A Taxonomy of Barnacles, page 21
So it was at the stroke of twelve on a perfectly lucid Saturday night, both boys, without discussing such a plan, climbed up their neighbors’ fire escape with the very same intention. Arguably though, the two were moved by wholly different motives. Billy was fueled by love alone while Blaine was guided by something yet stronger, pure cash incentive. Still, an innocent bystander would never have known from looking since greed and love resemble one another even from a very close distance. In spite of this distinction, both twins forged the exact same route, both of them wholly unaware of the other’s intentions. Just like this, they made the treacherous climb to the girls’ window, Blaine arriving ten minutes ahead of Billy to attempt the odd and ingenious feat of parroting an event before it happened. And though this rendered both boys hopelessly ill-equipped for the task ahead, neither one had the good sense to put a ring in his pocket.
Luckily, the girls received their guests with a sense of humor, gleefully swearing off sleep for the night and accepting the boys’ invitations. Ignoring Barry’s certain rebuke and their mother’s vigilant eye, they all but leapt from their bedroom window, delighted by the chance to forget their cares and self-consciousnesses. It was nothing short of exhilarating to sneak out at this age. Audacity brought on the feelings of youth, just as youth had once spurred daring. Of course, it was not lost on the girls that sneaking into their house in order to sneak right back out posed some logical questions. But it was understood that these were the types of sacrifices one must make for love. Luckily, the girls were blessed with the giddy ignorance of their youth and so resolved to make the odd pilgrimage. Despite their earlier differences, Bell and Bridget made twins of themselves, tumbling guiltlessly from their window, one ten minutes after the other, both transported to the past as though by some feat of magic.
Outside, the warmth of spring combined with the cold of recent months, causing the air to match body temperature like certain tropical water. As a result, when you moved your arms even slightly to the left or right, the air didn’t feel like something separate but an extension of your fingertips. Old familiar sounds were somehow infused with new life. Even the simple act of breathing felt completely miraculous. As they took their first steps down the grates, they were greeted by the city sky and, forced to rethink their stance once again, decided it didn’t matter one bit that the light of the city’s skyscrapers obscured the light of the stars. But sensory pleasures were the least of the night’s offerings. It was as though, by virtue of some strange glitch in time, Bell and Bridget had been released of the full weight of human experience.
Every stage of the descent brought on a new sensation. They may as well have been astronauts encountering their first planet. By the time they reached the tenth-floor landing, sidewalk sounds started up. Green lights signaled the swell of taxis while red made them muffled and soft. On the sixth floor, taxi cabs were joined by sharper city noise. Partygoers tripped down the avenue, their laughter wafting into the air like lost helium balloons. On the fifth, they could hear conversations playing out on the sidewalk below. Mrs. Fullerton, who lived on the seventh floor, was just returning from some benefit and asked Carlos, the night doorman, whether he had yet to receive a delivery of her dry cleaning. As they approached the first floor, the girls thought guiltily of their father. But with every downward step, he lost his grasp on them a little. Why was it so easy, Bell wondered, to repeat the events of one’s youth? Why did freedom feel so much freer, thought Bridget, when you had to break some rules? And why, both girls wondered as they leapt into the darkness, why oh why was it so much fun to sneak out of a life you chose?
Blaine began the evening with a typically grand statement, informing Bell that for the duration of the night, they would only bother themselves with places or activities on her list of all-time favorites. First, he demanded that she name her favorite place in the city. Bell was hard-pressed to name any one place; she simply loved too many. But Blaine was not so easily dissuaded from his plan. In a flurry of excessively gallant gestures, he hailed a cab, handed the driver a large bill, and asked him to drive for as long as it took to see all of New York’s great landmarks. As they headed down Broadway towards Time Square, Blaine asked Bell to name her favorite drink. At the next red light, he jumped out of the cab, disappeared into the nearest bar and emerged with two glasses of Champagne, a gesture Bell found so irresistibly charming she allowed herself a few sips.
