Mike, Mike and Me

He went on, “I meant, where are you headed from here? Flying someplace on vacation? Or business?”

“Oh! No, I’m just…I’m meeting somebody’s plane.” And I’m head over heels in love with him. So stop flirting.

Are you flirting?

Or is it my imagination?

“How about you?” I asked him, after taking a sip of my second drink. The second drink I shouldn’t have been having in the first place.

“I landed a while ago. My luggage missed the connection at O’Hare so I have to wait for it to get here on the next flight.”

“You’re in New York on vacation?”

“I just moved here a few months ago.”

“Oh.”

He just moved here. Which meant that he lived here. Unlike Mike. My Mike.

“So you live here, too,” he pointed out conveniently.

“Yes.”

“Where?”

“Upper West Side.” I didn’t want to ask him where he lived because it really didn’t matter because I was never going to see him again.

Then again, it seemed rude not to ask, so I did.

“Lower East Side.”

“East Village?”

“Lower.”

“SoHo?”

“Lower,” he repeated with a shrug. “Chinatown, really.”

“You live in Chinatown?”

“Yeah. But I’m not Chinese,” he said, deadpan.

“You’re kidding. You’re not?” I asked, also deadpan.

“No. People make that mistake all the time, though.”

“They do?”

“Yeah, you know, they’ll ask me for my recipe for kung pao chicken or they’ll want to know how to play piaji, and I—”

“Piaji?” I cut in.

“Yeah, it’s a traditional Chinese game.” He grinned.

“Really?”

“Really. And actually, I really do know how to play. You soak up a lot when you live in the neighborhood, you know?”

“Yeah.”

“Like, I bet you know how to eat Sunday brunch like nobody’s business.”

“What?”

“Living on the Upper West Side. Forget it. I was trying to be funny again.”

“Oh.” I cracked a smile.

“I should probably give up my dream of starring in my own sitcom, right?”

I laughed.

So did he. Then he said, “Actually, I’m serious.”

“You are?”

“Yeah. I really do want my own sitcom someday. Dream big, I always say.”

I honestly couldn’t tell if he was kidding or not, so I just shrugged and said, “Yeah.”

“But for now, I’m working entry level at an ad agency. What do you do, Beau?”

“For a living? I’m a production assistant.”

“What kind of production assistant?”

“You know that show J-Squared?”

“Janelle Jacques? Yeah, I know it. You work for her?”

“Yeah. I’m a production assistant on the show.”

“You’re in the industry?”

“The Janelle Jacques industry? You bet,” I quipped.

He was already reaching into his pocket. “Here,” he said, and pulled out a small pale blue rectangle.