He pulled the handle and sea winds rushed into the lobby around them. She pulled her coat tight around her and he followed closely. Outside, she hung close on his arm; they made their way down the side street as one. Sirens rang far off. A horn blew at some insignificant left turn and a driver was hurried. On the corner of the left turn, a young black man sang in a pea coat. His stiff fingers found their way down the fret board and he kept a small fire, a soul’s fire, burning despite the winds blowing hard over the waters of the sound. He broke from her arm and dropped two dollars in the open case at the young musician’s feet before she urged him on. Fifty young men and women dressed to the hilt stood shivering in line for a club they might enter in the next hour. The couple passed close and smiled at the sight of so many faces. He watched her as they walked. She watched the tall buildings and the lights and she pondered on suites and a life wearing suits. He laughed and shrugged.

            “Whatever you’d like,” he said.

            “And you’ll be there too?”

            “I’ll come along.”

            They drank coffee huddled close and marveled at the city and her lights.

Cities brought on fear, so he clung to her. But she packed light. And she laughed with her chin back and her eyes on the stars.  Her laughter was bright; it filled whatever space it originated in. It could fill the sound, a concert hall, even a sea. She laughed, and entire coffee houses turned to see. Restaurateurs lost track of their singe to lean out of their kitchens—to see the source: the easygoing girl at the end table, the beauty with the bright smile. The cold wind stung her neck red, her wool collar flapping in the trade winds. She began to laugh. Her hair rushed over her face, other passengers fell to stares, the captain leaned back from his turning wheel. Everyone turned to see the stunning girl giving them music.

            He watched too. And he lost all fear.

            She held out her hand to him, “Come on."

            He took her hand. He smiled at the thought.

            She didn’t know, didn’t see them.

The concierge loved the show. His shifts were always the same, always different. They began at three in the dark morning. Sometimes freezing, sometimes cool. Always hot coffee, and he always offered a light pat on Nick’s shoulder. Nick looked wretched most of the time, but he only saw Nick at three in the dark mornings. Nick would stumble out of the big gold doors, back to his studio seven floors above park block. Quiet professionals would hustle past the front windows, remarkably put together—he always, always, marveled at the early-morning suits, the smooth shaves, the flowing blouses. In winter, they wore the finest coats he’d ever seen. Then the coffee stand would open. Usually Sarah, then on weekends Sarah and Tom and Sandra. They gave him whatever he wanted. He stuck to Americanos, and he tried to keep those to three. By seven, the lobby was alive. Some came for business. Casual conversations revolving around money. Others were tourists, resident hipsters, families with giddy children who refused to discriminate quiet mornings from rowdy nights.

Once, he watched a break-up: the young man wept. The girl pulled her hand back from his and rushed out. The concierge watched her through the window, shrugging some unseen weight from her shoulders, the wind tossing her hair. The young lover man sat hunched and broken. He’d lost his world.

The concierge brought him a coffee. He knew there was nothing more to do. It was a beautiful play, though.

He returned to his place at the counter and wondered at it all. He sipped his Americano, and muttered to himself all the conclusions he’d never say aloud to anyone else. He’d never remember them once he left.

He prided himself in his efficiency. All aspects of his living made sense. His clothes made sense, his job, even his reasons for not settling down with her—she, the brunette with the wit, the one who’d loved him, the one who’d watched him from across crowded dinner tables with that hopeful glint in her eye, the one who was perfect for him. Even his reason for living here, so far, so isolated from all he knew in his past.

Maybe it was that he loved this city, loved smoking pipes in alleyways and answering to no one. Loved there was no one to run into. Maybe it was that he was scared; that she scared him. Whatever it was, there was always one thing that he could not account for—one thing that never made sense but that was him—wholly, completely, the essence of him. It was imagination. It bled out whenever he wasn’t looking. It showed itself in the comfort with which he handled life. There was art in his lifestyle: Art in his gait as he switched alley for alley, as he crossed the street, art in the manner he conducted business, art in his awkward exchanges with the family men who served him his dinners from carts at the base of steel towers. He breathed it, and every now and again, it escaped him in quirky moments of brilliance that could’ve saved a hundred production houses had they been listening. But they hadn’t. Not that he cared. He walked on, happy and alone, stepping forward like some modern yeti—wondering the skyscraper wilderness he’d found himself in, easily surviving, never recognizing the draw to settle down in it, not like we do. He was, down to his core, a rambling man. How about that?