Q: A Love Story. Evan Mandery
call it expertise if you will, that I set out to evaluate I-60’s authenticity and investigate the possible fraud. Following our dinner at Bouley, I clandestinely follow I-60 to his hotel and determine that he is staying at the W. This is further cause for suspicion. W’s are swanky, and the one in midtown is as nice as they come. How can I-60 afford such luxurious accommodations on what he professes to be a limited budget? Standing on Forty-ninth Street, off the side entrance of the hotel, I develop a plan to resolve my doubts about I-60 one way or the other once and for all.
The following morning, I rise early and return to the W. It is not a teaching day, and I am free. I stand again on the corner of Forty-ninth and Lexington and wait for I-60. He emerges just after seven thirty, on his way for a run. After he jogs off, I enter the hotel lobby and tell the concierge that I have forgotten my key. He asks for identification. I hand him my driver’s license. Fortunately he does not scrutinize the photograph. He simply hands me a plastic key card.
“You have to forgive me,” I say, “but I have also forgotten my room number.”
“Room 609,” he says. “Make a right turn after exiting the elevator.”
I head up to the room and take a quick spin through I-60’s things. Nothing is out of the ordinary. He has traveled light. Aside from the running outfit, which he is wearing now, he has packed two sets of clothes: two pairs of socks, two pairs of underwear, two shirts, and two pairs of pants, one nice, one casual.
The new trousers are unfamiliar to me, but the latter pair I know. These are my favorite pants, have been for years. My grandfather used to wear brown corduroys, so I have always had a thing for them, and this pair from Eddie Bauer fit just right from the very first day. These are the pants I put on when I want to feel better after a rough day or when I am settling in to watch a big game or when I am about to do something difficult or important.
I am wearing them now.
His are more faded than mine. The cuffs have frayed, and the waist button has been sewn on too many times, perhaps let out a little bit over the years. But it is undeniable that these are my pants.
Suddenly, I become conscious of the time. Who knows how long a sixty-year-old can run? I take a look out the window, note that the room faces Lexington Avenue, and make a quick exit from the room. Downstairs, I walk out the side door and across the street to the Marriott, where I inquire about a room. I tell the desk clerk that I would like a unit facing Lexington Avenue. They can accommodate me, he says, though check-in will not be possible until later in the afternoon. This is fine; I don’t intend to check in until the next morning, but the room is expensive, which gives me pause. Happily I am able to use frequent-flier miles and redeem a coupon for a second night. I book the room, return home, and wait for Q.
She is frazzled when she gets home from work. The battle for survival of the garden has become more serious, she tells me. The prospective developer is asking the city to take the property on which the garden sits by eminent domain so that the massive skyscraper can be erected.
“The mayor will never go for that,” I say.
“He may,” says Q. “We still don’t know the true identity of this developer, but whoever it is, he or she has good connections. Our initial calls to city councilors were discouraging. The project has political momentum.”
“What are you going to do?”
“I don’t know. We’re starting to have meetings about it.”
“Good.”
“Can you help?”
“I’d be happy to do whatever I can.”
“Thank you,” she says, as she gives me a kiss. “It means a lot to have your support.”
I tell Q that a good friend of mine from high school is visiting from out of town. “We’re going to spend the day together tomorrow and have dinner in the evening. I might be home a bit late.”
I might not be so understanding of Q spending a night on the town with a mysterious friend, but she simply says, “Fine” and “Have fun” and returns to reading her copy of Keepin’ It Relleno: The Complete Guide to Chili Pepper Farming and Organic Political Advocacy.
Nothing bothers Q. She is undemanding and generous and accepting of others, qualities to which I cannot relate.
In the morning, around six o’clock, after Q has left for the garden, I head over to the Marriott. I take with me a pair of binoculars, which Joan Deveril bought me for a night at the opera after learning that I did not have my own. They are tiny, but super high-powered.
The room is nice enough. A free copy of the Times is waiting for me. The coffee maker is serviceable and the mattress is not horrible. But it is nothing compared to I-60’s room at the W, which has a state-of-the-art coffee maker and Egyptian cotton sheets on the bed. Using my binoculars, I can see his luxurious accommodations across the street quite clearly. I again wonder how he has afforded the room.
As he wakes up, however, my suspicions notwithstanding, what I see is unmistakably me. He is up early himself; it is still not yet seven. Again he goes for a run. The stiff knee that bothers me when I wake up has deteriorated. It takes ten minutes of stretching for him to get himself out of bed. He cannot lift his knees to put on his running shorts. Instead he sits on a chair and reaches forward to pull the shorts up over his feet. It is an ordeal.
When he goes downstairs, I do the same, and trail him from a safe distance. He walks from the hotel to Central Park and then jogs my favorite route—once around the pond, up past the Hallett Nature Sanctuary, across Seventy-second Street, over Bow Bridge into the ramble, a loop around the lake, then south past the sheep meadow and the Heckscher Ballfields, and finally back home. I feel pangs of sadness as I jog behind him. His gait—my gait—which was once effective, perhaps even graceful, has become a lurching series of stumbles. He is slow, gets winded, stops to watch some teenagers play softball. He is in no hurry. He is an old man.
After the run, he walks back to the hotel and retreats to his room, as I do to mine. Through the binoculars, I see him shower and dress for the day. He is not meeting anyone as far as I can tell, but still he takes extra care with his appearance. He shaves and irons his shirt. The baggage limit on travel from the future is apparently generous enough to allow him to pack a nose-hair trimmer, which I failed to notice while rummaging through his things. I-60 spends a few minutes grooming his nose, then a few more tending to his ear. When he leaves his room, he looks better than when I met him. Travel can be brutal on appearances or, perhaps, he is feeling more optimistic.
On the street he buys a bagel, checks out the toys in the window at FAO Schwartz, walks to the Metropolitan Museum, where he spends a while with the impressionists. He takes another long, slow walk home, back through the park, where he buys a pretzel, wistfully watches a pair of young lovers paddle a rowboat, lingers by some frolicking dogs, and reads the descriptions of the trees.
He is killing time. I suspect I am to blame for this. I have made this necessary by telling him, at Bouley, that I cannot meet again for several days. I have papers to grade, I say, and a reading in Greenwich, Connecticut. In truth I have neither papers to grade nor a reading to attend. I want to buy time to scrutinize him. He sees through the lie, I am sure. How could I ever deceive him? I bet he even remembers the true date of the Greenwich reading, which was several months ago. But he does not call me on it. This would be awkward. Instead he spends the time wandering the streets of the city. Perhaps he does not mind. Perhaps it is a pleasure to spend a few days in the New York of his youth. Or perhaps he is past the point of feeling much of anything.
In the evening, when he has exercised himself to the point that he knows he will be able to sleep, he returns to his hotel and I return to mine. In his room, he takes off the clothes of the day and dons the brown corduroys. A little after six o’clock, he leafs through the room service menu and places an order. Twenty minutes later it arrives. Through the binoculars, I can see that the meal is a veggie burger with tomato and onion and a side of sweet potato fries. This is more to my own taste.
I-60 sits in a lounge chair and eats the supper in front of the