Muh-reee-uh! The canopy was so tight and motionless that the little light piercing through appeared more like twinkling stars than sun rays. Muh-reee-uh! The dinning and humming of the traffic and people created a bustling wall of silence that separated me from Megan and everything beyond the tress.
Hoods and yuppies and weirdos walked by us, rushing in one direction or another. They seemed happy, so I peered at them in disgust. As Megan chatted away, I thought: None of them know what I’m feeling, and none of them could possibly understand my condition. I studied each passer-by intently, searching for reasons to hate them. I heard the rumble of a Concorde in the sky above, probably on its way to Paris, glanced at it in disgust, and returned my gaze to the pathway before me.
That’s when I saw Maria.
She hurried by Megan and me; she made eye contact with neither of us. I wanted to run up to her and ask what she was doing there in Central Park that day. Oh, my dear, sweet Maria, did you travel into the city in hopes of finding our initials in our tree? Did you recognize me on the subway ride that morning, hoping to confront me one last time, and spit in my face?—or shoot me?—or hug me? Yes, that’s it! Maybe you saw me on the R train and wanted to declare that you’d finally read my poem and desired to be my present love once again? Sweating, I contemplated these and other questions for a few moments. I never unearthed the answers, though, because, upon my second look, Maria had vanished.
I tensed-up. My flesh turned cold and hard. My body hair stood on end. The homeless man reappeared, the one that was singing A Hard Day’s Night just a few moments before. I could have sworn I heard him change his tune, and begin singing—yelling, actually—the words to The Long and Winding Road.
How does he know? I wondered. How does he know?
Did Maria spitefully give him a buck and request that song after noticing me on the bench with Megan? I hated her for doing that. And I felt as if all of Central Park’s visitors were covering their mouths, smothering their giggles, not because they were happy, but because they were laughing at me. As I sat on that goddamn bench, with a goddamn girl I didn’t want to be with. The sounds of the park became a drum playing a slow roll, taunting me, mocking me.
Most distinctive in my left ear was that bum singing that goddamn song; most distinctive in my right was the little, stupid conclusion to what was until that moment Megan’s soliloquy.
“So, that’s it,” she said, “I really want to be a corporate attorney. My dad’s not just a Deacon. He’s an attorney, too, but he works mostly on cases involving very poor people. It’s not like we’re rich or anything. He said I should shoot for something better, for a job where I can not only have my own office and make good money, but also defend high class people. The money’s not that important to me, though. I won’t owe much after college, because I’m in the Air Force ROTC program at Hunter, and it pays most of my tuition.”
My ears perked. I felt as if I’d been given a steroid injection.
“I never mentioned that I was in the ROTC, did I? I guess that sometimes I’m sort of embarrassed about it, you know, because I couldn’t afford to go to school without it. And I never had much of an interest in the Air Force. To be honest, I really just do it for the financial aid. It’s not bad, though; I get to fly planes at Camden Air Force Base in Jersey. It’s pretty cool. And when I graduate from college in a few years, I have to serve in the Air Force for a while. But that’s okay. I heard that it’s good to take a few years off after college before you go to graduate or law school. It should be a good experience. Hey, didn’t you mention once that you were really into planes and stuff? A.J.? A.J.—are you all right?”
She’s in the ROTC? Megan’s a fucking pilot? The blaring drum roll engulfed my trembling body. It was anticipating something or another, though I didn’t know just what.
Megan sounded so—what’s the word I’m looking for?—sure. Sure about herself and about her plans for a bright future. She was confident, but not cocky; happy, but not idealistic. There was nothing about her that I could have possibly hated that moment, and that’s precisely why I loathed her so. That’s why I didn’t respond for a few moments, hoping she’d think that I wasn’t listening, that I didn’t give a shit about her goddamn plans. She’s a tease, I thought. But what she was teasing with exactly, I had no idea.
She was as confident and hopeful as my old friends from high school seemed to be. And it killed me. I thought of all of them at that moment. Kyle and Paul and Rick and Mike—they’re all doing well. Kyle, currently the youngest DJ in the history of Long Island’s WNHR, is destined to be a famous comedian, I’m sure. He always managed to be crass and make people laugh without offending and harming people, and now on his morning show he’s being paid to do just that. Paul’s doing an internship with Chase Manhattan Bank this summer. I guess those extra math classes finally paid off. Mike’s the editor of New York University’s daily newspaper—a first for a freshman—and he reviews two movies per week. His dream is to review movies for the Daily News, and I have no doubt he’ll realize it soon. Rick’s at the New York Restaurant School, majoring in restaurant management. He co-manages a bar in Greenwich Village part-time between classes.
And Maria? Well, I ran into Lynn last month on the R-train and she updated me on Maria’s life.
“So, A.J.,” she said, “where are you going on the R-train at 8 a.m.? To morning work out at the Air Force Academy?” She chortled, vindictively, like the Wicked Witch of the West as she set upon Dorothy’s ruby slippers. But I had no lightening to zap her away.
“No, I go to Hunter College now. I decided to take a year off before the Academy.”
“I see,” she said.
“What are you doing on the subway so early? Gonna catch a train in Grand Central and head up to Saratoga to race?”
Unfazed by my sarcasm, she responded: “No, actually, I’m on my way to a bridal shop on Central Park South. I’m going to be a bride’s maid in a beautiful June wedding. June 21st, to be exact—the first day of spring. Isn’t that romantic?” She spoke as if there was a viper up her sleeve.
“Not really,” I said. “I think marriage is a waste of time, no matter what month it’s in.”
“But don’t you want to know who the bride is?” she asked.
“Sure.”
She smiled. “Maria.”
My heart fell to the subway’s filthy floor. I stared at the ground and searched but it had already degenerated. The train screeched to a halt at the Fifth Avenue and 59th Street stop. Ding-dong went the bell, signaling everyone to board or get off. “Toodle-oo,” I heard her say. I looked up and she was gone.
To this day I have no clue if Lynn was telling the truth or not. Hell, what are the odds that Maria got engaged and was about to get married all in a little over a year? Regardless, it stung. Regardless, it made me realize how much of a shmuck I really was, how pathetic I was.
I used to think I was so cool. But the more I reflect on my mistakes, the more obvious it becomes that I was a putz. I think a lot about Maria getting married, wearing that beautiful white dress, and how she told her new husband what an asshole her ex-boyfriend was. I think a lot about the time that Mike and Rick dumped water on my head, how Kyle reacted so coolly as I screamed in anger. Only now do I realize that they weren’t laughing at us. They were laughing at me. All of these realizations and thoughts struck me like lightning bolts at that moment in Strawberry Fields.