey at the ears. Though I could be wrong.

And so I trudged down Broadway, my eyes stinging, and as I walked my nose began to run - my sinuses have been hell for weeks. I was sniffing, wiping my eyes, and finally I couldn't stand it anymore, I cleared my throat and spat.

Garlic may not truly ward off vampires, but other old adages are true. One should not spit into the wind. Yes, even me, for as you know I'm trumpet player - I have awesome lung volume, and could suck the air out of a Macy's balloon float, or blow down the little piggies' straw and twig houses, maybe even their brick house too if I huffed and puffed enough. If I were the more vulgar type, I might be dominating my age category in the Spitting Program International Tournament (SPIT) (50 and over, non smoker), riding from one venue in the Ozarks to another until I had no more room for trophy-spittoons on my mantle.

But you see, some folks have to learn the hard way. I was always the kid who, when the sign said "no this, that, or the other thing permitted" would immediately do whatever was prohibited to see what would happen. I needed to know why, always.

Now some people don't spit at all - they think it is gross. I guess it is a question of your circumstances and upbringing. The Japanese, who are forever spitting everywhere, think that our habit of expelling snot balls into hankies that we carefully fold and put back into our pockets is gross. They have a point.

Other people spit, but not on the crowded sidewalks of New York. If your aim is off by a few degrees you could hit somebody, and they might respond by beating you to death with their bare hands, a trash can, a newspaper box, or by pushing you into a careening taxi driven by a Egyptian emigrant who has never driven in ice and snow before. I myself have no reservations - under duress, I'm a spitter.

You might think I was being particularly dim, or something - I mean, everybody knows that you shouldn't spit into the wind. I guess I wasn't thinking, or the whole thing was too distracting - the cold, the grit in the air, my runny eyes. We all know that the reason we don't spit into the wind is that, well, it comes back at us. But there's more to this story. Much more.

The reason we don't spit into the wind in winter when it is four degrees with a wind chill of twenty five below is not only because it comes back at us, but because it freezes so fast you can almost hear it, crackling faintly as physics and chemistry and other science stuff happens and the liquids you expelled at approximately 98.6 degrees return as an irregularly shaped, jagged little three dimensional polygon.

And so it did. It came back at me, right in my face. This is where you can say "Eww",but it more or less bounced off of me, like hail and icy rain will.

I cursed and kept walking down the street, bumping into a few people who were off balance from the unaccustomed, poorly distributed weight of six layers of clothes. As I walked I felt my ears and cheeks start to burn from the cold, and thought about putting on my gloves, but I hate gloves.

I was about halfway to my office in the Financial District when a woman stopped in front of me, blocking my path, and said to me "Are you ok?"

I'm often stopped on the streets in New York. Three quarters of the people who stop me need directions, especially down here in the south part of Manhattan - the streets are built on old colonial footpaths, which were built on old Indian trails, which were built to track game along meandering streams long gone. It isn't like midtown - a neat, ordered grid of numbered streets - it is very confusing.

I'm happy to help folks who stop me and ask for directions, and as far as the people who aren't asking for directions - they are usually trying to hustle me. This is New York, after all.

I always try to decide as quickly as I can who is going to hustle me and who needs help. I'm in a pointless rush, like every other coffee guzzling, harried New Yorker. But even after having been stopped by people maybe a hundred times, I've never had anyone ask me if I was OK, even after too many drinks at my favorite sushi bar when they should have been asking.

I looked at her and wasn't quite sure what was happening. She looked local, whatever that means - had a certain air, she looked like she was on her way to work - and I didn't think she was going to hustle me. She had on a nice brown winter wool coat, a lovely pattered scarf, and a pair of pearl earrings that were probably real, judging by the fabric of her coat and scarf. 'Was I alright'? What did she mean?

"Excuse me?" I wasn't sure what else to say.

"I asked if you were alright." She was looking right at me, and had the loveliest blue eyes set against pale skin. "You're bleeding." With that she reached up, took off her brown leather gloves, and touched my face, ever so gently. "Right there. I'll show you." She rummaged around for a second in her purse-thing, fished out a compact - that's what you call them, right, those little round mirror things in cases - popped it open, and pointed it at me.

She was right. The icy kamikaze spitball from hell that I had created apparently had cut my face when the wind ricocheted it back at me. Back at ya' kid! Blood had been dripping down my cheek for blocks, freezing about halfway down, my face too numb to feel it. I looked like an escapee from a Halloween horror house created by eight year old boys.

I was genuinely startled, and almost felt light headed - I'm not sure why, it wasn't more than a small gouge in my face. At fifty four I've got more than my share of accumulated dings, scars, and healed-over wounds in places both visible and hidden, and I don't give these types of mishaps a second thought.

I think what caused my momentary wooziness was the surprise of it all. I saw her look at me with concern. "I have one of those wipes..." and the next thing I knew she was handing me an antiseptic wipe.

We were standing in the middle of the street, and I suggested we get out of the pedestrian traffic, so we moved to the fence at the edge of the sidewalk, the fence that borders Trinity Church and the graveyard. I fumbled around - my hands were half cold and numb, my fingers not working too well - and then she started laughing, covering her mouth with her hand.

"What?"

"You're just smearing it around!" and she outright laughed. "Look, if you promise me you don't have any blood-borne diseases, I'll do it. Promise?"

She was looking in my eyes again, confident and comfortable, right at me.

"No blood borne diseases, promise."

