Love Lettering

by Kate Clayborn

  Once I get to Pierrepont Place I can see the blue of the East River ahead. With the sun shining, the water is a brighter shade than I’ve seen in months and months, and the breeze across my face is enough to cool me down, but not enough to make me worried about getting hair stuck in my lip gloss, which, as everyone knows, is the ideal type of breeze. There’s a woman hanging around the bike racks, juggling four balls of yarn and singing a song about cat astronauts (Keep NYC Weird, obviously), and while I’d normally think of this as an ideal opportunity to avert my eyes and pretend there’s something interesting on my phone, this stretch of people-watching I’ve been indulging in means I’m somehow charmed and not vaguely on alert for one of those yarn balls to hit me in the head. For a few seconds I feel a bit like chocolate milkshake guy or club sandwich man, remembering for the first time since the swoosh why I’d thought this was a good idea. Even if Reid says no, getting out here, around all these people, will be good for me.

  I just need to get through this one meeting, which I am, again, six minutes early for, an absolute advantage since I can set myself—

  Except of course! He’s already here.

  He’s twenty or so yards down the Promenade, his forearms resting along the railing, hands clasped in front of him as he looks across the river toward the city. He’s definitely not doing business casual, wearing instead something similar to what I saw him in a week ago—sneakers, jeans, jacket. Maybe this is his Sunday outfit. It’s probably labeled that way in his extremely anal-retentive closet. His profile, even at a distance, is ridiculously handsome.

  I subtract a few letters from that word that’s been haunting me. His face looks like the word swoon.

  He straightens as I draw closer to him, as though he’s sensed me coming, and when he turns toward me there’s an awkward few steps where there’s nothing happening except him standing there waiting for me. I feel as if I’m walking the plank toward those blue eyes, flat and fixed on me. I wonder if he’ll say, “Good afternoon.”

  “Hey,” he says instead. I try not to let my eyebrows raise in surprise.

  “Thanks for coming.” For the first time, I notice there’s a woman sitting on the bench closest to us. She’s got a travel mug in one hand and her phone in the other, and she’s staring at Reid with her mouth slightly open, which is probably what I would be doing if I were in her position and was seeing him for the first time. He doesn’t seem to notice, but still I say, “Want to walk?” and I’m relieved when he nods, lifting an arm in a gesture that tells me to go ahead. Maybe the woman behind us sighs.

  “So,” I say, trying to squeeze right into that casual “Hey” he offered me. “How’s your weekend been?”

  He looks over at me, blinks once. He is definitely not going to dignify small talk with a response. I might as well have asked him which sexually transmitted diseases he’s been tested for.

  “Mine’s been okay,” I continue, as though he’s answered me. “Of course, it rained all day yesterday, so I didn’t get out much. Pretty nice out here today, though.”

  If Sibby were here, she would remind me that talking about the weather in this way is functionally the same as having “I’m a Midwesterner” tattooed onto my face. For my next trick, why not bring up a garage sale I heard about? Or perhaps point out that I got the bag I’m carrying at a fifty percent off sale, with an extra five percent deducted for a temperamental zipper? Would Reid be interested in knowing my opinions on mayonnaise versus Miracle Whip?

  “You mentioned you had an idea,” Reid says, and he is obviously not referring to the mayonnaise-Miracle Whip thing.

  I clear my throat, committed to dispensing with the small talk for both our sakes. “Right. Right, well. I was thinking about what you said last week. About there not being signs for you here?”

  I slide my eyes his way. His hands are in his jacket pockets. His head is tipped down. He’s listening, but he’s keeping his distance about it.

  “Well, signs are sort of . . . my thing. Given my job and all, I’m always interested in signs—what they say, how they say it.”

  He stops, and I’m a half step ahead before I pause, too, turning to look back at him. His face is so serious, the kind of face that should be stamped on a coin.

  “I was not speaking literally.” I think the slight softness to his voice is sympathy. Dear Diary, I imagine him writing later. Today I met a woman wearing too many buttons who does not understand what a metaphor is.

