I realized as I stood at the street corner waiting for the walking green that the leaves had changed, shaken off the Maple trees. Autumn was falling — purple leaves, and crimson leaves, and sunset leaves — down to a sodden burial of rain on the pavement. Pedestrians rushed down the sidewalks opening umbrellas, looking at their watches. The smell of donuts and coffee curled from the front doors of French bakeries.
The walking green shone but I could not walk. The sidewalk traffic sprung into motion, full of automobile horns and turtle necks, full of itineraries and appointments to be met — like a recess of children leaving me a column of raincoat solitude. I waited, because I couldn’t move. The colors mesmerized me to a single predicament; rooting me still.
We had agreed the night before to meet at Cafe Quatre at half past noon. We had agreed while having dinner; all evening I sat staring at the corner foot table. The lining in conversation — my fabric — had seemed thin: Sally kept screaming every subject of every sentence to pull spotlight; Edward tapped his finger over the plate and looked towards the bar; Steven, reached for the swatches of leaves falling between us and tried to bunch us all together again.
How could I have mentioned that I no longer enjoyed myself. The colors had changed between the four of us. No one said it. It was left unspoken, and I felt terribly guilty.
The brush of strangers set a trembling in my bones. The walking green changed to a standing red; the bell for the blind rung to stop.
I was crossing 34th when I heard the engines growl, the brakes press, the horns punch against the air to shake the leaves and blow them down like confetti, the remnants of an unexpected explosive in slow motion. They must be waiting for me I thought.
My bones felt brittle. I watched a leaf fall in front of me, landing on the glossy concrete just before I stepped over it.
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