“The tricky thing about telepathy is understanding what you hear,” Marco said. “People’s thoughts aren’t neatly ordered, Alice, they, the thoughts I mean, they aren’t clear, they blend together and they don’t have a single direction. No simple direction at all. Those writers. The modernists, Faulkner, Joyce, Eliot, Miller, Woolfe, they got it exactly right, it’s a stream of consciousness. A current, a river of feelings, of observations, questions, fantasies, all rushing through and carving out the canyon of the mind. If that makes sense, and does it make sense? Do you understand what I’m trying to say?”
“Totally,” I said, forcing a polite smile. Not that it mattered. Marco had hardly looked at me since he arrived at the bar. At the moment, he was staring over my right shoulder and picking at his beer bottle label with one hand while the other sporadically clenched his thigh. It was already my worst first date in New York, and that’s saying a lot.
“And it affects me, you know,” he continued. “Profoundly, I’m sure you’ve noticed it by now, too much time in those rivers. It affects my own thoughts, and thus manner of speaking, and I have been spending too much time in the water, I’m sorry to tell you, many strong thoughts clamoring about lately. Yet I wither if I remain indoors. But tell me, Alice, and I’m being rude, aren’t I, my apologies. Tell me, remind me, what is it you do for work?”
“Marketing, product marketing,” I stammered, astonished to have finally been asked a question. “For a, uh, business accounting software company.”
“And that’s your passion?” Marco asked. “It’s your dream to promote accurate financial recording, to ensure honesty and transparency in business, upon which so much in our society depends?”
“I don’t know about that, but it pays the bills.”
At that, Marco frowned thoughtfully, which was quite a sight despite the lack of eye contact. His eyebrows were thicker and wilder than they’d looked in his profile pictures, and practically met over the bridge of his nose.
“I’ve been lucky recently to take an extended break from work,” he said. “But I’ve heard people thinking deeply about bills of late, about money generally, due to inflation I believe, and the weak job market, and then perhaps certain societal expectations. New York lifestyles, social media, keeping up with the crowd.”
“Totally,” I said. “And what did you do? Before your break.”
“I was a custodian, a janitor, at an investment bank.”
He smiled vaguely over my other shoulder. This time, I didn’t bother smiling back. His beer label was fully shredded now. He’d formed a little pile from the scraps. A nervous tic? Would he offer it to me as a gift?
An idea occurred to me. A slightly unkind one, since it risked raising the hopes of someone I wasn’t interested in. But I didn’t want to go home yet, and my friends all had other plans. Why not milk this strange experience for all it was worth?
“So what am I thinking right now?” I asked.
Marco frowned again, though he still wouldn’t look at me. His left eyebrow twitched, and so did a little vein at the edge of his temple.
“Are you sure?” he asked. “I want to be sure, because it’s an intimate thing to share with someone and I try hard not to intrude on someone I’m talking with, because…”
“I’m curious,” I said. “So that makes it okay, right?”
“Well…”
“I’ve never met anyone who reads minds before,” I added. I said it slightly breathlessly, and even bit my lip a little. Judge me for that if you want. If you do, you’ll take comfort in what happened next.
Because Marco nodded, and finally looked into my eyes. His were a deep, murky green, and those impressive eyebrows seemed to focus his energy at a specific point in my brain, far beneath the bone. I tried to smile, but couldn’t keep it up. His tongue moved behind his cheek, as though working at a stuck scrap of food. A red blotch appeared on his forehead, and he began to groan softly — I was about to ask if he was okay, but he raised a hand to stop me and breathed, “Outbound. Hard sky, no shelter, hideous brick. All around.”
“I’m sorry?” I asked.
“That’s it. That’s all, that’s what I hear in your thoughts, Alice.”
He looked over my shoulder again, seeming relieved to do so.
“‘Outbound,’” I said. “‘Hard sky.’ What does that mean?”
“Don’t ask me that,” he snapped, and rose abruptly from his stool. He fumbled in his pocket, took out a thick velcro wallet, removed three crisp twenties, and dropped them on the bar. Then turned and walked out the front door without saying another word.
