I stand at a pop-up park on the Upper East Side. I have never met Nicole in person but we have a dynamic friendship over Zoom. Three hours from now, I’ll never hear from her again.
On the train ride up, I am full of hope. Two gorgeous Australian girls board the train the stop after mine. They sit with football players who strain to make conversation. I can’t help but overhear how the boys make quips and push conversation points past their natural lifespan, eventually settling on the sobering topic of sexual assault on the college campus. The football players soon find themselves obligated to mansplain the statistics of sexual assault to three girls. I put on my headphones. The next time I take them off, the boys are unsuccessfully sparking debate about the merit of New Jersey.
Once in Manhattan, I feel excited. Preceding my arrival, I spend my morning comparing every itinerary within an acceptable price range and walking distance. I make two dinner reservations. I draft a plan for three separate parts of town to appear spontaneous: one in the East Village, one in Midtown, and one in Chelsea.
Meanwhile, Nicole (the girl whom I will never hear from again within two hours) is texting me about her flight.
I giddily step off the platform. This is what a city day should feel like: bursting with the untapped potential of new experiences. On a whim, I search for a specific metabolic soda I once saw Nicole drinking over Facetime and make a point to buy some in a Duane Reade.
Nicole asks for twenty minutes to “get her affairs in order” since she had just arrived on a delayed flight. She must be hungry. I head to Whole Foods to buy ready-made meals for us.
I’m patient, only texting her once after forty-five minutes of delay that I’m in the line at Whole Foods. I’m grateful for the extra time. In my arms, I balance two chicken wraps, two hard seltzers, a baguette, cheeses, and a bag of grapes. The plastic containers dig into my arms as I wait in the massive Manhattan queue. I feel like a personification of the phrase, “I came in for only one thing”.
I settle into a lawn at the Lincoln Center Opera House. The only thought in my mind is if I’ll be fined for drinking my hard seltzers among the New York public. I send a message to Nicole, “Should I come to where you are?”
At this point, she had already made the resolution to never speak to me again. Two prime seats open up. The seatbacks are covered with artificial grass and face toward the gushing fountain of the Lincoln Center. I take out my book to appear inconspicuous.
Ninety minutes go by. I decide to eat my share of the food and call Nicole two times at the half-hour mark. After the second call, I decide to leave a voicemail, thinking that if she were blowing me off, at least she should have a memento of my disappointment.
Two hours pass by. I finish a section of my book and outlast everyone in the park. I look around to see a new cohort of people among me. I try to Facetime Nicole, and I notice that my third voicemail comes after a prolonged ring. Her phone was on.
After three hours, I’ve sent four texts, three calls, one Snapchat and an Instagram direct message. I use one of the women beside me to denote the time. I tell myself, “after this girl leaves, I have to admit I am being stood up”. I glance up from my phone and find the signpost has left. The minute I stand up, the Metropolitan fountain sputters and stops. The whole park is silent without the pounding of water.
I needed to charge my phone. On the off-chance that Nicole had texted me, and it was in my phone that was the problem, I wanted to be ready. I go to an outdoor reading room adjacent to the Opera House and treat myself to the rations of bread, cheese, and hard seltzer that I hoped to nibble alongside Nicole.
At the four-hour mark, I pack up my things and head home. My last message is a voice memo sent from my Bluetooth headphones as I exit the park. I ask only if she was okay. since I could only rationalize this behavior if Nicole had a near-death experience.
I walk aimlessly, like a modern-day Holden Caulfield. My feet are dragging dejected behind me. I am partially drunk and partially depressed. I search for a distraction.
A few blocks away, I hear a noise emanating from Bryant Park. I take off my headphones to see a sprawling audience facing toward the outdoor stage of a classical orchestra. It’s a free concert for the fully vaccinated. I run to the entrance, crack the seltzer I reserved for Nicole and watch the concert with a heavy heart. Between one song (composed by a surprisingly talented fourteen-year-old) I ask the group of girls next to me for their opinion of my predicament.
They suggest that I have been cat-fished, and I defensively pull up Nicole’s Instagram. They aren’t convinced. At best, they say, I should call the hotel and ask if she is a guest. Brilliant, I think maliciously, except I have no idea which hotel she is in. I begin to align with their cat-fishing argument.
Being forgotten is a premeditated and active effort. It’s hard work to get ghosted.
A phone is a tool but it is not who you are. I can send thousands of texts in a month and still neglect to meditate. I can search for love on dating apps and still push off my plans with good friends. Nicole was a person I knew nothing about, and whom I wanted so badly to trust.
I’ve never gotten stood up before, but if I were to describe the feeling, it was a creeping, sinking feeling that I wasn’t good enough.
Right as I leave, I catch a glimpse of a low-cut shirt I recognize from my train ride. There, in the Walgreens checkout, are the same Australian girls I shared a train ride with. The football players are stalking close behind. It’s funny, how the city picked us up and shook us around, and yet I’ve come to the same spot that they did.
The Australian girls walk out of the Walgreens and head in the other direction. I wonder what their day has been like.
When I get back to my apartment, I pawn off the metabolic soda’s to my R.A.
