This is Where We Used to Live

The morning is glorious. A blue New England morning when summer is just giving way to fall. Bright sharp sunshine, just warm enough but with the hint of the crispness to come. Clouds floating fluffy above.

The Saturday that came Before, and I wake up on the floor by the door of a room in a Motel 6 in New Haven. The Suz is dozing in the bed. E-Money is stirring on the same floor, over by the window.

In those days, Suz worked north of the city, and I worked west. Neither of us had bonded with our co-workers, so when we felt social we would meet for drinks on Friday afternoons in Faneuil Hall, where the tourists go. We were only a year into Boston, so we were still somewhat tourists ourselves.

Labor Day weekend found us enjoying the musical stylings of a cover duo calling themselves Me and Julio, even though they didn't play anything by Simon and Garfunkel at all. When they paused for a break, The Suz watched them stand in the street smoking cigarettes. "I just want to go out there and ask, 'Okay, which one of you is me, and which one is Julio?'" she said.

Later in the evening we met up with E-Money and lamented our lack of plans for the Labor Day weekend. The Suz was well into the bag when she announced that all she really wanted in life was a good bagel.

"I know a place," E-Money offered.

The Suz was well near the bottom of the bag, but he and I weren't. We formulated a plan, then the three of us crammed into his Corvette, and he took us to our apartment so we could throw together a few things and exchange his mid-life crisis on wheels for my more practical vehicle, a VW Beetle we called Stewie.

So the next morning we woke up in this motel room in Connecticut.

The Suz was not making a speedy recovery. "I'll take the train home," she said, before she closed the bathroom door. "You guys can go on without me."

"No way. Either we all go or none of us go," said E-Money.

"Agreed," I said. I tossed him my car keys. "There's a CVS across the road. Go get some Advil and some Pepto-Bismol and some Gatorade. Then we wait and see."

Two hours later we were cruising down the FDR trying to decide where to park the car for the day. We picked a spot not far from the UN on a row dotted with embassies in a garage offering the full day for about $12.00. The Suz took another pull from the bottle of Pepto-- she had stashed it in her purse-- as we emerged onto the street.

That was a perfect day.

That was the day we got a bagel in a diner on Lexington Avenue and the waiter thought the three of us were siblings. That was when his remark felt kind of true.

That was the day we met a promotional crew from the Fox network in Central Park who gave us tubes of lip balm bearing the logo for the network's new reality series "Love Cruise." The Suz took the cap off and applied some.

"Let me understand this. Some strangers in Central Park give you lip balm, and you decide it's a good idea to put it on your face?" I said to her.

"Yep. It's not bad," she said and took another swig from the bottle of Pepto. That was the day The Suz was a trooper.

That was the day we made fun of E-Money for ordering a pink girly drink in a bar in Greenwich Village. We also made fun of him for insisting we go to Greenwich Village because he wanted to be on Bleeker Street, because it was the home of some comic book villain whose name I don't remember.

That was the day I accepted a bottle of water someone handed me out the window of and SUV in Times Square.

"Let me understand this. Some strangers hand you a bottle of water from a vehicle in Times Square-- after dark-- and you decide it's a good idea to drink it?" The Suz asked me.

"What? They're legit. It's sealed. The car had the NBC logo on the side," I said.

"Sure, okay," she said.

It was after 11:00 at night when we got back to the car. We had walked all over and seen nearly everything.

"But we didn't make it to the World Trade Center," E-Money lamented.

"That's okay. It'll give us something to do next time," I said.

Of course, there wasn't a next time. When I think about what today is, and what it means, I think about the collapse in my stomach as I watched it happen on a TV screen in my classroom. I think about the colleague crying on the sidewalk outside the school. I think about the tragedy of broken families and the hope of unfathomable heroism. I also think about the war and the debt and how I have to take off my shoes at the airport. I think about all the things I'm supposed to think about today.

But I also think about that perfect day, my first trip to New York with my two best friends in the world. I think about Me and Julio, Pepto Bismol and other pink drinks, and artwork on the sidewalks, and comic book villains. I think about how it seemed safe to accept a bottle of water from a moving car. How it was still safe say things like "Next time." And "It's going to be okay."