That’s right, he walked out on me. After twenty minutes of his insane rambling, he was the one who felt I wasn’t worth his time. I should have just laughed. I did, a little. But I also felt pretty indignant. After such a shitty date, didn’t I at least deserve the satisfaction of turning him down?
So yes Marco had given me quite a story to tell, and yes the money he left paid for another glass of wine, but I still didn’t have a particularly pleasant walk back home to the West Village. Everyone I passed seemed to be having a much nicer evening than me. And when I finally reached my dark apartment building, I needed a moment or two before heading inside.
The following day, a Saturday, I filled in my friends Leah and Jian at our usual post-pilates coffee. I’d almost texted them the night before, but some stories deserve to be told in person.
“Oh my god, that’s crazy,” Leah said once I’d finished. “I don’t miss the apps at all, I really don’t.”
“Was he cute?” Jian asked, grinning slyly. I glared at her, and she added, “Sorry, but it is kind of funny.”
“Did you ask him what else he’s heard in people’s thoughts?” Leah asked, putting air quotes around ‘heard.’
“I didn’t have time,” I said. “He literally ran off, like, a minute later.”
“Crazy,” Leah said again. “You really have the strangest luck with guys.”
Thanks for that, I thought, but decided not to say it out loud.
“So, those words,” Jian said. “You think he was onto anything?”
“Of course not,” I said. “He’s just some freak.”
“So you don’t believe in telepathy?”
I glanced at Leah, but her expression was neutral.
“I’m just saying, some people are intuitive in weird ways,” Jian continued, shrugging.
“What were the words again?” Leah asked. “Something about a sky…”
“Outbound,” I said. “Hard sky, no shelter, hideous brick. All around.”
“And that doesn’t mean anything to you?” Jian asked.
She was giving me a funny look. I looked at Leah again, but she was thumbing at something on her phone.
“Of course not,” I answered. “Why are you asking?”
“I don’t know,” Jian said. “Just — your face. When you said the words…”
“I have a guess,” Leah cut in. An idle interruption? Or had she sensed I was about to say something snippy? “I think it’s about a journey. ‘Outbound,’ right? Like, you’re setting out somewhere.”
“Yeah, and ‘hard sky’ could be the sky before a storm,” Jian said. “Gray and tense. So stuff is turbulent where you are, and you’ll go on a journey to get away.”
“Ooh, and that works with ‘no shelter,’ too,” Leah said. “Alice — you should go on a trip! Somewhere exciting that’ll get you out of your rut.”
“Am I in a rut?” I asked.
But neither of them quite seemed to hear.
“Bricks could mean buildings,” Jian said. “More landlord problems?”
“Maybe,” Leah said. “God, I don’t miss having a landlord.”
“I don’t know. Our remodel’s all — actually, speaking of which. Did I tell you what our contractor said this week? Tara and I were on phone with him, and out of nowhere, he’s like, ‘You know, I don’t know if a copper countertop goes with that color of backsplash.’”
“Oh my god.”
“Yeah. And he said it all smugly, like he was doing us a favor.”
“What an asshole. Ours was amazing. I should have given you his number.”
And so on for another few minutes. Not that they stopped talking. I just mean I tuned out in self-defense. The morning wound on, and the sun rose higher, and reflected off the surrounding windows directly into my eyes. I didn’t have my sunglasses, and when I eventually stood to leave, Leah and Jian both started a little. I think they’d briefly forgotten I was there.
After that, I tried hard to forget about Marco. Everyone has their recovery rituals after a bad date. Unfortunately, mine either weren’t available or didn’t work very well. My favorite masseuse was on vacation. The show I was watching was too optimistic to be cathartic. When I exercised, I kept getting lost in thought.
Two parts of the whole experience were still bothering me, I realized. The first was not having picked up on Marco’s weirdness during our initial app conversation. In the days following our date, I spent more time than I’m proud of poring over those messages, wondering what questions might have helped me filter him out.
