by Michael Moon for the Autumn 2025 issue
The old route had always been there, of course, though he hadn’t walked it since changing jobs last summer altered his commute to catch the PATH at Grove instead of Exchange. The first agendaless Saturday in months saluted him now, crisp & vivid as a newly minted hundred dollar bill, with the promise of some further value to be extracted as long as he kept alert and was swift to act on whatever opportunities might present themselves that morning.
Do-it’n-doo-doo, feelin’ groovy!
Though the rest of the lyrics remained lost to the fogs of memory, their rhythmic residue provided a definite pep to his step from the moment he emerged outdoors and, in a single sweeping glance, took in how the sunlight—traveling across an astronomical unit of sheer space and refracted through countless cirrus ice crystals lingering like stretch marks in the Earth’s lower atmosphere—had settled across the city that morning, setting into motion a slow choreography of shadows cast by buildings & birds, people, planes & pets. A dull, underlying ache, long anesthetized if not fully aestheticized through the normal operations of memory, still pulsed with suppressed but unsublimated energies.
He took a sharp left out the sliding doors onto the old route, narrowly avoiding entanglement in a pair of leashes held by a heedless dogwalker and not knowing himself until just the step before which direction his feet would take him, and continued east towards the river, past the pharmacy on the corner, and through the pedestrian plaza whose flowerbeds were replenished several times a year by whoever managed the surrounding office complex, which included a dog park, playground, and once adirondack-strewn public lawn, all fenced off now and locked up due to budget cuts that the flowers were apparently spared.
He passed between the plaza’s two large, metal sculptures, one safely ensconced behind the office building’s glass facade, the other exposed to the elements. The indoor sculpture stood ten feet tall and was shaped from a single, thin sheet of silver that had been pummeled into a shimmering trompe-l’œil mask. Its cracked, scaly skin seemed to be flaking off eczematically, especially over the right eyebrow, giving the impression of a hairline receding into the treetop silhouettes of some pale, moonlit forest. The interplay between its smooth, reflective surface and its actual concavity tricked the eye into seeing the convexity of a giant sentinel’s expressionless mask too riddled with holes to hide any intentions, good or bad. The outdoor sculpture, by contrast, having been exposed to much worse than the elements, took its twisted steel from the wreckage of 9/11 and was recast as a memorial honoring the Jersey City firefighters who had lost their lives so that perfect strangers might live, underscoring for those who stopped to meditate on such things before such memorials what was actually meant by the word “community” in honoring the sacrifices that being part of one required.
He opened a music app on his phone while waiting on the corner for a creeping car to bebop over a speed bump, crossed the street, then waited for the light rail running north to pull in and pass when the southern bound tram eased into the station. He couldn’t help but notice that the world seemed to be conspiring to slow his progress.
Slow down, you move too fast, Simon & Garfunkel’s melodic admonishments poured stereophonically into each ear. You got to make the morning last.
He hummed along for a bit as no one was near, turning right onto Hudson Street where he was confronted by a long stretch of empty sidewalk lined with low trees. Planters on the left provided bursts of color every few steps while shrubbery bonsai’ed into blocks on the right hid the unsightly light rail tracks from view. He moved through it now as if entranced, stumbling in the opposite direction of a slow-moving conveyor belt where there had only been static sidewalk just a second ago, moving through time and space as a purely sensory experience mingling the sky’s blue with the quality of sunlight and gravity’s paintdrop-petaled exercises in pointillism with the soft white blossoms of fruitless pear trees that inspired surrealistic visions of monstrous dandelions refusing to grant wishes no matter how hard the wind blew or how much breath a passerby might expend looking up its white, sunlight-dappled skirts, maliciously fragrancing the entire block with a scent that many mistook for semen. This stretch of stench had always felt like passing through an urban birth canal that opened up at Exchange Place to expansive views up and down the river. He spots an Asian couple in their mid-twenties, walking a white Maltese, the same breed Romeo was. A momentary darkness passes over his memories like the shadow of a sea gull’s wing, unwittingly exposing an unexpected tenderness to touch that forces him to look away.