The rest of the night involved all sorts of similar excesses. Blaine asked Bell to name her favorite song and then promptly sang it. He demanded she name her favorite poem then recited it. Next, it was to her favorite bridge, Brooklyn’s own cathedral. Then back up Canal Street to be stalled in her favorite traffic and right off Canal onto Sixth Avenue to enjoy Bell’s favorite food, two slices of Joe’s pizza. They turned on West Fourth and then Christopher to get onto the West Side Highway, all so Bell could drive by the Hudson, her favorite river. Then they cut across Forty-second Street to catch a glimpse of Bell’s favorite theater, turning south yet again to reach Thirty-fourth and Lexington for the best view of the Chrysler Building. And finally, when Bell made the mistake of answering in earnest, they rode all the way back up Madison to Central Park; Bell’s favorite place in the world.
Oh sure, Bell knew that she and Blaine were not quite the ideal match but a critical shift in her heart made it possible for her to suspend judgment; she had long since given up on the notion of perfect romance. She was way too old and cynical to fall prey to such quaint delusions, had had her heart broken too many times, had slept in too many beds. No, she saw her night with Blaine for exactly what it was. Theirs was a marriage of convenience. She wanted a father for her child and he wanted a quick replacement. Oh God, when she put it like that, it seemed terribly sinister. Perhaps it was better to think of it like this: She was a woman with a full plate and he was a man with an empty stomach. No, that was no good, either, perhaps even worse than the first assessment. But who was she to submit love to unreasonable standards? She was an accomplice to love’s degradation, had all but destroyed it herself, joining in its gleeful desecration like a soldier tearing down a statue of a deposed tyrant. So, though she knew the whole charade was something of a farce, she decided to act as she would in Rome and simply hammed it up.
A half hour later, the pair emerged from the cab exactly where they had started and, faced with the sight of their parents’ building, contemplated a new direction for their evening. Despite a somewhat heated debate over the best bar in the neighborhood, they opted instead for a stroll and, heading south on Fifth Avenue, enjoyed the slightly colder air that emerged from the trees in the park. They paused at the steps to the Arsenal to examine a clump of tulips, their green buds, still yet to blossom, threatening to burst from excitement. Then, for no particular reason, they ignored their parents’ lifetime mandate, and turned down the steps on Sixty-fourth and Fifth to enter the darkened park.
They sat for a while on the long, low bench that faces the Central Park Zoo, straining to hear the sounds of sleeping animals. To their right, the time-weathered Delacorte clock meandered past one o’clock. And, remembering time for the first time in hours, they simply stared at the aged clock, marveling at the power it had had over them when they were children. Indeed, this clock had figured prominently into their childhoods, its proximity to their apartments rendering it as reliable a fixture as ice cream trucks or church bells. Every hour on the hour, the clock serenaded the neighborhood while a menagerie of stone animals circled the clock tower. And just when it seemed the night’s momentum had begun to slow, Blaine issued a new challenge. Due to the surprisingly low height of the fence surrounding the zoo, he simply couldn’t think of any good reason to refrain from climbing over.
Bell, despite Blaine’s aggressive campaign, resisted his peer pressure. But Blaine was now far too intrigued with the thought to dismiss the notion altogether. After a quick promenade around the perimeter of the fence, he made the decision to risk arrest and hurtle himself over it. He glanced one last time toward Fifth Avenue in a cursory check for parents and cops, rolled his pants legs up to his knees, then managed, with only a small running start, to climb up and over the fence. Once inside, he taunted Bell with overblown “oohs” and “ahs,” promising that mere inches separated her from hands-down the coolest thing he’d ever seen in his life. But, refusing to submit, Bell remained seated on the bench. She was finally persuaded if only due to her sudden awareness of the darkness and the fear that if she didn’t, Blaine would simply leave her behind. Luckily, her earlier window descent had sufficiently limbered her muscles, providing her with the agility needed to make the leap without undue embarrassment.