The other tough part was his abrupt departure. In dating, subtle power dynamics matter a lot, and getting walked out on is a pretty heavy blow, especially if you didn’t even like the person. It’s like life kicking you while you’re already down.
I think that second part was what got in the way of my best recovery ritual: venting to friends. I did tell a few more people about Marco’s so-called mind-reading. That story was funny, and not really about me. But it was harder to admit, and thus to get over, how powerless he’d made me feel. Who likes admitting they met a weirdo and lost the upper hand?
There was one other thing that got in the way of my recovery.
This is going to sound stupid. But basically, I had a few experiences that week that reminded me of the words Marco claimed to have heard in my thoughts. Once, a car almost hit me while peeling out from its parking space. Another time, on my walk to work, a gust of wind knocked my kale smoothie out of my hand and into the gutter. Then, later that evening, I got caught in a sudden rainstorm on the way to my friend Jasmine’s engagement party, and had to show up looking like a drowned rat.
Outbound, hard sky, no shelter. It wasn’t just life kicking me while I was down — apparently, New York in particular had decided to join in.
Still, the week passed eventually. After work on Friday, I swung by the market for dinner ingredients, then called my mom on my walk home. I often called her on the way to something, having learned the importance of a built-in stopping point.
The first part of our conversation was actually pretty nice. She shared some hometown news, complained good-naturedly about my dad’s latest lawn project, and told me about a recent dinner with my brother and his wife. Next, I tried to sate her hunger for gossip with social media updates from a few old high school friends. But as soon as I paused, she took a crisp little breath and asked, “And how was your date last week?”
“I don’t want to talk about it,” I said
“Oh, sweetie. Has he not called you back?”
“No. That isn’t — he was just weird.”
“Weird how?”
“He wouldn’t look at me, and he said he could read my mind.”
A pause, as she weighed this description against her mental registry of the other men I’d dated.
“So are you going to see him again?” she asked.
“Why would I do that?” I answered.
“I don’t know. I just — oh, never mind.”
“What?”
“Forget it. You won’t like it.”
She was probably right. But I knew that would only stop her for so long. I could practically hear her lips pursing and her hand clenching beneath her chin.
“Fine,” I sighed. “What do you…”
“I just wonder if you’re a little quick to judge, sometimes,” she said.
“Mom…”
“I know, I know. But remember Jeremy? Carrie’s nephew? Carrie said he had a great time on your date. Why didn’t you…”
“Mom, he told me he wanted a traditional marriage.”
“What’s wrong with that? It’s not like he’s one of those ultra-righters, or something.”
“Do you mean ‘alt-right?’”
“I just want you to be happy, sweetie. If you’d only…”
But I didn’t get to hear what she thought I ought to do. Distracted by irritation, I tripped on a hunk of loose pavement and stumbled into a group of young Wall Street types who were coming in my direction. They stepped aside, and I hit the ground hard, sending my phone flying. Amazing. Just fantastic. It didn’t have a case on, and my mom would probably think I’d been mugged.
When I looked up, the Wall Streeters were all staring down at me, standing in a perfect circle with their arms folded neatly across their fleece-vested chests.
Only for a moment. But for that moment, the streetlights seemed to dim and those young men’s faces were all I could see. “Big crash,” one of them chuckled. Another one chuckled, too, though I couldn’t tell which one. Why did their faces suddenly look identical? But the circle broke before I could figure it out, and they continued on their way before eventually melting into the crowd.
New York is full of assholes. Meeting them is only a matter of time. Still, as I pushed myself to my feet and went to find my phone, I couldn’t help thinking, “Hideous brick, all around.”
At that point, I would have been happy to never think about Marco again. Unfortunately, fate had something else in mind. Word of my ill-fated date had gotten around my irritatingly tight-knit office, and over the following week, half a dozen co-workers individually decided they had to hear the story directly from me.
Eventually, I told a couple of them about the weird experiences I’d had since the date, hoping that might earn me some sympathy and peace. I should have known better. I’d only added to my own mythology, and was soon fielding stupid questions everywhere I went.
