I haven’t been to the promenade in Brooklyn Heights in nearly twenty years, and much has happened since then. Sometimes I still feel like the same guy I was then—or maybe I’m just tempted to act that way when I start romanticizing my past. Even as I step off the subway at Clark Street, iPhone earbuds nestled in my ears with the sounds of Roy Ayers, I am reliving the first time Eva and I made love.
Our first date was on this promenade, just four short blocks from the apartment I was living in at the time. She was working as a singer at a theme restaurant in Midtown Manhattan, and while she was on one of her fifteen minute breaks, we somehow or another found ourselves conversing about our common Southern heritage. I asked for her number (so that we could keep in touch), but I knew the moment she lifted her pen from the back of that receipt I was going to ask her out.
She accepted, and that Saturday she arrived to me via the 2-Train. The promenade was the first place we headed.
The cool October air caused us to huddle together, her body eventually falling into my embrace, as we cast our gazes along the East River, admiring the Twin Towers that punctuated the transitioning sky of blues, violets, and purples. The Brooklyn Bridge stood off to our right, the Statue of Liberty to our left. In that moment, I could feel my heart wanting to love her, needing only the slightest of reasons to break free and declare itself. But I was cool, figuratively and literally, and I held her so close to me that our cheeks touched.
“Will you sing for me?” I asked, remembering how her voice had captivated me at the restaurant.
She smiled, and even in the brilliant bronze hue of her skin, I could see her blush. I smiled in turn, figuring that her being a professional singer would not have made her blush, but my presence might have. I hoped so anyway.
“What do you want me to sing?” she asked.
“I don’t know. Anything, I guess.”
“Well, what’s your favorite song?”
I could have easily told her anything, because all I wanted to do was hear her sing, but for some reason, my mind started to fan through my entire music catalog. Favorite song? I had never considered such a thing, not with all of the CDs that I had amassed.
She turned to face me, and from out of nowhere I blurted, “My Funny Valentine.” I don’t know if it was because I owned at least ten different versions of the song or if it was because I thought it was standard enough for her to know. Maybe it was because I loved the quirky lyrics and enjoyed the idea of her singing those lyrics to me. I sat back, awaiting her response.
As her lips parted and her rich alto voice entered the space between us, I knew I wanted her more than any woman I had ever known.
“Your looks are laughable, unphotographable,” she sang. “Yet you’re my favorite work of art.”
In that interminable moment that she sang to me, I felt as if my body had become an instrument and she was the virtuoso whose voice pushed every cell of my body into chords that rhythmically and melodically made me a part of her art.
By the time she finished, the butterflies in my stomach were flapping their wings wildly. A “that was good” just didn’t seem to be adequate—not when all I wanted to do was kiss her. As soon as she closed her mouth, I made my move. My eyes were already sealed and the gentle scent of her perfume seemed to beckon me forward. I was so committed to the kiss that it took me a moment to register that both of her hands were planted firmly against my chest, freezing me in my tracks.
I opened my eyes, unable to hide my stinging pride.
“What are you looking for?” she asked.
“What do you mean? I was looking for a kiss. I see you standing here, beautiful in this sunset, and I want to be closer to you.”
“Closer to me how?”
The butterflies stopped flapping, formed into a ball and dropped down into my stomach. The realization that I would have to probably explain what I was feeling, before I even understood it myself, made me wish I could disappear into the cool breeze tickling my nose, making me feel for a second that I might actually sneeze my affections into Eva’s face.
“I’m just really feeling you.”
She nodded, considering my words.
“Well, let me ask you a question,” I added. “Are you in a position to entertain my feelings?”
“Is that your way of asking if I have a boyfriend?”
“I guess so.”
“I’m single, but I have to be selective.”
“Being selective’s a good thing.”
“It’s just that I have gone out with more knuckleheads than I care to mention, and they all start out real cool, saying the right things, doing the right things. Then somewhere along the way, they flip the script on me. I just can’t handle any more of that stuff. Not right now.”
“I’m not trying to game you or anything,” I said. “In fact, if you’re really interested in getting to know me, we can take to it as slow as you’d like.”
And we eventually did.
Our relationship moved so slowly that I feared I wouldn’t be able to stay the course. Dating Eva required a Zen-like focus, and I was still young and restless, but she was perfect, if ever there were such a thing. Now as I turn my eyes toward the bridge on my right, I realize now more than ever that Eva was my one. I squandered two years of our relationship, simply because I wasn’t ready to be in a relationship that consumed so much of my attention. Ironically, though, I feel I could be more than committed to her at this point in my life.
Or maybe I’m feeling that way because I’m standing here remembering that first date, the one that ended pleasantly with that soft, short kiss she planted upon my lips, just as we were turning to leave. Maybe when I turn to leave today I will no longer feel the sting of it all, wondering how her marriage is going (it’s been nearly seven years), whether or not she has any children, or why she refuses to add me as a friend on Facebook, even after all of this time.
I have been chasing the idea of her for so long, wanting to find a woman with only a portion of what it is that Eva had to offer. I miss her in the stillest of moments, when my heart whispers through its loneliness its vow to never take a love like hers for granted again.
Even though she’s moved on, I find myself unable to move beyond all of the memories. I am stuck in this emotional purgatory. Standing on this sacred ground, I hold fast to a moment that happened too many days ago to count.
I reach out, grasping the iron fence in front of me, watching the sun cling to the last moments of dusk. The skyline here is now altered, the Twin Towers having come down more than ten years ago. There is no longer any punctuation along the landscape, only an emptiness that might go unnoticed by anyone who has never stood in this spot before.
I can’t take my eyes away from it.
“Crazy, isn’t it,” an older man says, sidling up next to me.
He runs a frail hand through what’s left of his hair, his gaze also cast longingly across the East River.
“But you know what?” He places a finger to his chest, near his heart. “We’re still here. Don’t you get it? We’re still standing.”