the choices we make paths we take smiles we fake lives we forsake

He was wearing his best flannel shirt, yea, the one that smelled of the night, and had Kerouac folded in a circle in the back pocket of his jeans. Drank wine from the bottles with the corks pushed in and splashed paint on canvases in his threadbare studio apartment in Hell's Kitchen. One mattress, uncovered, and scribbled rubbish poetry on his hands with ballpoint pens and the ink leaked and ran. There was jazz and indie and electronic and he danced.

He ventured to-day to the other side of town upon the subway to find nirvana among concrete and steel. Glass blur blur people and he looked up and spun to make the buildings fly. His heart raced the beats in his giant headphones, thump thump faster faster and such was the rhythm of the city. Hey, DJ mixed it up to the crosswalk blocks and the flashing orange hand high fiving the billboard where the roads divide and he couldn't take either because neither was the one less traveled so he couldn't make a difference. There were no trees.

Then he saw her walking out of the building in her fabulous checkered grey and white peacoat, sleek black boots, large leather purse, and beautiful face. He stopped and lowered his giant headphones and the DJ was gone. She lifted a pretty little hand and a limousine sailed in to the curb. As she reached for the door she saw him, and for an instant, she stopped, not because there was this out-of-place bohemian staring mouth slightly agape, but because he was looking at her. Then the sun snapped back into its journey across the sky and she slid into the limo, camouflaging into the afternoon traffic.

Inside the limo, she fingered the tiny hole in her ear lobe that was now empty. She turned around in her seat and looked out the back window at him, standing there among the blur of suits and yellow taxis and the curb turned a wild purple river beneath the orange glint of the glass that was the blinding smile of a city. Dropped something a long time ago like a cork in a wine bottle that could not be fished out again but there was one more drop and she had tasted it and remembered but now the bottle was lost and gathering dust in a back alley dumpster. Hey, the black leather seat would forever nary have cigarette burns and little love tears.

On the sidewalk, he watched the shipment of cars bolt forth at the switch of the colored light and looked down at his hand. He reached out and fingered his class ring from the prestigious prep school and knew it was just a piece of cold, hard metal that he could not melt and weld once more. He pulled his headphones back on and the music came alive once more to dance with the mannequins in the display case for the lifeless things that ran about in front with their suits and briefcases. Hey, the sidewalk lines would always move never stop stop go go.

She turned around and sat still for an instant. Then she rummaged in her purse for her cell phone. "Linda? We need to work on the Milan proposal. And how are we doing on the deadline for the Franco project?"

He turned around and stood still for an instant. Then he slid into the groove that the sidewalk had etched for the river to flow into the subway station where the graffitied train rumbled alive and still whispered quietly of paint-stained walls.