The C&C sedan with its rooftop sign was a block away, bobbing along like a buoy among the flotilla of cars on the sea of Lexington Avenue. My third lesson would begin on this blustery, late October afternoon as soon as Val pulled up. I had to admit, I was growing more comfortable with the concept of driving when I was in the car beside my hot instructor. Mind you, I hadn’t yet been forced to drive. Up till now, I’d successfully avoided that undertaking, safely observing from the passenger side. As Val braked in an area designated as a bus stop, I once again jumped in the passenger seat before she could even open her door.
The smile she gave me was very cute but also seemed a bit exasperated. “Not again. I cannot continue being your chauffeur, aimlessly driving you around the streets of Manhattan.”
I spoke in my most earnest voice. “I really think I need more time to witness your amazing driving skills.”
“Flattery will get you some places, but none of them in my car. How are you going to learn to drive if you never sit in the driver’s seat?”
I tried my most winning expression, but Val didn’t look like she would be won over. She had that same easygoing, laid-back aura I had seen in our previous lessons, but that one raised eyebrow was a definite signal that I had some major convincing to do. “You’ve been so patient with me, but look at all this traffic. I can’t start now. What if I lose control and drive onto the sidewalk and mow seventeen people down before crashing into a lamppost? Then you and I would both be dead because I was not ready to take the wheel.”
“Wow. You certainly paint a vivid picture of destruction and mayhem.” Val laughed. “I wouldn’t let that happen. Not only do you have to trust yourself, you have to trust me as well.” She darted a look in her mirror and put the car in gear. “You’re lucky we have to get out of the way of the M103 bus.” We traveled about two blocks before she said, “We’ve gone over every inch of the car already. How do you want to spend this lesson if you’re not going to drive?”
I was ready for this. “I could still learn a lot by watching you. If I’m ever in a car, it’s usually a taxi or an Uber. The only thing I can see is the back of the driver’s head.”
“Let’s make a deal. If you promise you’ll sit in the driver’s seat and attempt to drive during the next lesson, you can spend this one watching the master navigate these streets.”
“Deal.” I exhaled with relief. “Is there some sort of survey I need to fill out at some point? Or a manager I need to pass along my compliments to? You’re getting five stars.”
Val laughed. “Good to know, but I have plenty of job security since my dad is the owner. And I’m currently doing him a giant favor.”
“You’re not normally a driving instructor?”
“Oh, I am. I started instructing years ago in college—it helped pay tuition, and I was pretty popular with the teens since we were close in age back then. Then I left New York for a while.” Val shot a quick look at me. “I came back October of twenty twenty-one. Damn, I’ve been back two years already.”
“Why did you leave and why did you come back?” I was interested. Val was interesting, not to mention very easy on the eyes. But was my curiosity coming across as creepy? “Only tell me if you want to.”
“It’s okay. I grew up in Washington Heights, and then I left because I finished my nursing degree. I’m a traveling nurse, but I’m taking a break from that.” Val tied her history in a brief and neat little bow. “I like what I’m doing right now. It’s helping people in a way that’s totally different than nursing. And there are fewer bodily fluids.” She turned on her blinker. “Now, watch me. I’m making a right. Approach real slow and watch for pedestrians in the crosswalk.”
“That’s one of the things that scares the shit out of me. What if I hit somebody?”
“If you’re paying attention, you will not hit anyone. And if you’re behind the wheel, you are—by definition—paying attention.”
Perhaps I should embroider that sentence on a pillow.
Val edged forward, then paused as an elderly woman inched across the street with her tiny little Maltese, which looked like a whisk broom on a leash. While we waited, the light turned yellow and then red.
“Never rush. We’re obviously in a position to turn. The cars coming across Sixty-ninth will let us go.” A large SUV charged past on our left side, immediately disproving Val’s claim. “Unless they’re assholes.” She was utterly calm.
I, on the other hand, had grabbed onto the dashboard so hard there were indentations under my fingertips.
Val proceeded to make the turn and fell in line behind the SUV. “And I have to concede there are a very large number of assholes you’ll be sharing the road with.” When we came to the end of the block, she put her blinker on again. “Let’s try that again. Use your turn signal, slow down, watch for pedestrians.” She narrated as she maneuvered the car onto Third Avenue. “When you turn onto a road that has multiple lanes of traffic, try to turn into the closest lane, but be mindful of double-parked vehicles.”
