The Conference on Beautiful Moments

THE SECOND FLOOR

T h e S e c o n d F l o o r “Happy Birthday, the snowman, or Cary Grant?” the woman asked from behind the counter, holding up the stamps as if they were jewels he might want to examine. “If I say Cary Grant, will you think poorly of me?” he said. “Excuse me?” she said. “The Snowman,” he said, to say something. “Give me ten snowmen.” He had always been jealous of Cary Grant anyway and hardly needed the reminder. While he was waiting for his change the rotund, red-faced woman in the line beside him was presented with the same choice by her postal clerk. She hesitated a second, blushed, then said“Cary Grant”in an illicit-sounding half whisper. Outside a strong wind was blowing in the blue sky. When he was a kid, not much younger than Abby he supposed, he used to think the wind controlled the color of the sky. There were blue winds, and gray winds, and multicolored winds, which produced the colors of sunsets and rainbows. Of course, since the wind does move the clouds it wasn’t a completely false notion, he thought, the moral being it’s as difficult to be completely wrong about something as it is to be completely right. He’d actually tried to talk about this to Abby once but she couldn’t really grasp it or else wasn’t interested. Abby and he had had three conversations so far, four if he counted the first one when they met in the park. He’d always needed someone to talk to—a simple enough need, one would think, but in practice surprisingly 25 26 t h e c o n f e r e n c e o n b e a u t i f u l m o m e n t s complicated. The park, where he’d met her and where he’d gone today with the expectation of meeting her again, was in a lower-class part of Philadelphia. There were some swings (half of them broken), a dented, graffiti-laden slide, a metal jungle gym, and a dirt path that led to a pond. Unfortunately, the pond had largely dried up and its banks and what was left of its water were heavily littered. It was by this pond that he’d started talking to Abby. He never asked her if she came to the park on any specific days or at any particular times, but it seemed that at about 3 p.m. she was usually there. She wore jeans the first time that matched the blue in her eyes and a green top that matched the green that was equally prominent in them. “I’ve never seen eyes like yours,” he said to her on the first day. She smiled. Her teeth were spaced apart a little and very white. “It’s like seeing two sets of eyes compressed into one.” “Is that good?” “It’s magical. It’s like the beauty of blue sky and green grass. You have sky and land eyes both,” he said, and she giggled. At ten past three on a weekday in this park, most of the people were either kids skipping school (some of whom were playing basketball on the concrete court a hundred feet away) or people who were out of work. A few were probably also selling things they shouldn’t be, though in an unobtrusive way, moving toward and away from potential customers quietly , as if they were clouds themselves. He was the exception,he realized.He didn’t work because he no longer had to,not since he’d inherited his share of the money from his father two years ago. Still, he chose to live relatively near the park just a couple of train stops away (or today a longish walk). It was really the best place for him to live, given how he had to live, where no one ever bothered him. If Abby didn’t come it would be a wasted day, he thought, looking at his watch. He sat down on a wooden bench with two half-rotted beams and looked out at the basketball court. One rim was bent and both baskets were without nets. It was like looking at a giant mouth with two teeth missing. What was he thinking by coming here, and yet what choice did he have? There were times like...