Not Paris
“What if we just ran across?” Caitlin suggested, as we stood high atop the rocks. Waves splashed past, but only slightly sprinkled us. I thought of the Big Little Lies opening sequence, and started playfully humming the song from it until Caitlin shouted, “Nicole!” In response, I looked down at the short stretch of rock-less sand that separated these rocks from more on the other side. “Okay, I’m just gonna do it,” I shouted back at Caitlin, over the crashing of the waves.
In that moment, it would have been smart to remember that John, our Airbnb host, had warned us the waters were the worst he’d seen since the Hurricane. It would have been smart to remember my phone had been water damaged three times already and that Lifeproof cases are not actually life-proof. And maybe it would have been smart to simply walk along the side of the parallel road instead of along the treacherous rocks.
I thought all this as we silently continued our walk to the beach part of the beach—the beach part of the beach where we could sunbathe and read and chat and eat the snacks that were now drenched in our shared bag. Caitlin skulked slightly ahead of me, our towel weighing upon one arm—now heavy with water. My now-soaked denim shorts rubbed uncomfortably against my legs, as I held our bag out, scarecrow style, with two slightly-wet novels airing out in my other hand and my white beach cover up draped over one arm—a living clothes line.
I started chuckling, “Remember when we were gonna go to Paris?”
Caitlin erupted in laughter, “We really thought we were going to Paris.”
Just two days earlier, I was frantically packing for a trip we had planned since August. For the past seven months, Caitlin and I would intermittently remind each other of this trip. Whenever one of us was anxiously writing a paper: “Hey, but remember we’re going to Paris.” When we were pulling marathon hours in the library for finals: “Paris, though—we’re going there soon.” When one of us was crying: “Just think, in one month, we will literally be in Paris.”
When the date I’d looked at for months on our travel itinerary came—Friday, March 2, 2018—I thought nothing of the hail and snow that harshly smacked my face as I walked outside. It didn’t strike me that something as uncontrollable as the weather could prevent us from getting on flight DY7192 from Newark-EWR to Paris-ORY. I was sitting in my room on hold with Norwegian Air, as Caitlin struggled to even drive down the street she lived on, snow covering and re-covering the windowpane every few seconds. I don’t know what came first: the sobering realization that we were not going to Paris, or the enticing yet meekly presented suggestion that maybe… we go to San Juan?
*
“There are no Apple Stores in Puerto Rico,” I reported back to Caitlin, after a disappointing, yet surprisingly pleasant, conversation with a customer service representative named Charles. I handed her phone back, looking despondently at mine sitting in a bag of rice.
“Honestly, it’s a good thing,” I said out loud, trying to convince myself. “We’re all addicted to our phones. The universe is trying to tell me something. It’s meant to be.”
At my mention of “the universe,” Caitlin rolled her eyes. Two-ish years ago, after a surprisingly good conversation with a boy at a party, Caitlin thought about how to proceed. I assured her the universe would somehow bring them together again—if not tomorrow, some time. “The universe” was the only way I could think to express in active voice what I meant in passive voice—as they teach you to do on the SAT—to express the idea that they would be brought together again, somehow. I don’t know where this undenominational spiritual conviction came from, but I held it sincerely. I remember the incredulous look on Caitlin’s face at the time—the shadow of which was on her face at my most recent mention of “the universe.” Though we often joke about being the same person, this is our essential difference: my flair for the dramatic, romantic, and artistic versus Caitlin’s steadfast pragmatism. (She did not wait for the universe to bring them together again; they dated for two years.)
“Honestly, we can both just use my phone,” she suggested, as if our identities had not already merged enough.
My phone-less existence was strange and prone to overthinking. There was one car ride where our driver only talked to Caitlin and completely ignored me. They were immersed in a conversation about Philadelphia, where Caitlin was from. A city she loves, sports teams she loves, and on and on—the type of introductory spiel I imagine my mom has gotten used to hearing from my dad. There wasn’t really a point for me to enter the conversation. I didn’t really like sports; I felt not passionate at all about being from the suburbs of Washington, DC. It’s my least favorite line of questioning—the least interesting, the least ripe for further conversation. After a few introductions that would follow this pattern, I started to feel thoroughly uninteresting, and constantly reminded of how bad I was at small talk.
We went to a bar in Old San Juan after the one car ride where I was completely ignored. I was feeling down about the fact that I was invisible for 20 minutes, and without a phone to entertain myself, I sat studying the menu somewhat awkwardly—bored but not really wanting to talk. As if dropped into the scene by “the universe” right on cue, a man with a British accent turned to us and asked, “Where are you from?”
He actually had to ask twice because the first time we tried to ignore him, thinking he was another creepy guy at a bar. I let Caitlin field the initial questions, hoping she’d be able to shake him off.
He said he’d been shipwrecked, to which I perked up. A few days earlier, I had learned Caitlin was an anxious flyer. She gripped the armrests on our flight to San Juan, as I tried to calm her down and let her watch me play Tetris. (I almost wish she had just popped a Xanax because she made fun of every slip up I made.) She said she’d rather take a boat, which resulted in me describing how dangerous sea travel is, how many people would die crossing the Atlantic before planes existed. I didn’t know what the statistics were, so we got into an argument, and the fact that this man was shipwrecked was finally backing up my claims.
