Window Shopping

I am laying on my back, one arm tucked behind my head.

“Whatever happened to romance?” I ask Max, my fingers pulling up a few strands of hair, letting them glide over my nails and fall quietly back onto my neck. I like the softness, the faint scent of the same shampoo I always use.

He looks up slightly from his videologic ministrations, ears perked as though he’s just heard a sound he cannot quite recognize. His brain chews gently on this question for a moment, and I know him well enough to hear it working. Nibbling gently like a bunny.

“People are selfish,” he says without a hint of rancor. “They are selfish and involved in what they are doing.”

So says Max.

I cannot even bring myself to admit the embarrassingly mundane romantic fantasies I entertain. They are so cliché and pedestrian sometimes, made even more humiliating by the fact that I have never experienced them. I was grateful for the wedding of a few weeks ago, where there was actually some slow-dancing to speak of. I thought it would remedy the daydreaming about my emerald green cocktail dress, flashing like an Amazon night bloom under the glow of lanterns on a roof deck. High heels sway me back and forth, moved by the sound of Miles Davis and warmed by the arms clasped round my waist. It is a clear summer night, of course.

I don’t expect every 24/7 to be romanced, Hollywoodized moments dripping off every interaction ‘round the clock. I’m so practical, so pragmatic. I can’t help but hold my breath for those moments when I am caught helplessly off guard by some grand gesture.

I know what kind of romance I am supposed to be finding in this city. I walk gingerly down 5th Avenue, staring into the window at Tiffany’s with Wynton Marsalis playing on my iPod. This is my romantic compromise, because I can neither afford to step foot in that store, nor can I buy a place at Jazz at Lincoln Center to watch the real Wynton coax ecstasies from his brass muse. So I have gotten as close to it as I can. But that isn’t romance. That is the ache of longing.