He felt his wife’s presence rise reflexively from somewhere deep within himself and envelop his entire being like a softly spoken spell of protection. They had each been a total and utter one through a series of unfortunate events early on in life, but then their luck had changed and brought them together in their mid-twenties to become a united & indivisible two, which Romeo’s adoption made three, and their daughter’s birth made four. However, losing Romeo didn’t make their family a three again, but a permanently scarred four minus one. He allowed himself to sink exactly one year to the day into the past, opening himself up to a total recall of Romeo’s panicked, uncomprehending eyes locked on his, first as if he could prevent the inevitable end Romeo must have sensed coming from actually coming, and then as if all he’d ever really wanted out of life was to go out gently gazing into his owner’s eyes for just a moment longer.
A loosely-tied banner flapped noisily against two guardrail sections advertising that year’s Fourth of July fireworks over the Hudson River. Wyclef Jean was headlining the musical lineup, but he didn’t recognize any of the other performers. He continues south along the walkway, remembering how terrified Romeo was of fireworks, past the gruesome Katyń Memorial of a captured soldier, cast in bronze, bound, gagged, and bayoneted clean through the back with its pointed blade protruding several inches out his chest. The sun’s harsh glare glances off the river and casts the entire morning in a beautiful, though difficult to endure light, making him wish he hadn’t forgotten his sunglasses.
Their old bench in the shade occupied, he continues on past the converted Colgate-Palmolive factory that his father had once operated a forklift in for nearly fifteen years before it was finally shut down and later renovated into office spaces, leasing at astronomical figures today, with a cafe and sushi restaurant installed off the main lobby, past the ferry terminal where he idly consults the departure times, deciding that twenty minutes constituted an absurdly long wait, especially considering he had no real destination in mind, all the way down to the Colgate Clock, which for a decade spanning the roaring twenties into the Great Depression enjoyed the dubious honor of being the world’s largest clockface, but was later relocated after falling in the rankings to ninth place to an elevated patch of landscaping where a fork in the walkway ended in a cul-de-sac.
He cooled off in the octagonal shade of the 50-foot clock, staring out over the brackish waters between the Freedom Tower and the Statue of Liberty, musing over how much Romeo would’ve liked being there, when he heard someone calling his name:
“Jacob? Aren’t you Jacob Park?”
SOS or eso es? Undecided whether he’d just heard a distress signal or Spanish subvocalized in his head, he noted with fascination how kind the years had been to his old high school guidance counselor and fourth year Spanish teacher, Señora Barellina. She must’ve been in her late forties now, but looked exactly as he remembered her twenty years ago. She’d been pregnant when he visited her that first Thanksgiving back from freshman year in college.
“¡Señora Barellina! ¿Es usted de verdad?”
“¿Quién si no?”
“¡Wow, increíble!” Jacob emotes with muted machismo, reaching the end of his español. “You look exactly the same.”
“And you, still boyish and handsome, I see. Do you live here in Jersey City?”
“I hadn’t since leaving for college, but yes, I do now. I moved back during the pandemic. And you?”
“Oh no, I’m just visiting. Met up with a dear, old friend for lunch, then decided to take a little stroll before the drive back home. It’s so nice out, and so much has changed along the waterfront. I’m still in education, but out in Fort Greene now, at the Free School.”
“Oh, I have friends in Fort Greene, but no idea where their kids go to school.” Then offering her a sweet bouquet of smiles, references his teenage self, “Still guiding lost souls?”
“¡Cómo no! I have three boys, 17, 15, and the youngest, a joyful surprise, has just turned 8.”
“I believe I’d met the oldest, in utero. May I ask their names?”
“The youngest is Pedro, and he’s crazy about all things Harry Potter. The middle one is Bernard. He has a secret girlfriend he thinks none of us know about; he’s going through that phase where personal boundaries are precisely defined and rudely defended.” She touches her forehead to ostensibly wipe away coagulating beads of perspiration as a brief shadow of sadness flashes its bird’s wing across her half-hidden features and veers out of view like a painful memory deflected for the time being to be savored in a quiet moment alone later on. “And then there’s Santiago, whom as you say, you’ve met already. He’s going through a hard time.”
“I’m very sorry to hear that, Señora Barellina,” Jacob frowns. “Stop me if I’m prying, but may I ask what’s causing his troubles?”
A doubt seems to cross, then double-cross her mind.