“Could he have hypnotized you, or something?” my coworker Elaine suggested over drinks one evening. She’d actually been one of the better ones, but I could tell from her expression she’d been sitting on the theory for some time.
“I really doubt it,” I said, smiling thinly. “I think he was just weird.”
“So he didn’t, like, do anything with his hands?”
“Not like that. And don’t you have to agree to be hypnotized?”
“Paul got hypnotized on our honeymoon cruise. He hates dancing, but the hypnotist got him to do a striptease to ‘It’s Raining Men.’”
I thought back to the times I’d met Paul. The idea of him stripping was funny, but not in a way I thought Elaine would like.
“Wow, crazy,” I said. “But I really think it’s just a strange couple of weeks.”
“God, tell me about it,” Elaine said. “Remember that neighbor I told you about? The crazy one with all the birds?”
“I think so,” I lied.
“Well, some of them got into our apartment last weekend. The window was open, and…”
She launched into a long story involving her cat, an antique rug, and Paul’s apparent habit of leaving out half-eaten slices of bread. I’ll admit I only half-listened. Elaine was a bit of a rambler, and I was feeling distracted. The bar was too crowded, maybe. Or there was a harsh quality to the light.
After a few minutes, she seemed to be wrapping up. Something about her whole block taking the crazy neighbor’s side, and giving her and Paul nasty looks whenever they came and went. I nodded sympathetically, sighed, and said, “New York, huh? Sometimes it feels like the city is telling you to fuck off.”
Elaine’s eyebrows rose, and she stared at me over her spicy margarita.
“Could that be what they mean?” she asked.
“‘They?’” I answered.
“The words your guy heard. Could they be about you having second thoughts about New York?”
“I’m not having any second thoughts.”
“But ‘outbound’ could be moving. And then ‘hard sky’ could mean a storm coming if you stay. And ‘no shelter, hideous brick…”
“That’s not it,” I snapped. “And he didn’t actually hear anything, remember?”
Elaine flushed faintly and looked down at her drink. A part of me didn’t care. Was glad to have landed a blow, even. But another part remembered that being on Elaine’s good side had always been a big help professionally. Despite having a very strategic role on the marketing team, she didn’t have many close friends at work.
“Sorry,” I sighed. “I didn’t…”
“No, no,” she said. “Anyway. How’s stuff going with the data visualization launch?
“Fine, I guess. It’s kind of a nothing release.”
“Wasn’t Tina going to start putting you on bigger launches?”
“I don’t know. She keeps saying I’m wasted on this ticky-tack stuff. But she disappears whenever I actually ask for something real.”
That weekend, things got real, all right.
It started on Saturday morning. I was out early, walking to get coffee after a miserable, sleepless night. That puffy-faced, tunnel-vision feeling. The streets already felt too noisy, and the sun was just a little too bright.
I’d spent most of the night stewing about Elaine’s suggestion. Stupid, I know. She’d only been taking a shot in the dark. But that particular shot, in that particular week, at that specific moment in my life? God damn. And who was she to suggest something like that, anyway? She’d been in the city less than three years, and she and Paul were already talking about moving to New Jersey to get more space. Meanwhile, I’d known it was New York Or Nowhere for nearly a decade. Somewhere in my closet, I even had one of those hats.
Okay, maybe I wasn’t done stewing. I crossed Hudson at 12th Street and passed the little park there, hardly taking in my surroundings. I started to cross 8th Avenue, too, but a bus blew right past me with its horn blaring. Shit, fuck, okay. I stepped back, exhaled hard, and looked in the bus’ direction.
Instead of a route number, the digital display by its roof just said, “Outbound.”
Perfect. Thank you, New York, for that perfectly timed middle finger. It was almost funny, really. And I actually did laugh, staring at the bus and then, when it turned a corner, at nothing at all. Forget the people all around me, their scattered stares. If they knew what was happening to me, they would have laughed, too.
“Hard sky,” a passing woman barked into her phone, and suddenly none of it was funny at all.
