Look Where You're Going and Keep Moving
luck, envy, and other fictions.
I roll out the door like Oscar the Grouch emerging from his trashcan — disheveled, with an air of curmudgeon.
It’s barely 8 a.m., yet the day’s already hotter than the devil’s mouth. The train took its sweet time showing up, then inexplicably sat in a tunnel. I’m running late, I’m hot, and the hair not stuck to my sweaty forehead has morphed into a voluminous triangle that, were it to appear on a cartoon, would signal they were going through it. This is not my Best Self.
I’m headed to breakfast with a publicist, where she’ll talk about her clients so I can hopefully write about them. In honor of the occasion, I’m sporting a dress with a peplum, which is decidedly not my style but might be the style of whoever it is I’m trying to be. I routinely feel like I am cosplaying adulthood, something I fear I may never outgrow.
I arrive to find the publicist already seated, looking prim and fresh. Silk dress, neat hair, glowing complexion. The restaurant — her choice — looks like it hails from the time of Paul Revere, the kind of place where toast means a slab of sourdough three inches thick, and a fried egg comes nestled in its own little cast-iron pan. Over the course of our conversation, she reveals that she lives nearby, in a home she and her husband are in the process of renovating.
She gestures animatedly as she speaks, her diamond solitaire glinting like a scale model of Epcot. On the tabletop, her phone background bears a photo of two smiling children. Based on her LinkedIn profile, I surmise that we are about the same age. Yet we present as two different species.
We part ways and I head to work, marinating in the assumption that this woman has everything I want, everything that remains maddeningly elusive. I feel rankled, mystified, frustrated at my perceived lack of traction. For the rest of the day, a thought drifts in and out of my mind: Some people are just lucky.
The following week, I reach out about one of her clients and receive an automated bounce-back. Soon after, her colleague informs me that just a few days after our meeting, the publicist tragically and unexpectedly died.
*
I’ve thought of her many times in the decade since. I think of her whenever I pass through her neighborhood, or the corner of the restaurant where we met. I think of her at this time of year, as the air grows thick and hot. Though we spent a grand total of ninety minutes in each other’s company, I’ve thought of her more than figures who shared whole seasons of my life.
In truth, I am thinking less about her — a person I barely knew — than I am about the myth of her, and the ways it affected me. I reflect on the envy I felt without knowing her story, or the realities of her life. About our inability to predict, or control, the plot. About the parameters of luck, if such a thing exists.
*
I’ve shared it before, and am far from the first to tell it, but the story bears repeating.