An Upper East Side story
It was raining. The freaking middle of summer, and it was raining.
The time was 2PM and it was the fifth of July, 2008.
I was getting ready to leave New York, and the skies were weeping with me. I thought it was a touch dramatic of NYC, but very apt.
My cousin and I were walking around Yorkville. The original plan was to go to the MoMA.
She asked, “train or walk?”
“Let’s walk.”
Here’s the funny thing about New York: People will walk ten blocks to the next train station (even if there’s one a block away) if it meant catching an express. And I wanted to get an express that day. “Faster,” I told my cousin.
(I think of the subway station in 96th. How empty it was on weekends, the smallness of it. Always, always, I’d think of the pocket park right next to that station when people say 96th Street. It won’t be raining in my memories. It will always be a sparkling, early summer day, with the children playing in the park. In my head, I’d be turning around to go down, with the crowd, to head downtown.)
We walked. More like ambled along, really. We used the rain as an excuse to keep ducking into stores to window shop. We kept walking down 2nd Avenue until we hit 86th Street. (A familiar route for me by then. I loved the ten-block walk from the apartment to the the 86th Street station.)
I dropped off a CD of the photos I took at a nearby CVS. “An hour,” the Hispanic girl told me. “Come back in an hour.”
We walked past Elaine’s (check out the first scene of Woody Allen’s Manhattan), past Carino (where my aunt treated me to for my birthday), that thrift shop that only seems to open at night (and where I got a couple of beautiful necklaces). Ask me now and I could draw a map of Yorkville for you, with all my favorite stores, spots, boutiques in it, straight from memory.
From a gift shop, I bought picture frames, a thick wad of bright green tissue paper, and purple paper bags. On a whim, I got a handful of small stuffed toys. My cousin looked at the toys, and then at me. “What’s that for?”
“They look cute.”
I wanted to make that day last forever. I wanted to keep inhaling that familiar, comforting smell of New York. I wanted to stay still in the rain until I had absorbed all of New York into my skin.
I send my cousin on. “Go to the restaurant and get us a table. I’ll catch up with you.”
At a bodega, I bought a bouquet of cheerful orange gerberas, picked up the prints from CVS, and dashed into the restaurant. Fetch! said the sign outside. I loved the wooden chairs and tables, the bar in the corner, and the dim lighting.
I leaned forward and told my cousin, “We should get champagne.”
“It’s 3 in the afternoon, cuz.”
“Yes. That’s why we need to get champagne.”
I called the waitress over and asked if they served champagne at this hour. She looked amused and not a little surprised.
I did my best to explain: “You see, I’m leaving New York tomorrow morning, so I want to make this a special event… ”
“Oh! But… Leaving New York?! Why’re you gonna do that?!”
“Well, I was just visiting.”
“Really? So where’re you from?”
“The Philippines.”
“Oh, oh! But that’s sad!” We shared a look of mutual understanding about my frustration. “Okay, wait, I’ll ask our manager if we have any champagne!” She rushed off, and I grinned at my cousin.
“Let’s look at the photos,” I said. And while we were looking at the photos, the waitress came back with two flutes of golden champagne, still fizzing with bubbles. She laid them down on our table, and said, “this one’s on me, ladies.”
On an impulse, I whipped out a shot I took of the underside of the Manhattan Bridge (yes, the shot you see right here) and handed it to her. “And this one’s for you. Thank you very, very much.”
She stared at the photo. “Wow,” she said. “Wow.” Again.
She stood there for a bit and talked to us. I found out that her name was Emma and that she’s still studying, and that she lived nearby, “just along 91st Street, actually.”
After that late lunch, my cousin and I walked back to the apartment. She paused at the corner, just as I was turning into the building, and she goes, “this is it.” We hugged, tightly, and I tried not to cry. “I’ll see you soon,” I said. “Get that apartment so I don’t have to squat at Tita Bing’s anymore.” We laughed, and we walked in two different directions.
I rushed back into the apartment. Dusk was falling. I needed to be on the 7PM train for New Haven if I wanted to have enough time to pack my bags. I vacuumed the apartment one last time, threw out the trash, arranged the gerberas in a vase (right next to the sunflowers that my aunt had bought, on a whim, too, I bet, because we’re kindred spirits like that), fixed up my gifts on the table, and took one last look of the New York skyline that had been my bedside companion for the past three months.
I managed to get to Grand Central Station with only five minutes to spare before the New Haven train was leaving. I got into the bar car (yes, the train car does indeed have a bar) and smiled at the man who was trying to start a conversation with me.
I was going back to Manila. But while I was on that train to New Haven, it felt a lot like I was leaving home.
First posted here.