I blinked. The woman was still visible. I didn’t recognize her, and she kept walking. Oh, I wasn’t tired anymore.
Forget my flat white. I felt exposed, and untethered from the surface of the earth. I also wanted very much to be back inside my apartment, so I turned and went back the way I’d come, walking quickly and navigating several times through surprisingly heavy crowds. One was gathered around a wild-eyed street preacher standing on a crate. As I passed, he looked at me, pointed up at the sky, and opened his mouth to speak, but I plugged my ears and kept moving.
And eventually reached my street and my building. Climbed the stairs into the foyer, then up to my apartment, where I locked the door as soon as I stepped inside. I sat on the couch. Looked back at the door. Then rose, heart pounding, and went to lock the deadbolt, too.
After that, I didn’t leave my apartment for the rest of the weekend. I ordered in, binged a stupid show, and above all avoided looking out onto the street. It worked, mostly. By Sunday evening, I was almost, almost prepared to believe it had all been another coincidence. New York wasn’t out to get me. It had just been a weird few weeks. Marco hadn’t truly read my mind. My life wasn’t spiraling out of control.
I just had to do one thing in order to be completely sure.
‘Hi Alice!’ Marco’s Hinge reply read. ‘I wasn’t expecting to hear from you again, I’m so happy you reached out. I wanted to apologize for leaving our date so abruptly last Friday, that’s not the standard of behavior I hold myself to, I won’t make an excuse due to the circumstances.
‘I’d be very happy to see you again, Alice. I think it would be so much fun to finish our date!! I don’t meet many people who I feel I can have a real conversation with, especially these days, when so many people are so quick to form opinions, you need time to get to know someone, don’t you agree? Also, I’d love to hear a little more about your work.”
Then a list of oddly specific times we could meet over the next few days, including one in the middle of a work day. Even stranger, he suggested meeting at the same bar as before. Whatever. I only had two questions for him, and then I’d be on my way.
I didn’t tell anyone I was seeing him again. I hadn’t actually seen or talked to any of my friends all weekend. After Saturday morning, I couldn’t be sure what they might say.
Marco and I met again on Tuesday evening. I called in sick to work on Monday and Tuesday, then took an Uber to the bar, listening to loud music through my earbuds the whole way there.
When we arrived, a crowd was gathering outside the bar. I shoved my way through, slipped inside, and found that the bar itself was almost empty. Just two bartenders, and Marco sitting in the exact same spot as he had before. He waved me over and pulled out a stool when I arrived. I pushed it back in, removed my earbuds, and slammed my purse on the bar.
“What the hell did you do to me?” I demanded.
“Alice, hello,” Marco said, smiling brightly at a spot several inches above my head. “It’s great to see you again, really, a pleasure.”
“Cut the shit,” I said. “What did those words mean?”
“I’m sorry, I’m not sure I understand.”
He still wasn’t making eye contact, so I did something I’m not proud of. I grabbed his chin, like a parent might do to a disobedient child, and tilted his head down until our eyes met.
“I’ve been feeling really weird ever since we met,” I said. “Thinking and seeing — strange stuff. And I need to — I need…”
Surprisingly, Marco wasn’t resisting my grip. Were his green eyes confused? Calculating?
I couldn’t tell. After all, it wasn’t like I could read his mind.
“I’m sorry,” I said, releasing him. “I shouldn’t have…”
“That’s alright,” he said. “You’re upset.”
“I am,” I said. “It’s been — no. I need you to tell me something. Why did you leave so suddenly last time?”
“It was the strength of your thoughts, Alice. They were intense, they startled me, and when that happens I sometimes get frightened, or maybe I should say overwhelmed, and I run away before I really realize what I’ve done.”
A silent moment as I considered his answer. My gut said he wasn’t lying, or didn’t think he was, but what good was my gut anymore?
“Fine,” I said at last. “If that’s really what you — fine, fine, okay.”
“I don’t blame you for being frustrated,” Marco said.