“His best friend since middle school recently took his own life,” she explains solemnly. “I’ve counseled literally over a thousand teenagers in the course of my career, but I just don’t know how to help him. He’s so…insensible.”
“Insensitive?”
“No, you know, insensible, unresponsive. Nothing I say gets through these days. We see him for dinner maybe a couple times a week. He avoids me at school, and at home, he’s pretty much locked himself in his room—I’m so sorry, I don’t mean to burden you with any of this.” She appears to have collapsed into herself without moving, the way an instinct to catch her freezes him in a mirror of her motionlessness. A slight quiver worrying her lower lip is the only indication that time is even passing between them while also serving as prelude to the torrent of pent up tears that follow.
“Please, Señora Barellina, it’s really no burden at all. Perhaps I might even be able to help. If possible, I would like to speak with Santiago. As you know, I was well-acquainted with death at his age, and you were there when I had no one else to turn to. Please, allow me to repay your kindness.”
“Oh no, I don’t think that would be a very good idea. But I really do appreciate you wanting to help. Still such a sweet, sweet boy,” she sniffles, reaching out her hand to give his chin an affectionate wag.
…
Having not seen Señora Barellina since his freshman year of college, Jacob took it as a sign when coincidence brought them together again for the second time that week. He’d been sitting at a table on a sidewalk in Fort Greene with a couple of college friends. They got together quarterly under the pretense of some vaguely conceived book club, whose business was usually concluded before their second round of drinks even arrived, and continued gathering long after it became obvious that their little charade was really just a convenient excuse to forget about life’s responsibilities for a while, to splurge on fine dining & drinks, and to chase down all those good nights that had somehow eluded their younger selves.
“Jacob? I thought that was you. Twenty years nothing, and then twice in one week. I feel the universe is speaking to us, Jacob, only I can’t understand what it’s saying.”
“This is Jacob?”
“We don’t point, Santi, it’s impolite. Jacob, I’d like you to meet my eldest son, Santiago.”
Jacob rose to shake hands, inexplicably enchanted. “Encantado.”
“Hi, Jacob, it’s nice to meet you.”
“Señora Barellina, Santiago, these are my good friends from college.” Jacob waits for everyone to exchange greetings, then wonders aloud whether they should adjoin tables. “We’re just getting started,” he says, already tugging on the corner of the empty table next to him. “Why don’t you join us?”
“Oh, no, we couldn’t, but thank you, it’s very kind of you to ask. It’s clear we’d be interrupting.”
“Not at all, please, it would be our pleasure.”
As the link between parties, Jacob rises to the occasion of relaying with charming efficiency the newly amalgamated group’s intersections of interests and identity, wittily summarizing their current situations with a few tactfully selected details. It came to light that each of his friends’ four children had, at one point or other with varying degrees of overlap, attended the Free School where Señora Barellina served on staff as the school’s child psychologist. If she possessed intimate psychological details about any of their children, she prudently didn’t let on.
“My mom told me a few stories about you,” Santi confesses shyly once Señora Barellina, who had just excused herself to make use of the rest rooms, is out of earshot. “We’re actually named the same. My name is yours in Spanish.”
Jacob, who was about to let himself sink quite happily into quiet reveries, jerks up with sudden attention as if surprised to see Santi still sitting there, speaking to him from across the table. He casts a quick glance over at his friends, who were absorbed in a mostly civil discussion of NYC mayoral politics.
“Jacob and Santigo? Huh, I’d never have guessed.”
Santi projected an aura of intense attentiveness and, though he’d struggled all night with maintaining eye contact, had locked eyes with Jacob now. His delicate Asian features propped up a Latino nose, producing an overall effect that was somehow harmonious. “I’m told it was actually my dad who suggested the name,” he said, dropping his voice down to not quite a whisper, “And evidently, my mom agreed. She was your guidance counselor when you were in high school, right? She said you came out the other side of some pretty dark times with admirable resilience.”
“I don’t know about admirable, but that’s right. She was also my senior year Spanish teacher. I remember the last time I saw your mom, she was still pregnant with you.”
The waiter approached to check on their tables, and Jacob asked for another cocktail he didn’t really want. Something about the way that Santi was looking at him made him uncomfortable. Jacob craned his neck and, seeing no sign of Señora Barellina, filled his lungs to capacity before heaving what seemed to Santiago like a deeply significant sigh. It occurred to Jacob that death offered many lessons, and so he started telling Santi about how the one he’d taken away from the untimely deaths of each member of the family he’d been born into, which occurred serially over time in an unrelenting escalation of loss bracketing his high school career, was to pursue life as an endless array of aesthetic experiences.