Dan was amused by our friendship. After a few minutes, we independently concluded he was harmless, and learned he was “busking the globe.” He would essentially travel place to place, perform violin on the streets, and live on whatever money he earned. We quickly learned that Dan was charming and kind and shared the same sense of humor as Caitlin and me. He and Caitlin easily teamed up in poking fun at me, as if the three of us had been friends for years. I’m usually very skeptical of people I just met, but Dan quickly became an old friend.
Dan was very observant. At one point, he turned to me very intently and asked, “Has anyone ever told you that you talk with your hands?” Caitlin started cackling, and the two of them started mimicking my expressive hand gestures, as I shook my head ruefully. He then pointed out a woman wearing a black sweater across the way, who was not amused by our laughter and the past minute of expressive hand movement. She glared at us when Dan got up to demonstrate the “award-winning” choreography he performed with his collegiate a cappella group during his semester abroad (in Rochester, New York of all places). I, meanwhile, couldn’t stop laughing.
Our bubbly trio walked down the cobblestone streets of San Juan together, leaving the bar and heading to the live poetry café, where Caitlin and I had planned to meet our friend Gaby. Gaby was home for Spring Break, and she brought two friends, Mary and Albany, whom we knew peripherally. Gaby is warm and generous, and invited us to join in on their plans most days.
That night, we all hopped from bar to bar together, until eventually climbing our way atop El Morro, an expansive 16th-century fortress. I laid out on my back, listening to the distant crashing of the waves below, gazing at the clear sky full of stars above, only slightly tuned in to the triangles of dialogue around me. I looked over at Dan, who was a complete stranger hours ago, confused if I had just met my soul mate.
*
The first night we went to Gaby’s home, our Uber driver dropped us off in front of a gate we assumed would unlock. In our meandering, trying to find a way around it, we came across a street sign showing the intersection of Calle Poppy and Calle Iris. I pointed it out to Caitlin—she called her grandpa Poppy, and her grandma’s name was Iris. Her grandpa had passed away the week before our trip, but we didn’t cancel it because Paris was his favorite place in the world.
“You’ve got me believing in the universe or something now,” Caitlin teased through the veil of tears forming.
Hours later and a few Margaritas in, we were out dancing when Dan texted Caitlin’s phone, or rather “our phone” as we’d been calling it. Caitlin was pretty much ready to leave—the impact of the street sign never quite dissolved—but he insisted that he was only five minutes away. For some reason, neither of us was excited to see him, even though we’d spent the whole day recounting our night with Dan.
I later told Caitlin how I wish our evening with Dan could remain an isolated gem in my memory, but that night it was cracked open and turned into something else. He arrived with a busload of new friends who he tried to introduce us to over actually good music. I was annoyed; all I wanted was to dance with my friends, but I found myself once again in the trap of introductions.
Some tall Danish guy came up to Caitlin and asked, “So which one of you likes him?” At that point, neither of us even liked him in a nonromantic way; we were annoyed that this sea of people was interrupting a lovely night with friends. I kept turning over the phrase, “Some one had blundered,” like a refrain in my head. Some one had blundered.
Reflecting back, neither of us knows who blundered, or how, or when. We slipped out after a quick goodbye, and back at our Airbnb, Caitlin and I had a long, tearful conversation about her grandpa and our relationships with men. It was rare for me to hear Caitlin speak about men so openly; in pretty much the entire time we had been best friends, she’d been in a stable relationship.
The next day, Caitlin put me in charge of our phone—an unread text from Dan was mine to deal with. Not knowing what to do, I did nothing. Neither of us wanted to see him again. We walked through Old San Juan with our friends, and after seeing his trademark folding-bike resting against a lamppost, Caitlin ran to the other side of the street and I walked hurriedly past, praying he wouldn’t see us.
We spent the rest of our trip with Gaby’s family and friends. Her older brother Javi, quiet yet hilarious, would drive us everywhere, and her mother insisted we have dinner at their house most nights. By the last day, I was laying upon the laps of my friends, as six of us squished into a car meant for five people. I remember giggling and dancing, which was really just me squirming around as I lay horizontal in the car, on our long drive to the rainforest, El Yunque.
*
Paris was always meant to be a trip about friendship—an escape, a time to heal. Whenever I would visualize the trip, it was as though there was an invisible bubble surrounding Caitlin and me. All those months, not one of my thoughts wandered to the people we would meet. It had been so long since I’d had to introduce myself. I blame it on the fact that I was a senior in college, and simply tired after years of meeting new people and making new friends.
In the existential crisis that served as the backdrop for my final semester, I wondered less about my career path, and more about the person I wanted to be—it felt a bit like middle school. I didn’t really have a prepackaged, easily digestible version of myself ready to present to the world. It would be much easier if the planet were filled with old friends, with Caitlins and Gabys: to be understood without quite defining yourself.
As Paris was meant to be, San Juan was a trip about friendship, but not only between Caitlin and me. There was no invisible bubble surrounding us; we met new people, and bonded with old. Gaby’s family welcomed us with open arms. It simultaneously was and wasn’t an escape, but even Caitlin agrees that the universe has some role in all of it.