“Good,” I said. “But look, my real question, the reason I’m here. Those words you thought you heard in my head. What do you think they mean?”
Surprisingly, Marco was still looking at me. But he didn’t answer, and gave me another one of those striking frowns.
“Look, I’m willing to believe you have a kind of special intuition about people’s feelings,” I continued. “Okay? Some people have perfect pitch or a photographic memory, and you — I don’t care what you call it. Or how you think it works. But I’m ready to believe you sensed something about me last time. Something unresolved. And hearing what you — it’s really been throwing me off. Making me see coincidences as — I don’t know. Like I’m not in the right place.
“But I think, I fucking hope, that understanding will help me feel normal again. So whether or not you can really read minds…”
“I really can, Alice,” Marco whispered.
“I told you, I don’t care,” I said. “Those words — you sensed them, or chose them, or whatever, for a reason. Why? What do you think they mean?”
I shut my eyes then, and drew a ragged breath. When I opened them, Marco was still frowning. God damn it. I finally took him a little bit seriously, and he chose that moment to keep his mouth shut.
“Marco,” I began, but he raised a hand to stop me and looked at the floor.
“I told you before that human thoughts are like a stream,” he said. “Well, that stream, it’s fed by many sources, many springs. The words that I heard, if you say they’re about, what was it, feeling out of place, well, that could mean many things, wanting to leave a place, or take a break from it, or change your relationship to it. Seeing it in a different light. Physical, spiritual, aesthetic, there are many types of thoughts, Alice. Many types of need.”
“But I don’t want any of that,” I said. “I wasn’t thinking any of it until I talked to you.”
“Are you absolutely sure?”
I didn’t answer, and Marco looked up at me again. For a moment, he looked almost normal, like the guy I thought I’d matched with on Hinge. But that was just a brief impression. I was really thinking about what he’d said, about thoughts being like rivers with many sources. I’d always hated corny similes. But if Marco did have a kind of vague insight into my feelings. Which I really was prepared to believe. Then maybe, maybe, there was an aspect of those feelings, a small part of me, that was asking a pointed question or two about my life in New York. Which didn’t mean I was in the wrong place. No, no. But maybe it was normal and okay to have doubts, sometimes. To consider different paths, and imagine what it might look like to finally…
But I couldn’t finish the thought, because Marco leaned forward and tried to kiss me.
“No, dude!” I shouted, and reared back violently. Marco apologized at once, but that didn’t help. It was time to leave, no matter what happened next. I told him I was doing so, and took grim satisfaction in dropping a crisp twenty on the bar to pay for his drink.
“I really am sorry, Alice” he murmured as I turned to go. “I told you, the tricky thing with telepathy is understanding what you hear.”
That was three days ago. I’ve thought a lot about what Marco said, and though I have no desire to see him again, I’ve decided I do agree with him in a couple of ways.
Maybe I have been in a bit of a rut in New York. A lot of people would envy my life, but it’s been a while since I’ve taken a real risk. Marco said something about changing one’s relationship to a place. That feels right, I guess. It feels like something I can do. So maybe it was good I crossed paths with Marco. A chance encounter can end up meaning a lot to you, even if the person themselves means nothing at all.
So I’ve been thinking of ways to change my relationship with New York. Volunteering, moving to a new neighborhood, trying different hobbies. Pottery, or a running club, or something like that. Definitely getting off the apps for a while. Focusing on friendships, or maybe even finding some new ones. I don’t know, all of that is just a start.
It’s a lot to think about. Friday evening now, and I’ve been sitting in bed all day, trying to make sense of it all. Usually I’d go for a walk, because I think better when my feet are moving, but the people outside my apartment building don’t seem to want me to leave. They’re packed together very tightly, and chant the words louder whenever I look out the window. I shudder to think what they’d do if I actually went outside.
But it’ll be different when I make my mind up, I think. I’ll march to the window and shout my decision into the street, and they’ll all smile and leave me be. Either that, or I just have to wait until the storm comes. Maybe, in the end, they’ll be the ones who are washed away.