She put her right glove back on - I'm not sure she totally trusted me - and pulled another wipe from the mini-dispenser. With the softest touch she daubed at my face. The alcohol stung for a moment and I probably flinched the tiniest bit.

She paused for a moment, looked at me again - "Is it ok?" and I nodded. She pressed a bit more firmly, and finally, after a few moments of wiping studied my face, for longer than seemed necessary, honestly - and seemed satisfied. "Much better, see?"

I looked at myself in her compact, trying to move the tiny circle of mirror to get the right view. Indeed, no more little kid Halloween fright mask.

And that is when it got really weird. As I stood there I could not help myself - I felt my face grow warm and started to cry silently. First a tear welled up in my eye, and then another, and they started rolling down my face, the salt stinging the nick on my cheek all over again, and her blue eyes got big. "Did I hurt you? I'm so sorry!"

"No, no, the opposite. Are you a doctor or a nurse or EMT or something?"

She smiled again. "No, that's silly. I just wiped some blood off your face, I didn't perform a hip transplant." But she still looked puzzled. "Why are you crying?"

And I don't know why, but for once in my life I let down that guard, that protective armor I carry everywhere like a Roman shield. I didn't want anyone other than her to hear my confession, and said it softly. "I'm crying because it has been so long since I was touched with such care and concern. Too long."

And as I admitted this I felt the tears again, rolling down my chapped face in the cold and dripping off of my chin.

She just looked at me and cocked her head. I looked down for a second, embarrassed at the whole thing: my stupidity by challenging one of the most basic laws of nature, spitting into the wind! Embarrassed for having walked ten blocks or more with a blood-smeared face. And embarrassed for crying, and admitting to a stranger that I craved to be touched.

I felt as if I were naked, exposed, and it was uncomfortable and wanted it to end. "Listen, I can't thank you enough. I'm sure you have to go to work - I do too, despite the way I'm dressed, I actually do have a job."

Softly, somewhat tentatively, she said "You're welcome. You know, people always say that kind of thing, like a cliché: 'I can't thank you enough.' Actually, you could thank me 'enough.' You know how?" It was now my turn to cock my head. "You could buy me lunch one day next week."

That's when I noticed, on her ungloved left hand, that she didn't have a ring. Not one. No wedding ring, no engagement ring, no wedding-engage combo, no trick rings on the non-ring fingers to confuse me and other simple-minded men.

So we had lunch this past Monday. She's separated, too, no kids - thought that's complicated - and he's in Florida - much older. Eventually the age thing became too much. He moved to Florida, Boca Raton, to bask in the warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico in his waning years. She said "Boca Raton - doesn't that mean 'the rat's mouth'? Somehow I doubt that Walter's coming back from the rat's mouth. It seems to suit him." (Insert mischievous smile.)

She used to play piano and appreciates music, and speaks a little German. She's a curator for a small fine arts museum, and her specialty is European furniture from the 16ththru 19th centuries. She's travelled extensively over the years, sometimes to rough places hoping to uncover dusty family heirlooms and the like.

As we exchanged details over lunch she told me that she and Walter had a child, a daughter. Their daughter was killed ten years ago in a car accident at the age of sixteen when a classmate drunkenly crashed a car full of post-prom kids into a tree. The daughter lingered on life support for a week, an agonizing eternity where her mother was forced to question and eventually abandon her faith and hope.

It has been years since that happened; she told the story factually, without much emotion, but it was then I realized what I saw in her, what really touched me - there seemed to be a sadness in her that connected with my own. There was something deep, permanent, irrevocable in her, something hidden by the scars that time accretes on our soul, but beneath which lives the dulled sense memory of searing pain that can never be forgotten.

She came over just this past Tuesday night - the circumstances and logistics seemed to present themselves, a coincidence and an opportunity. It was so cold that we agreed we'd order Chinese food, a so-very-New York thing to do.

Candles flickered on the table in my apartment as the heat from the register struggled to keep us warm, and gently nudged the flames atop the wicks. The Empire State building literally shimmered on the horizon, the air so cold that the light from its tower danced and wavered as it sped through the subfreezing ether.

She wore a dress, a dress like a real woman, and when she turned away from me I could see underneath the fabric the garter stays that held up her stockings, as if they were beckoning me. When we sat on the couch after dinner she asked me to put my arm around her, to warm her, she said.

Afterwards, hours later, we curled in bed and talked, almost all night, the rug burns on my knees a mark of our pleasure, the yin and yang like the sweet and sour soup we shared for dinner. I want to describe for you the spectacular sex, how her moans echoed in my ears and were seared into my memory, burying my aches, how the cold and her passion made the points on her chest swell like her body was reaching out to me, how I erupted in a fit of pent-up need and desire and made rivers run, how her heart was pounding after she came, like a Valentine's Day cartoon on a sproingy bouncy spring. But there I go again, like a man, getting into the biomechanics of it all.

Sometime around two a.m. I lit the last taper candle in the apartment and put another blanket on the bed, crawling back under the covers. She rested her head against my scarred chest and ran her fingers thru the graying curly hair that covers me to my neck. As she moved her fingers aimlessly over my chest, she whispered so low I could barely hear her - "I needed you to touch me as much as you needed me to touch you." My search is over.

Of course, my dear reader, none of this is true - I just wish it were. Well, almost none of it is true. The only true part is about Mrs. Robinson, who after a couple of drinks too many wandered out to look for her cat and died in the cold, though she never really felt a thing. Because that is how life really is - or is it?