Without a word, the two split up to canvass the zoo. They spent the next half hour wandering on their own in a state of awed silence. The polar bear paced its cage restlessly as though it had been awakened from a bad dream. But on sight of a visitor, it assumed a deceptively demure look that caused Bell to feel such remorse that she had to keep walking. The monkeys slept, intertwined in elaborate configurations, exposing their light pink stomachs to Blaine and boasting, it seemed, their eerie resemblance to human beings. The tropical birds presented a welcome burst of color, their bright red heads and neon feathers glowing in the dark. At night, the zoo was perfectly still, a far cry from its daytime frenzy, causing the lucky and still slightly drunk explorers to feel as though they had stumbled into an enchanted forest. The city even upped its meager offering of stars. This night was unlike any other, Bell thought. Everything in the world was at its loveliest.
Finally, just before one thirty, Bell and Blaine converged at the seal tank. Having fully forgotten the surrounding city, they climbed onto the circular steps, and sat, heads tilted toward the sky, shoulder to shoulder.
“Pretend it’s a million years from now,” Blaine said. “Evolution has been hard at work. Close your eyes and picture it. How do the animals look?”
Bell looked around for inspiration then turned back to Blaine and smiled.
“Go on,” said Blaine. “I know you can do it. Use your intuition.”
Bell opened her mouth to speak but quickly stopped herself, concerned happiness might compel her to say something overly earnest. She prayed that her eyes hadn’t given away the wild feeling in her stomach. It had been so long since she and Blaine had been alone together. She had completely forgotten how he smelled, like warm milk and almonds. Over the years, she had forgotten the details of his complexion, had forgotten he looked like a matinee idol but with lovelier imperfections. She had forgotten the way his light brown hair fell jauntily over his eyes, the way his eyebrows twitched just before he laughed and, when he got very worked up, how his lower lip trembled. She had forgotten the color of his eyes, their warmth and intensity. In fact, she had forgotten most everything about Blaine including how completely overwhelmed she felt in his presence. And yet it was natural, she decided, to have suffered this temporary amnesia. Had she remembered any one of these things, she could never have stood being near him.
Still staring into his eyes, she remembered he’d asked her a question. She reminded herself she had nothing to lose, did her best to filter breathy nervousness out of her voice and answered in earnest. “Polar bears are blue,” she began. “Frogs are bigger than whales. Rhinoceros horns are ten feet long and knotted like branches. Monkeys finally got it together and figured out how to talk. Mice are the size of horses and they carry their babies in pouches.”
“Fish finally got fed up,” Blaine jumped in, “with being water-logged. Now, they walk for miles on end and split their time between the East and West Coasts.”
“Luckily, panda bears haven’t changed much. They’re every bit as cute. Bats are the size of elephants. And sharks are now mammals.”
“The great thing about evolution,” Blaine concluded, “is it made everything better. What other force can claim responsibility for such widespread improvement?”
“Except for the unlucky few that are endangered or already extinct.”
“And,” Blaine looked at Bell pointedly, “those rare perfect specimens that evolution didn’t dare mess with.”
“What happened to them?” Bell asked. “Did those guys miss the boat?”
“Nope,” said Blaine. He gazed at Bell. “They haven’t strayed too far from home. They’ve come full circle.”
“Oh,” Bell said. Her stomach dropped as she gleaned Blaine’s full import.
Blaine brushed a strand of hair off Bell’s face. “Yes, it’s true,” he concluded. “Some creatures were already perfect.”
Instinctively, Bell swatted her neck to slow her racing pulse.
“Bell, I have to show you something,” Blaine said.
“Oh really. What’s that?” Bell whispered.
Blaine fidgeted with his shirtsleeve for a moment, smiled gingerly at Bell, then, without further fanfare, raised his hands to his head and removed his Yankees cap.
“As you know, I first offered you this cap when I was sixteen years old.”
“And then, yesterday,” Bell interrupted, “you asked me to give it back.”