  “No, I mean . . . of course, I realize that. But when I first moved here, the actual signs, they sort of, um”—I look out toward the Manhattan skyline, all its huge gray-and-glass chaos—“they organized my experience.”

  There’s a long stretch of silence while Reid simply looks at me. I’m guessing my sense of organization is different from his, what with the days-of-the-week outfits and daily diary entries I have assigned to him, but for some reason—maybe for the same reason I felt that odd connection to him last week and last year, too—I have the sense he gets it. That he wants me to keep going.

  We start walking again.

  “I have this project. My deadline is in July, which is a long way away, but also not, because I’m . . .” I pause, a heavy swallow in my throat. Too blocked to even say the word out loud, which is I guess whatever the opposite of irony is. “Because I’ve been having some trouble focusing on my work lately,” I say instead.

  “That seems hard to believe.”

  “Why’s that?”

  He looks out at one of the piers beneath us, where there’s some kind of kickball game going on, the occasional distant shout of celebration or objection filtering up to us. “Because you—the lettering projects, I mean. They’re very . . . creative.”

  My lips press together in annoyance. Something about the way he’s said creative—as if he’s using air quotes around the word—makes it sound like I’m hobbying around, not serious. I tell myself to let it go, but then my mouth uncharacteristically trots ahead of my brain.

  “You think creative people don’t have to focus?”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “What I do, it’s a business, and—”

  “I meant that it seems like it would be interesting, what you do. Lots of variation.”

  “Oh.” I think about explaining all the Bloom Where You’re Planteds, everyone lately wanting the same kind of brush lettering—swooping, upright scripts with fat, washed-out downstrokes. But it’s probably petty to get into it. At least I’ve been switching up the color schemes.

  “Is it not that way?” he asks, and the thing is, even though I don’t really know Reid at all, I once again get that sense about him, something essential. He never asks a question he doesn’t want to know the answer to. In a world of the standard, unthinking “How are you?” where the only real acceptable answer seems to be a neutral “Fine,” Reid’s attention feels special. Acute.

  I shrug. “It’s the same as anything else, I suppose. It can get rote, or frustrating. When that happens, it’s easy to make a mistake.”

  He coughs. Because I said mistake. I wonder if the dive into the river from here would kill me, or just maim me. I think my steps actually falter for a second, as though my body’s really considering it. It can’t be as dirty in there as everyone’s always saying.

  “It’s okay,” he says, keeping his eyes ahead. “It’s a common word.”

  “I’m sure your work is interesting!” I blurt. “Variation, or whatever.” I try to think of some keywords from the absolutely impenetrable Wikipedia page on “quantitative analysts” I read last week in preparation for this meeting. I think I quit reading at the word stochastic, which actually sort of reminded me of Reid, if what it means is a combination of stoic and sarcastic. But I’m pretty sure it has to do with calculus.

  “What kind of project?” Reid asks, and it is absolutely a deliberate cutoff. He is not interested in talking about his work with me, which I suppose I should be grateful for. It is both too math adjacent and too ex-fiancée
adjacent.

  I stop, gesture to one of the few empty benches on this busier part of the Promenade. Once I’m seated, I pull my bag onto my lap, reach in for the slim, soft-covered notebook I’ve been using for my ideas. When Reid sits beside me, I wince at the crinkle of stuff inside—a half-eaten bag of pretzels, probably ten balled-up receipts from Target. I start talking immediately to cover it, and maybe it’s a gift—having to rush this out. It ensures that I don’t think too hard about Reid being the first person I’ve told.

  “There’s this company, Make It Happyn? ‘Happen’ but with a y, so it’s—uh, ‘happy’ also.”

  “I don’t get it.”

  Frankly, I don’t get it, either. It is cheesy in a way that makes me slightly embarrassed, but I don’t want to admit that to Reid, so I move on. “They’re a big brand for most of the major craft retailers. They make build-your-own planner materials. Folios and accessories and calendar pages.”

