Wind across the table lifts the paper napkins she placed next to her plate and almost at the same time the sun, sinking behind moving clouds, lifts the scene from white grey to orange and light. She looks up and smiles as a waiter walks past with a high tray stacked with baskets of nachos and spins past a woman holding a small dog in one hand and a beer in the other. We both turn sharply as the woman spills the beer on herself and walks away resignedly, then smile again as our eyes return to each other.
The sun is out for the first time since we took our seats, and the river is bright and moving with the light of the afternoon.
Later we sit precariously, it seems, on the end of a jetty in the river. Growing up surrounded by the sea, the constant strong streaming flow of the river gives me a feeling like vertigo, like movement.
What did we talk about?
A man in jeans, a woollen sweater and deck shoes sits behind us next to a charter boat, reading silently. Behind his boat the city roars, muted by trees and water. Helicopters chatter overhead, following the river.
The helicopters. We talked a little about the helicopters.
I look at some of the boats moored and facing the flow of the river, wondering what it must be like to arrive in the city by boat from somewhere far away. We hold each other, sitting with our legs over the edge of the wooden beam, over the eddies of the water. The sun is moving below the buildings on the other bank.
We talked about friends, and England, and weddings.
We stand, awkwardly, carefully, and walk along the jetty to the bank and the path which is busy with cyclists and runners, and we take the wrong way back to the street, walking around a roundabout as traffic growls past.
The wind drops. The wispy clouds above the city blocks drift, imperceptibly.
When we look up the buildings don't look like they are falling from below.
We catch the subway a couple of stops uptown.
We wait outside a sushi bar and catch a bus home, the city darkening around us. By the time the bus is speeding across the Triboro, it is dark and the city is glowing, sharp points in intricacy. The view is untouchable for a moment until the netting on the bridge masks the way and makes the panorama elusive, fleeting, something to seek rather than drink in. We are holding hands. The bus comes down the long gentle ramp of the bridge and turns off and we are amongst bodegas, gas stations, apartment buildings, stores, inexplicable juice shops. We get off the bus after it stops under the elevated subway line and walk, slowly, in the warm air and gentle breeze, home.
e.