But Blaine was far too determined to be delayed by such a trivial fact and managed, with one winning smile, to render Bell speechless. “Bell,” he said, “I’ve known this since the first day we met…”
Bell straightened suddenly and turned to face Blaine head-on. There was something vaguely familiar about his tone, the theatrical lilt in his voice, his absurdly formal verbiage; the sincerity was uncharacteristic. All of it carried the unmistakable echo of a familiar ritual. But Bell forced herself to dismiss the thought. The chances were one in a million. Blaine would never. Would he?
“Time stopped for me ten years ago when you rejected my proposal,” Blaine began.
“But I didn’t reject it,” Bell interrupted. “Don’t you remember what happened?”
Blaine paused and looked to the ground, confounded by this technicality. Then, taking a large gulp of air, he launched into his speech again. “Bell,” he said, but suddenly his script raced out of his head. Vowels abandoned consonants. Words merged into a senseless blur. He racked his brain for poetry but found cliché instead. “Since the first day we met,” he began. Oh God. What was he thinking? “You see, I’ve always known,” he tried. No, that wouldn’t do, either. “Remember when Tug was signed by the Yanks.” Oh God. This was harder than he’d thought. “Oh to hell with it,” he said. His eyes widened with genuine terror. “Will you marry me?” he asked.
Certain phrases in the English language possess an almost godlike power, arming the speaker with the ability, at best, to change a person’s life and, at worst, to make them choke. Still, despite her shock, Bell found the strength to respond with decorum. Without blinking, she smiled at Blaine and said, “No, not tonight.”
Blaine, however, failed to find comfort in Bell’s graciousness and poise. He suffered, in the wake of her rejection, a wholly foreign vulnerable feeling. But like most men, he only grew more intrigued after being spurned and spent the next several minutes using every charm and excuse to get Bell to change her mind. Finally, he agreed to walk her back to their building, admitting, he claimed, only temporary defeat, demanding that she forgive his blunder and accept his belated invitation to the first baseball game of the season.
* * *
Despite a somewhat heated debate about the best bar in the neighborhood, Billy and Bridget spent a full hour circling their building block, engaged in courtship’s odd ritual of talking about nothing. Finally, just after one o’clock, they ventured up Fifth Avenue, lingering for a moment on Seventy-second Street near the entrance to the Boat Pond. Smiling, they paused to recollect the hours they’d wasted there, piloting rented electric boats as children and later, sitting on the benches for hours, pondering Holden’s question: where on earth did the ducks go during the winter months? Then, as though exhausted by nostalgia, they started up their stroll again, veering slightly right. For no particular reason, they ignored their parents’ lifetime mandate and, precisely ten minutes after Bell and Blaine, headed into the park. Both Billy and Bridget were blissfully unaware of the force that spurred them on. Bridget was merely convinced by Billy while Billy was pulled by nothing less than nature’s own magnet. And yet, for all he knew, he was simply following a whim. He needed Bridget’s help, he claimed, unraveling a mystery that had bothered him since childhood.
“You know that clock in Central Park,” he said, “the one with the animals?”
“Of course,” said Bridget. “The Delacorte Clock. We went there practically every day when we were growing up.”
“That’s the one,” Billy said.
“What about it?” asked Bridget.
“I’ve been wondering ever since,” said Billy, “do you think the animals still dance around after it gets dark?”
Bridget regarded Billy with mixed shock and confusion. “Of course they do, silly,” she said. “That’s a stupid question.”
But Billy was not so easily swayed by Bridget’s dismissal. He required, he claimed, more compelling evidence of the clock’s nightly mechanisms. And though Bridget did her best to resist his various appeals, she was finally persuaded to follow him yet farther into the park and to join him in his clock vigil, eyes peeled, standing watch. As Bridget predicted, at the strike of two, the animals sprung to action, circling the graying clock tower with military precision. Still, despite this definitive proof that the laws of physics remained intact, they soon found a new object for their curiosity. The clock’s music, Billy and Bridget agreed, sounded slightly eerie in the dark and therefore, according to Billy, the only sensible recourse was to hop the surprisingly low fence that surrounded the Central Park Zoo so as to compare the live to the stone animals and see if they followed suit.