  “Like what you make.”

  “Not really,” I say, thinking of the big, neon-signed store on Atlantic Avenue that I visited after my first phone call with the artistic director, a bold-voiced, fast-talking woman named Ivonne. The Make It Happyn aisle had been crowded with shoppers, some displays nearly sold out. I’d felt uncertain initially, seeing some of the more generic stuff. A January spread done all in ice blue. February, pinks and reds. March, all green. April, raindrops. May? An actual Maypole, which made Bloom Where You’re Planted feel damned subtle by comparison.

  But I’d been excited, too, by the possibilities, by the treatments I could create. It could be career-changing, this job, giving me the kind of opportunities most people in my position would love to have. Life-changing, especially now, if it means I can stay in my place on my own, at least for a while.

  “I mean, yes,” I correct, raising my chin. “They’re mass-produced, obviously. Not . . .” I trail off. Not containing subtle commentary on the status of anyone’s relationship, is what I’m thinking. That’s another benefit to the job, frankly. Surely I won’t be tempted to weave ridiculous, reckless codes into work I’m submitting for a general audience.

  “Unique,” Reid says, and it’s a kindness, I think. The most generous completion of that sentence possible.

  I stroke the front of my bag, my face flushing, but stop when I hear the crinkling again.

  “So,” I say brightly, to cover the crinkling, “They’ve asked me and a few other artists to produce three treatments, full-year planner pages. If they choose me, they’d produce a line with my work, using my name.”

  “Aha,” he says quietly, barely a murmur. “A business opportunity.”

  “You say that as if it’s a bad thing.”

  He turns his head, looks vacantly across the river. “It isn’t.” He lifts a hand, gestures toward the Manhattan skyline. “Obviously.”

  But that Obviously—he’s sure made it sound as if it’s a bad thing. He’s made it sound like business opportunities are the worst thing. Like that skyline is Sauron.

  When he looks at me, his blue eyes washed pale with the bright sun, his expression looks harder, closer to the way it had been when he’d come to the shop last week.

  “Despite what you may think about my work,” he says, “I’m not some kind of business consultant. That isn’t the work I do.”

  “I have no idea what you do.”

  “I told you. I’m a qu—”

  It’s my turn to wave a hand. “I looked it up. I still don’t understand it. Math, that’s the extent of it. You’re probably very smart.”

  His mouth lifts, higher on the right side, and it makes a gorgeous decorative line on his cheek, a curve up from his chin, a gentle swoop outward toward his cheek. That curve—it only lasts a second, maybe two, but it’s enough to feel seared into my brain. I’ll probably try to draw it later. Swoonsh.

  “I don’t want you to help me with my business,” I say, looking away. “That’s not what this is for.”

  “What’s it for, then?”

  I take a deep, courage-gathering inhale. “It’s for me to get some ideas.”

  I tell him briefly about the signs, about how they inspired me, how the letters on them, especially in this city, are full of variation. I show him the page in my notebook, where I’ve made a bulleted list of some of the most famous hand-lettered signs around the city. I reach for my phone, to show him the map I’ve saved, tiny red pins marking all the places I plan to go, but before I can unlock it, he speaks.

  “I don’t see why you’d want me involved. I don’t know anything about letters.”

  “Because you’re a numbers guy.” A statement, not a question, and he doesn’t respond other than with another polite tip of his head. It’s as much an agreement as it is an invitation for me to continue, to well and truly explain myself.

  But I’m not sure if I can do that. I’m not sure if I can be as honest, as direct as he was. I found your card, and it felt like a sign.

  So I shrug casually, as if I do this kind of thing all the time. “Last time we talked, you said you hated this city. And it seemed to me I could h—”

  He stiffens. That’s saying something, because he is a stiff guy in general. “You feel sorry for me.” His tone is sharp.

  “What? No!” I think fleetingly of opening my bag to show him the pretzels and Target receipts. Do I look like a person who would feel sorry for you? I would say.

