I was crossing the street when I saw this guy walking ahead of me in khakis and a polo, with curly blond hair and a North Face backpack, walking really fast, purposefully I mean, like he had important things to do. But his outermost backpack pocket was half unzipped, and then it flopped all the way open as he rounded a corner right in front of me, letting a little red box bounce to the ground. I finished crossing the street with some more spring in my step, yelling out to the guy Hey, you dropped... I could hear my pathetic quaver of a yell calling him over my music but of course he didn't hear me because he was listening to his iPod. So anyway I knelt down and picked it up, and it was a jewelry box—too big for a ring, maybe for a bracelet or necklace or something. I opened it, which I knew was not the polite thing to do but I was curious, and I don't know anything about jewelry but it was an actual diamond bracelet and it was gorgeous. I wondered if it was an anniversary gift for a girlfriend, or a birthday present, or if it was supposed to mean something maybe. I don't know. I thought, maybe he passed a jewelry store and saw a bunch of diamond rings and had the sudden urge to buy one, but realized that it was too soon or too expensive or that he was too young, or afraid, and copped out and bought this bracelet instead. Did you know, or didn't you, that that was why I bought you that necklace for your nineteenth birthday?
#
Definitely I got a little covetous about this bracelet, but I had no reason to steal it, and I started chasing after this guy. Took like a block and a half for me to catch him, when he went into that little book shop, you know the one I mean, where we used to make out back in the dusty Foreign section. I was panting distinctly when I tapped him on the shoulder, he'd gone straight to the Beat section and was leafing through Kerouac, of course, and he turned around looking dubious. I held out the bracelet and was like, You dropped this. He looked amazed and said, Thanks dude, I would've shot myself if I'd lost that, in a light southern accent. That was when I realized I knew him, because my freshman year he dated this girl Ashley who lived down the hall from me, and he did something shitty to her, I couldn't remember what anymore. He didn't seem to recognize me at all even though I do remember he spent a lot of time acting embarrassed whenever he saw me or any of Ashley's friends, back then. Still, remembering all that made me suspect the romantic gift was more like a bribe. I stuck around after the dude left, shopping the American section. If you're wondering whether I leafed through Descending Figure then I'll go you one better, because I bought a copy, and yes it was my third if you also count the one that used to be yours, but I hadn't packed anything to read on the bus. And the funny thing is that like you I've read the whole thing so much I can recite it in my sleep, but I like to read over lines of poetry that I've already memorized, it's like running your fingers over the curve of a jaw or the angle of a nose on a face that you know and will always know by heart. As soon as I had the volume in my hands, in fact, the vague stifling drug-induced panic that had been upon me all day dissipated a little bit, and when I left the store I pressed the purple daisy into the first page and slipped the book into my backpack.
#
So then I went into the subway and I was actually on the platform, having paid my hard-earned two bucks, waiting for the train to take me to the bus station, listening to Golden Slumbers, when I realized that I had a shift the next day. I figured I might as well quit straight off instead of pretending like I might be coming back in a few weeks, because this is just a gig at a cheesy stationery store anyway and the surfeit of fancy-paper smell and faux-witty birthday card quotes gets on my nerves. So I left even though it was annoying to waste the two dollars and I had a feeling it was going to be a huge waste of time too, not to mention the inhuman number of stairs it took to get back up to the street. But at least when I got to the store the manager was actually there for once, and he was cool about me leaving with no notice. I didn't mention that I was physically leaving, just said I wanted to quit. Actually he was like, I'll give you a reference any time and I won't even mention how you slept through every morning shift I ever gave you, and I was like, ...Thanks? and he looked closer at me and was like, So are you okay, man? But I don't like talking to authority figures, even a washed up sixty-year-old whose proudest moment in his entire life is still the time he went backstage at a Clapton concert, and who sometimes offers to sell me drugs. I shrugged and went like, Yeah I'm good, I just decided I'd rather devote my energies to schoolwork, which he took as a joke even though I meant it more as a believable lie. After having himself a nice chuckle he was like, Well hey, before you leave you should buy anything you need while you still have your employee discount. I gave him this look, like why would I ever, ever buy something at this sad sad store, and then he said, What, you don't have any people back home to write letters to? Love letters? Nothing? And like, obviously it's the twenty-first century and I use email when I write to the two people I bother to keep in touch with, my mother and your little sister, but when he said that it made me think. The first thing I thought was that I should write to you, and email is a hopelessly tacky way of doing that sort of morbid and vainglorious thing, so I bought this plain heavy grayish paper that I'm writing on right now, with matching envelopes with silvered edges, for thirty-five percent off which was still ridiculously expensive, and tucked it into the backpack on top of my new book. The second thing I thought was that I was leaving someone behind if I left right now, who might actually give a shit, who might want a letter from me later if this were a world where people still wrote letters.
