Slow Riot

It was overcast in the way Cobble Hill prefers, polite about it. The sky looked undecided. The Bergen F stop entrance was breathing people out in intervals.

I stood on the corner pretending I wasn’t checking my reflection in the darkened window of the bodega next to me. I checked again.

I looked at my phone.

Me: I’m at Bergen. By the little metal railing that prevents nothing.
Claire: I’m under the earth.
Me: That tracks.
Claire: Rude.
Me: Sometimes.
Claire: Black sheer top. Black skirt. Doc Martens. Tote bag.
Me: That’s half of Brooklyn.
Claire: I look like a goth kid who pays rent.
Me: Well that’s intriguing.

A man came out of the subway holding a bouquet of sunflowers. Not her.

Claire: Are you wearing the black jumpsuit?
Me: No. That’s for second dates.
Claire: Coward.
Me: Pink castaway shorts. Shirt that implies emotional depth but is actually cotton.
Claire: I see you.
Me: I see you seeing me?
Claire: Don’t ruin it.

She emerged from the subway talking.

“I cannot believe you said Christian ska was a gateway drug,” she said, walking straight up to me like the last five minutes hadn’t been typed.

“I stand by that,” I said. “Five Iron Frenzy led to everything.”

She was dressed as advertised. Like someone who had once committed to darkness and now allowed for daylight. Her eyeliner was precise without being dramatic. A silver chain at her neck that felt inherited from a previous self.

“You’re taller than I imagined,” she said.

“I’m average tall,” I said. “Like, tall enough to reach things, not tall enough to ruin anyone’s childhood.”

She looked me up and down. “You look like you live around here.”

“I do. A few blocks.”

“Of course you do.”

We stood for half a beat, the street behind us doing its Smith Street thing—strollers, dogs, a couple arguing softly about olive oil.

“So,” she said. “A fellow ex-Baptist.”

“Which is the sexiest sentence I’ve ever heard.”

She half smiled.

“I grew up in Virginia,” I said. “We had a youth pastor who tried to start a Christian nu-metal band.”

“Please tell me they were called something like Crossfade but worse.”

I closed my eyes. “No.”

“What?”

“Not ‘they.’”

She laughed. “You were in this band?”

“We were called Lambslaughtered.”

I hadn’t said that name out loud in years.

“That’s not even theology.”

“I know.”

We started walking south on Smith, two blocks down to the café I liked because the windows were large and the staff was mildly judgmental.

“What neighborhood do you live in again?” I asked.

 “Bushwick,” she said. “It’s fine.”

“How fine?”

“It’s like everyone is auditioning for something.”

“That’s Williamsburg.”

“No,” she said. “Williamsburg thinks it already got the part.”

“That’s fair.”

We reached the café. It smelled like espresso and something baked that had tried very hard. The windows were fogged slightly at the edges.

It was quiet. We ordered.

“Chai,” she said.

“Drip,” I said.

We took our cups to the high-top by the window.

“So,” she said, stirring her chai. “Christian rock, huh?”

“I contain multitudes,” I said.

“Did any of it take?”

I looked out the window. The sky had darkened slightly, like it was considering something.

“Nope,” I said. “It was mostly alarming. Everyone sang like the ceiling might open and they were prepared.”

She nodded. “I liked youth group lock-ins.”

“I never experienced one.”

“We’d stay up all night and talk about God and boys and whether kissing counted.”

“Did it?”

“Everything counted,” she said.

“That tracks.”

She watched the street for a moment. “Parts of it were okay.”

“God.”

“No. The structure.”

“Why?”

“I don’t trust unstructured joy.”

“That’s a very Bushwick sentence.”

She smiled but didn’t deny it.

Outside, a drop of rain hit the window. Then another. Within seconds it was a sheet.

“Well,” I said. “That escalated.”

She turned to watch it. The rain came down hard, flattening the street. People ran. A woman held a tote bag over her head.

“I didn’t bring an umbrella,” she said.

“Well, Claire,” I said. “I believe in fate.”

I opened my tote bag to show a small umbrella.

“That’s not what that means,” she said.

The rain grew louder. The window blurred.

“So,” she said. “Depression.”

“Bold segue.”

“It was in your profile.”

“I like to lead with my strengths.”

“That’s a strength?”

“It’s branding.”

She smiled faintly. “You wrote functionally melancholic.”

“I wrote it at a vulnerable moment.”

“Does it interrupt your life?” she asked.

“I used to think it made me interesting,” I said.

“It mostly makes me tired,” she said. “Do you take anything?”

“Occasionally,” I said. “Pharmacologically and recreationally.”

“That sounds healthy,” she said.

“You’re asking some incisive questions.”

“Might as well get to the bottom of things right off.”

She paused a beat. I tried to think of an equally piercing question.

“Are you happy?” I asked and immediately felt duped by my own brain.

“I don’t think I need to be happy,” she said.

“What, like happiness isn’t the point?”

“More like I just want to feel safe.”

I almost asked what that felt like.

“That’s reasonable,” I said.

She shrugged. “It feels like asking for too much.”

I nodded.

She looked at me as the rain intensified, if that was possible.

“This is very cinematic,” she said.

“It is.”

“Like we’re about to make a bad decision.”

“I don’t make bad decisions,” I said. “I make decisions that lead to future anecdotes.”

She laughed, but then she reached for her cup with both hands, like it might disappear.

“Do you think that if we’d met in youth group we would have hated each other?” she asked.

“Absolutely.”

“You would have thought I was too dark.”

“You would have thought I was performative.”

“You are performative.”

“I know.”

The rain showed no sign of stopping.

The café had grown quieter. A barista wiped the counter like she was trying to erase something.

Claire glanced at the door, then back at me.

She leaned forward slightly. “I have to go to work.”

I looked at the rain, at the window, at her boots.

“Okay,” I said. “I’m not suggesting anything untoward.”

“Uh oh,” she said.

“I’ll walk you to the train, but we have to share the umbrella.”

“What’s untoward about that?”

“It’s a small umbrella, so it’s easier if my arm is around you.”

She gave me a look. “That’s untoward to you?”

“It’s municipal intimacy.”

We finished our drinks as the sky emptied itself onto Smith Street.

I opened the umbrella. It was comically small. The kind you buy from a pharmacy when the heavens have already betrayed you.

“Municipal,” I said, sliding my arm around her.

“That’s worse,” she said.

The rain came down hard enough that the street blurred into something softer, less precise. We walked south, then east, then north again toward the train entrance. The umbrella made a small, private ceiling. Her shoulder was warm. Her boots moved with intention.

“This is very high school,” she said.

“I never got this part,” I said.

She leaned slightly into me. Not dramatically. Just enough to make it functional.

“Average tall works here,” she said.

She might have laughed, but sound was swallowed by rain.

At the train entrance, the air shifted—underground breath rising up. We folded the umbrella and stood there for a second longer than necessary.

People moved around us in quick, damp bursts.

“So,” she said.

“So,” I said.

She stepped forward and wrapped her arms around me.

It was solid. Measured. A person checking the weight of another person.

She pulled back, looked at me like she was memorizing something practical.

“Next time,” she said.

“Next time,” I said.

She disappeared down the stairs, swallowed by the underground.

I stood there a second longer, rain sliding down the back of my neck. The street resumed its sharp edges.

The train roared beneath me.

I folded the umbrella slowly.

The sky had already moved on.