Eddie woke up on 34th Street and jumped. He stood and walked out the parting doors and found his way upstairs through the ramps, the beggars, soloists, dancing bands with Michael Jackson as a backdrop and a barbershop quartet. A young girl danced next to her mother who was sitting and breast feeding her other child while begging for change. Preferably cash change – if not a reality change.
     He felt the shaking of an arriving subway – but the characters were unmoved. He thought about his kids and he wanted to speak to them now to tell them how much he missed them.
He thought about his wife and felt an inner disgust at himself. Laughed when he remembered what he told his Psychologist.
“I married her for her looks and her psychosis – ironically I divorced her for the same attributes.”
     He thought about Brenda. What was he doing? Brenda and Eddie is a memory that he worked hard to come to peace with. Her rejection of him and her subsequent climb through the window and out of his life – was a very traumatic and hurtful period for him. Now he is contemplating the soft kiss on his lips..
     He decided to walk through the streets past his apartment 57th Street and up towards Central Park. He bought a vanilla ice cream on a sugar cone, sat down on a bench and people watched.
     He thought about the past 20 years and the lies he told Brenda about his life. His divorce wasn’t amicable as he made it out to be, are any divorces? Can anyone who fails ever feel “OK” with it? He thought about his children, he had four of them. Two boys and two girls and how he loved them and missed them right now. They gave him a sense of being that nothing and no one had ever inspired in him.
He retired from his job because he had more money then he would ever know what to do with. He had around 25 million in the banks and another 15 million in investments across the globe. He lived an unflashy life to avoid losing his mind as he almost did several years earlier when his wife threatened to sue him for half of his everything.
Although he had incriminating evidence of his wife’s infidelities – he decided to burn them for the sake of his children. He gave her half of his holdings – some 5 million dollars in one shot. Put up trust funds for each child and then decided to make some money once she was not in the picture any more.
     He made over 25 million dollars in the next 5 years – but only he, his accountant and a handful of investors had knowledge of it. He was an anonymous philanthropist and a silent depositor in the bank accounts of the people he cared about. He had enough and all he really wanted to do was – what? He had yet to figure it out.
Now as he sat in front of the Plaza Hotel he pondered his future and shook about his bringing back to life the pain and darkness that once threatened to destroy him. “Hurricane Brenda” as his father once called her, had come to town and had already caused some collateral damages.
But that soft kiss on the lips – like a spring breeze and the scents of bursting fragrances of flowers and life. It made him weak when he felt, once again, the softness of her lips…
     He stood up. Around him were the sights and sounds of New York City in the late Spring. Horse carriages, the tourists posing in front of the Plaza and the statues and fountains. There were trickling of an assortment of noises, honking horns, brakes from buses and cars, the occasional “Fuck you” from the occasional New Yorker wannabe. There were the neighs from the horses as they slowly made there way into gear. With the young couple already kissing as they were being taken somewhere on some mystery ride.
     He knew what he needed to do and how he needed to approach it. He stood up, threw the wrapper from the cone in a garbage can and headed back home.