Second Date Amid Pandemic

We are both at the designated meeting spot, but cannot find each other.  Starting off with a metaphor, I guess. 

He texts says < Where r u??>  with two question marks, which annoys me slightly, so I say:

  

He finds me at last.  In the small crowd (very small crowd for Columbus Circle) everyone is wearing protective facemasks, but as soon as we see each other we both pull them down; an understood concession to the danger and thrill of meeting right now, at this time, when it’s either illegal or ill-advised (I’m not sure which). 

He’s a seven; on our first date, before this all began, I thought he was an eight.  No biggie—he’s successful and kind and has been very attentive during these few very strange weeks of the COVID-19 quarantine.  He is impressed by me, which I always found flabbergastingly attractive.    He is so nervous and it is cloudy and I can tell immediately that we only have about 1 hour before rain, and also that I could never love this person.

Something of the classic second date for me, I guess.   We walk through Central Park and in the overcast light I am amazed by how beautiful it is here.  Slightly thinned of tourists, the lush veins of its paths are saturated and intricate, and we get lost in them—then found—then lost again.     I’m pretty sure that’s North.  I’m pretty sure that’s an azalea.  I’m pretty sure it’s going to rain.  I’m pretty sure we walked through here.  I’m pretty sure the quarantine won’t end in May.   I’m pretty sure it may never. I’m pretty sure I don’t want kids, not anymore. 

I’m pretty sure I’m over my ex.   Is there a more instantly-combusting sentence I can’t imagine it. 

He tells me he has never really been in love. 

Our coffee gets cold as the conversation reaches that sad and familiar chasm for us both:  there is no a possible way to tell my story to this person.   This stranger.  He tells me his love languages (Acts of Service, and Touch!) and his sun sign (Libra) and we walk in long meandering orbits around the Bethesda Fountain before the gravity fails us,  and we spin off into a grove of cypress trees—where we both take a piss.   

Among ferns, we stop to share a pastry that I brought along.  The world is ending, but Paris Baguette is still serving $5 croissants.    He takes clandestine beers out of his bag, which strikes me as the most beautiful  gesture in the world.  We sip them and there are tulips everywhere and I think, for the first time in weeks, what a city.

But it's fleeting.  I get antsy: wonder what's for dinner, wonder if I can still get a game of Smash Bros. in at home, wonder what I'll watch tonight, wonder how early I'll wake tomorrow.   There's something about the overcast day--this particular percent humidity--that has this thick, lugubrious quality that makes time viscous and clinging; not flowing but alternately clumping & releasing, trickling in fits in starts, not moving at all, then whizzing by.    The afternoon quickly becomes interminable.   

We choose a direction at random and it turns out, as it happens, to be the way home.  He is thoughtful and bright, and has kind eyes, but I will never see this man again.