One Good Day
More than anything I wanted a cure for loneliness, but like death lonely would never be cheated and like the flu I could never predict with certainty which aid could prevent it.
The MET is one of the few places of aid I go to. The work week was slow and I had no shifts to occupy myself. No one was shopping we were all hoping to make it week to week. February would open up to March, daylight savings, my birthday, then so quickly April would come and we’d decide we were alright. Just 28 days I repeated through February. When I woke I felt the unease and tinted sadness all over my body, first being unsure if I was just tired and needed more sleep. It did not go away and I knew that I needed to pick from my map of lonely places. I picked the MET.
I always take the same way, visit the same places, passing the dark medieval chambers in order to get there. Stopping in a mockup of a small church with magenta stained glass I look at the artificial sunlight. Only at last to make it to the American Wing and feel like Elizabeth in Darcy’s house. The marble statues allow me to admire them so plainly that they count as real people to me. The glass ceiling makes me feel as though I am outside, but still warm. Many people are always there eating lunch in a cafeteria that I have not yet found the entrance to and am too cheap regardless to enjoy.
I walk and listen to my own footsteps and swallow the last of my drink because my throat is dry from breathing. Dry too because I am not talking and had not talked to anyone since morning despite it being three in the afternoon.
I walk down two marble stairs and find I’m at the entrance to a house. Like a parody western I imagine the bricks collapsing to find only a false wooden stand and me in the place of cut out hole where a window once was. Instead I walk through the real door like I am entering the house of a family member. The artifacts and hardwood are dark, but the windows which look out on the marble lawn let the light in.
Each room is set up like a room once was and I like to imagine the people who once lived there. The women, and the men who became their husbands. I read the plaques, something I only do for these rooms, and admire the fact that they were home for someone. I enjoy the familiarity of walking upstairs to find more rooms and being in hallways without other people above or below. I enjoy that there are no neighbors.
I walk on the third floor through a few rows of glass boxes with bedside tables, harps, leftover furniture with nowhere to go, but leave bored by their flatness.
It is by then getting dark and the MET will no longer serve its purpose. I make one more stop scavenging the Egyptian art to find the fountain on the edge of central park. I gaze at the water and with what little light is left see the coins at the bottom of its stream. I had yet to be embarrassed by my own company, but still searched for the most secluded spot of the open room and dig into my bag.
I need a quarter I repeat to myself. No quarters. Then a dime. Thinking that if it is worth more then it is more likely to come true. Thinking that the universe is donation based or entirely run on capitalism.
I turn my back to give the water privacy. Every wish I had ever made in this room had come true within a week of my saying it. Maybe just thinking it would come true is what counted, but I never left without wishing for something. I held it in my hand thinking that I cannot make too many wishes, that I get only one until this one comes true so I have to make sure it’s the right one. I close my eyes and forget that people can see me. What did I want more than anything? What could I wish for?
I toss the dime back and as it arcs I mouth the words to myself. I must mouth them so they have physical being, repeating them until I hear it hit the water.
Please, I ask, give me one good day.