  “Because I am not . . . I am not brokenhearted. About Avery.”

  That tiny point of clarification. God.

  “I wanted some company,” I blurt, and that, I realize, is what I should’ve said from the beginning. It isn’t the whole truth, but it’s certainly part of it. I do want some company, and Reid—the only man in this city, in this world, who knows my secret—might, oddly enough, be the right man for the job.

  He doesn’t say anything for a few seconds. Then he stands, tucking his hands in his jacket pockets and turning back to me. From anyone else, I’d read this as a dick move, a way for someone to literally talk down to me. But Reid’s face is contemplative, his posture looser. I think he simply needed to move, even that small amount.

  “Someone did tell me recently I ought to try keeping my mind occupied.”

  I know he wouldn’t appreciate it, but I definitely feel sorry for him now. This feeling intensifies when Reid takes one hand from his pocket and tugs at the sleeves of his jacket—a small, unconscious gesture that spells out a whole page of feeling to me. His discomfort. His disorientation at this whole entire prospect.

  “Well, you see?” My voice is so . . . buoyant. “It could be a great idea. Even if it’s awful, your mind will be occupied with how awful it is.” I smile up at him, and he swoonshes at me fleetingly. Then it’s quiet again, Reid looking down at the gray pavers while I wait, notebook clutched in my hands.

  “It’s a y instead of an e?” he says, finally.

  I blink up at him, and it takes me a second to catch up. Make It Happyn, of course.

  “Yes.”

  “Because having the planner makes you happy.” He says this so flatly. Stochastically. What if he had been in the marketing meeting where this idea was proposed? Probably everyone would have vaporized from the sheer force of his displeasure.

  “I think that’s the idea.”

  “It’s ridiculous.”

  I nod, look down at my notebook. It’ll be fine, to do this alone. Good for me, even.

  He clears his throat, waits for me to look up at him. He fixes me with eyes that are, for the moment, not so sad. And then he says, “It’s ridiculous, but I’ll do it.”

  Chapter 5

  I text Reid to meet me by The Garment Worker, a big, bronze statue of an older man in a yarmulke, bent in work over a hand-operated sewing machine, a loving tribute to the workers who made the textile industry in New York what it once was. It soothes me to wait by this particular piece of art, since in general Midtown has never been my speed—even when it’s blocks away Times Square is still a shouty, oc
ular migraine-inducing shadow, too many honking horns and flashing lights and tourists doing incomprehensible things like actually enjoying themselves in the madness. But even though this is still a pretty loud spot, especially on a Wednesday afternoon, I’m comforted by the quiet stillness of the sculpture. And since I’ve arrived a half hour early—as if I’m trying to out-anal-retentive my companion—I’ve had a lot of time to be comforted.

  I’ve spent most of that time considering two things: one is the list of addresses I copied out, comparing it to the map on my phone and reviewing the path I’ve set out for our walk. If I’ve got it right—and this is questionable, since one never really knows whether a hand-painted sign will have faded into oblivion, or whether some new build has since blocked its visibility—Reid and I should be able to see at least a dozen signs today. Whether I like the neighborhood or not, the Garment District has a lot to offer in the way of signage, and there’s even a few—one from a 1960s dress shop in particular—that have drawings included. My list makes me feel productive, prepared. Ready to meet the challenge and to meet Reid on firmer ground, a shared goal between us.

  The other consideration is the fact that, as a human woman, I would of course wake up with two new pimples on my forehead on the same day I have something important to do, and with someone I want to look presentable for. This latter consideration, obviously, is not a productive line of thinking, unless you consider my reaching up to touch them every forty-five seconds productive.

  That’s what I am doing, in fact, when Reid arrives. Today he’s fallen way off the casual clothes wagon, as in he has set the wagon on fire and spit on the ashes, because he’s wearing a suit. Dark blue, almost black. Slim cut. White shirt, gray tie. A gray messenger bag crossing his chest.