I understood all this in theory, but how was I going to do all the things in the correct order so easily like Val did? My eyes caught on something out the window. “Oh my God!”
“What?” Val asked urgently, her eyes scanning all around.
“No, nothing, sorry. Neil’s Coffee Shop is closed.” I turned in my seat as we drove past. “It looks like it’s permanent.”
Val took a breath and then shot me a look that seemed to say And…?
“My dad used to go there just about every Saturday with his buddies. That place has been open for decades.”
“I’m sorry for your loss.”
I returned Val’s look. “Well, it’s more his loss. I haven’t been in there since I was a kid. But you don’t have to be snarky about it.”
“I’m not. I completely understand the shock that comes with something in your neighborhood closing down. It happens all too often these days. When I first came back to the city, I couldn’t believe how many of my neighborhood institutions had closed.”
“I know. So many since the pandemic.”
“A bodega I used to go to every day after school when I was a kid really hit me hard.”
“Yeah. One near me is gone too. But a new store just reopened in its place. It’s one of those off-license weed-selling places now, with a sideline in snacks from, like, Yemen or Thailand or somewhere.”
“I want to try snacks from Yemen.”
It had never occurred to me to go in and get any. Now I wanted snacks from Yemen too.
Val kept talking. “But with all those businesses closing, people left too. Their jobs disappeared. So many people from my hood are just gone.”
It was the same all over the city. And my ex didn’t stick around that long. As soon as the news started talking about lockdowns, she was gone. Among the first to leave. Not because of her job, but because of fear. I stayed through the grimmest months, swearing Covid would never push me out.
“I’m no spring chicken anymore, but I’ve heard from my younger cousins that nightlife isn’t what it used to be either. The city that never sleeps now goes to bed by eleven.”
“No. Really? Even the clubs? God, I haven’t been to a club in at least a decade.” I remembered the occasional night lasting until way past closing time at four a.m.
“What, back when you were thirteen?”
How could Val make me smile with a weak line like that? But there I was, grinning like a fool. It was cheesy, but I could get used to compliments like that.
“And when the clubs close earlier, it’s not worth it for the all-night diners and halal carts and delis to stay open. No more greeting the dawn with dosas in Washington Square Park.”
I knew exactly which cart Val was talking about. I had probably eaten my body weight in dosas when I was at NYU. But then I’d eaten a dosa about as recently as I’d been in a club. “It’s exhausting just to think about it.”
The Upper East Side was now my home again for the first time since high school. Even as a teenager, when I escaped it to party in far cooler neighborhoods, I knew it was about as close to the suburbs as you could get while still within the boundary of Manhattan. It had never been known as a late-night destination. At thirty-four, I was officially old, but Val didn’t look like a winter hen, or whatever the opposite of a spring chicken was. “You can’t be that old. What are you, twenty-five, twenty-six?”
The smile Val threw at me was wide and disarming. “Bless you. I’m thirty-two.”
Who knew mutually under-guessing each other’s age could feel so nice? Val was dead cute.
“And I get it,” she said. “The pandemic took a lot out of the city but the cost of living is the same, if not higher—”
“Oh, it’s higher. Totally higher.”
“So it’s understandable that people left. Look at you, greener pastures in Los Angeles and everything.”
Guilt erupted in me. So much for swearing never to leave. Val didn’t know how hard I’d tried to make the life I wanted for myself in this city. But I honestly believed living here was preventing me from achieving a happiness in mind, body, and soul that had so far eluded me. Los Angeles could deliver what I desperately sought—fulfillment in my career, a productive life. A girlfriend, a partner, a wife. Family. To be settled with someone I loved with my whole heart. The West Coast beckoned like a shimmering jewel in a distant shop window, shiny with possibility and potential and promise.
But it wasn’t New York’s fault that my last relationship was cut off at the knees. That was all Covid. And finding someone new had been an impossible task. Dating apps? Forget about it—like finding a needle in a pile of pigeon shit disguised as a haystack. Despite those glowing profiles you see every Sunday in the Times wedding announcements, finding true love in New York City was about as easy as finding a rent-controlled apartment. A pleasant, unattainable myth.