I came across a Hunter Thompson quote once when I was around your age. Santi had never heard of him. It hit me at just the right time in just the right place; nevermind that I’d gotten it all wrong. Look for a way of life. Decide how you want to live and then see what you can do to make a living WITHIN that way of life. Jacob regarded the ice melting in his Manhattan for a moment before giving the glass a gentle shake, but without taking a sip. At the time, it honestly hadn’t occurred to me that by living, he’d actually meant getting a job. Taken out of context, or rather, transplanted into mine, I’d thought he was going on about not committing suicide. He scanned Santi’s face to see how the word landed, but if it triggered any trauma, he hid it well. Anyway, that’s how I’d made sense of it at the time. I owe your mom my life. She guided me through, as you put it, some pretty dark times. Santi shifts in his seat when his words are quoted back to him and crosses one leg over the other. I was very sorry to hear her mention the other day that you’re dealing with a rather difficult situation yourself these days. The simple fact of the matter is, we all return to dirt. Everything else is either religion or romance. Against the ineluctable fade, wipe, cut, or some other filmic transition effect to black, we’re equipped with an instinctive avoidance of any situations that stank of death—an understandable animal reaction, but one that leaves out regret. If your friend could communicate one regret from the other side, I’m sure it’d have something to do with how his life ended.
As Jacob’s monologue winds down, the waiter returns, with Señora Barellina trailing closely behind. Jacob announces his treat to the table, snatching the check straight from the waiter’s hand before anyone could object. He shoots Santi a conspiratorial smile, wondering whether anything he’d said all evening had gotten through to him. Jacob saw now why Señora Barellina had described her eldest as being insensible.
…
Fulfilling the rule of three adhered to by most coincidences that were retroactively looked upon as suffused with meaning, Jacob bumps into Santi outside the Paula Cooper Gallery in Chelsea the following weekend.
“No way, Santi! Out enjoying the art?” Santi layers a shrug underneath his nod; Jacob dials down the bonhomie. “You know, the Yayoi Kusama exhibit in there was pretty amazing. You gotta check it out. But first, I’d like you to meet my wife, Jade, and our eight-year-old daughter, Jojo.”
Greetings were exchanged. Jojo sized him up, peeking out from behind her parents through the space created by their torsos. The four of them stood in the middle of the sidewalk, like heavy stones in a stream, forcing passersby to flow around them. Jacob starts to suggest they sit down for refreshments somewhere, when a teenaged girl out walking her dog passes between them chirping an apology on behalf of her dog. Jacob notices Santi perform a rapid, full body scan as she passes between them.
“Should we go to that teashop around the corner?” Jade suggests clairvoyantly. “Jojo, want a mochi ice cream?”
“Sure.”
All three of the Parks turn to Santiago Barellina for his opinion.
“I love mochi ice cream, especially mango.”
Jade gets up to take Jojo to wash her sticky fingers. Santi again waits till they’re out of earshot before turning to Jacob with a deadly serious expression to ask whether or not Jacob was in fact his father. Jacob, stunned speechless, is disarmed and momentarily incapable of denying the charges.
“My mom’s husband isn’t my biological father,” Santi explains efficiently. “My half brothers are full Peruvian, but I’m half Korean. I’ve always sensed some mysterious scandal surrounding my birth. Both my parents have historically been pretty tight-lipped about it.”
“You think I’m your dad?”
“I think lots of things. Not all of them can be true and some may not even be plausible, but that’s how it is with father-shaped holes. So are you or aren’t you?”
“No, absolutely not! Your mother and I never had those kinds of relations. She taught me some Spanish and guided me through some difficult times, that’s all.”
“Okay, well, at least now I know. Please don’t take any offense; stranger things have been known to come to light.”
Jacob looks up to see his daughter skipping between tables ahead of her mother.
“All clean!” Presented with all ten digits for inspection, front and back, Jacob gathers her damp, delicate hands into his own and plants a quick kiss in lieu of any physical stamp of approval, then frowns upon noticing several wet spots on her dress. Jade steps up behind Jojo and gently places a hand on each flaking, sunburnt shoulder.
