Hip New Yorker meets his match when he falls in love with a passionate young woman from Spain and is forced to explore his own personal depths as he tries to penetrate and understand her elusive depths. I can stand on the corner of Broadway in my old neighborhood in New York and see a lot of the places where things happened.
I reflect back that a young man can be cruising along, exploring and enjoying the various fruits of mortal existence, and then one small woman can pick up the box that is his life, give it a vigorous shake, and toss the contents to the wind.
I think I have finally recovered enough of those scattered fragments to tell the story of Carmen. I met her in the park the same day I got back to New York from a canoe trip in Maine. Carmen was basking in the sun on a blanket near the soccer field. Miguel, a carpenter from Peru, introduced us. I squatted on the grass and tried to remember my high school Spanish. Carmen was visiting from Spain and spoke only sporadic words of English.
I liked the way she moved closer to talk to me. As we chatted, the ebb and tide of the game flowed energetically back and forth, with shouts in Spanish contrasting with the subdued English conversations of affluent Americans walking past with their dogs. Beyond the field, the sun blazed a golden reflection on the Hudson River and glowed over the cars crawling home on the West Side Highway.
Miguel translated the difficult words as Carmen and I began our first probes. She was 23, worked in a hospital laboratory, and was here on vacation for three weeks to visit her brother. Her direct question caught me off guard and I gave an evasive, embarrassed response.