Until recently, the city had usually been comforting reliability—like your favorite tweed blazer in the fall, the AC on blast in the summer, commiserating with a bestie over an illicit cigarette in the park during the spring. I hadn’t felt that comfort in a long while, but did you abandon your best friend in times of trouble? I gazed out the window without seeing a thing. All the city made me feel now was lonely. “New York is done. It’s time to go.”
Val frowned. “Is it?”
“It used to be the center of the universe. Now it’s not even the center of the US.”
“And Los Angeles is?”
“It’s better than here.”
Val let that one lie. I had no idea if that was true—yet—but I had to feel optimistic about my future home, right? My fascination with Los Angeles began as a tween who watched way too much WB programming. So many early-aughts shows targeted at young people seemed to be set in the sun-drenched shores of southern California, and I ate it up. All those wide shots of the Pacific stretching across the horizon were a revelation to a girl whose bedroom window looked out on a brick wall.
When the Pandemic hit, and with so much time holed up alone in my apartment, I turned to rewatching familiar favorites from my adolescence. Binging entire nostalgic seasons of The OC, Veronica Mars, and Buffy soothed my soul and sparked a desire for change. I began to see myself inhabiting the bright, vibrant life of a Californian—minus the teenage angst, crime investigation, or demon slaying. Was it ludicrous that old TV shows had incited a desire to upend my entire existence? Absolutely, but it had to be better than doing nothing. Los Angeles was going to open up my life and snatch me off the endlessly spinning hamster wheel New York City had become.
“I had just about the most perfect date in Los Angeles one time.” Val sounded wistful.
“Really? What was it?”
“It was a gorgeous, sunny Saturday and we spent it at the Getty. We wandered the galleries a little and had a meal in that nice restaurant they have there, but the grounds were the best part. Beautiful. We pretty much roamed over every inch, getting lost and then finding ourselves again.” Val seemed to be caught up in the memory of it. “Then we went back to her place and spent the rest of the weekend in bed.”
It seemed like everything came into sharper focus when I heard the pronoun Val had used for her date. I knew it! My gaydar is still operational! “That sounds lovely. How long were you together?”
“Um, two days?” She chuckled. “I never said it was a relationship. How about you? Any perfect dates in your past?” Val snuck a look in her side mirror. She did that a lot. What was back there? I’d have to remember to look in the mirror too. But I had lots of time before I thought about actually driving.
“My love life hasn’t been worthy of mention in a pretty long time, and perfect doesn’t come anywhere close to describing my relationship with my last girlfriend.”
She darted a glance at me.
Now you know I like the ladies too, Val.
“Bad breakup?” she asked.
I let out a long exhale before answering. “It wasn’t even that bad. It was still new—well, newish. We had been seeing each other for four months but then Covid happened. A new relationship couldn’t sustain that, plus she had already skedaddled out of the city before the governor started his daily press conferences. She lives in Indianapolis now and she’s engaged.”
Val frowned. “This was a few years ago now?”
“Yes. And there’s been no one since. I’m talking the driest of spells. I’m convinced the pandemic has jinxed me. Or the city. Or a combination of both.”
“No luck on the apps?”
I didn’t say anything. Should I admit to hating dating apps with an intensity that rivaled my hatred for bedbugs, the dentist, and dry January?
“Never mind. I retract the question. We both know what the apps are like. And they’re just as bad in Dallas, where I last attempted to use them, if not worse. It was like dating on another planet.”
“Why?”
She shrugged. “It’s very un-New-York-like. Culture shock, I guess.”
“What were you doing in Dallas?”
“Working. I was an ICU nurse. That’s where I was when Covid hit, so the dating profile was abandoned.”
“And that’s why you were in Los Angeles too?”
Val nodded. “Yup. A couple of years before that.”
I digested this new information about Val’s former life. “The ICU. That doesn’t sound like the greatest place to spend your pandemic.”
“It wasn’t.” Her smile seemed completely false. “It was just about the worst place to be.” The light turned green and Val accelerated.
“Is that why you left nursing?”
“Yeah, eventually. Now I’m going to change lanes. Watch what I do, okay?”
Val narrated the steps and I watched. I had many more questions, but instead I was thinking about how scary those first few months of Covid were, and wondering how Val had the strength to last that long under those conditions.