“I think the black sesame’s going to leave a stain. So is the bill settled or what?”
Later that night, after putting Jojo to bed, Jacob and Jade were out enjoying a bottle of Bordeaux on the balcony overlooking the alleyway that ran between their neighbors’ backyards. When he’d told her about Santi’s wild speculations, she hadn’t reacted with the surprise and disbelief he’d expected her to. Instead, she’d grown quiet and thoughtful and seemed to have reconsidered saying what she’d been thinking out loud, which continued gnawing at him long after she’d turned in for the evening. Did she really think he could be Santi’s father? He’d already told Santi the truth, and didn’t see the point of reiterating it for his wife, who actually hadn’t even asked. Still, she’d just sat there as if in silent judgement or the entertainment of doubt: even if he hadn’t fathered a son with his high school Spanish teacher slash guidance counselor eighteen years ago, could he be the type of person who would?
But these self-recriminations Jacob wrestles with that evening in an insomniac state of pronounced agitation hadn’t even occurred to Jade. She’d simply been distracted thinking about work, only half listening, and had already shrugged the entire episode off as utterly ridiculous.
His phone vibrates with anticipation at eleven forty-seven in the evening. He looks over at his sleeping wife and takes the call out on the balcony. Señora Barellina is beside herself with worry, and immediately starts interrogating Jacob of Santi’s whereabouts. She hadn’t been able to get in touch with him all day since he rushed out that morning forgoing breakfast. Jacob tells her that he was just with Santi earlier that afternoon. They had green tea lattes and mochi ice cream together with his wife and daughter. He’d seemed fine to him. But why did you think to call me? She hesitates. Santi’s taken an interest in you. You must’ve made an impression. How strange that the two of you met on the afternoon of his disappearance. So it was a disappearance, he thought. That made things serious. Had she called the police? They told her to just wait, he may turn up that evening, but to call back in the morning if he hadn’t. He asked me if I was his dad, which caught me off guard. Why would he think that? She sketches out the circumstances surrounding Santi’s birth without revealing anything he hadn’t already heard from Santi.
“Señora Barellina, if there’s anything I can do to help, please, all you have to do is ask.”
“Thank you, but no. I think you’ve done quite enough already,” she says with a finality that brings their conversation, and indeed all contact between them, to a close on this jarringly accusational note.
He lay awake in bed that night, counting cracks in the ceiling, then rolled onto his right side, seeking solace in his sleeping wife’s shallow breaths, inhaling her own redolent, carbon dioxide-rich exhalations. He flipped onto his other side to look for the nearly full moon, which had started out in the lower left quadrant of his window, and moved by imperceptible degrees each time he’d glanced in its direction like a private, lunar game of red light, green light, until the moon had advanced beyond the window’s frame.
What did she mean that I’d already done enough? It wasn’t my fault, was it? Whatever it was?
They’d discussed the fathers neither of them had really known. Jacob’s father passed away without ever having explained much about what his life was like before immigrating to New Jersey. Santi, on the other hand, had never known his biological father at all, who was out of the picture long before he started forming memories. At some point, seeing how it breached his mom’s defenses, Santi simply stopped asking questions. Everything he knew about his dad was derived secondhand from his mother, who’d maintained tight narrative control over his father’s absence.
Jacob suddenly remembered that their conversation had somehow diverged into a foolish social media fad he’d once participated in, around the same age Santi was now, called ledging, where you experienced your human net worth in a self-induced trance standing stock-still on the ledge of a tall building, not stepping into the void. Santi had heard some of the stories before, but never actually met anyone crazy enough to have tried it.
One of the last images to emerge from the chemical baths sloshing around the darkroom of Jacob’s brain, before the puppet strings of consciousness were severed for the evening, was of Santi in long, fluttering robes, perched over the Brooklyn Bridge, scanning the East River for his reason to live. What’s the point of asking yourself questions that’ll only lead to answers you wouldn’t be able to face? As the sky outside begins to brighten, Jacob finally manages to persuade himself that he couldn’t possibly be held responsible, except perhaps emotionally, for whatever happens to Santi and falls asleep, or rather, through sleep, into a groundless dream of flight. 🏁
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