For as long as you have been in New York, you have had a vision: a girl in a ball gown running down the main promenade of Grand Central Station.
A scene from a movie, you thought. A scene from a book you haven’t yet written. It is burned in your mind. It is very specific, and every time you enter the station, you see it.
And then one day, you are running.
The big clock is about to strike noon and you are running down the slopping passageway of Grand Central in your long, fancy dress, ballet slippers skating, and yes, there is music, Carol of the Bells, from the light show flashing snowflakes on the ceiling with stars, and you realize, it is you, you in the vision. You have been seeing yourself for months. You are the girl in the big blue and white dress, and you are late, and you are running. To him.
And then you are waiting for him, then there he is. And there are two new old friends, and one very new friend, and you ride the train together, and you are laughing, laughing, the whole way. In line, you are laughing. Your boned corset sets off the metal detector, and when you open your coat to the security guard, you start laughing. You laugh in the elevators, in the marble hall.
Upstairs, there are couples, all kinds of couples, children, running up and down the hall, cell phones and flashbulbs, military uniforms and white dresses.
You pin yourselves with flowers. You wait and then wait. You have waited your whole life, and then suddenly, you are done waiting. The door opens. You go in. You raise the window and light floods the room. You stand in the light, side by side.
The judge is big and kind, and he smiles at you when you cry. You are both shaking. In a snow of tears, you find his hand, and fit on the ring. You say the words.
You met in a hallway.
You were singing and he came up the escalator to sit by your piano. You flew back and forth across the county many times. You made rose petal ice cream and kissed on a Ferris wheel. You saw zebras and white balloons and an overturned watermelon truck. You escaped a tornado. You baked an apple charlotte. You picked up hundreds of pennies. And then, over homemade fig rum nutmeg ice cream, he asked you a question.
The night you met, he found a fortune under your chair.
It came true. And now you are married. Married, married, married.
Happy holiday. I love you.
