I was supposed to meet friends in the Brooklyn Bridge park for a screening of Wet Hot American Summer, homemade tonic to mix with gin, and caprese salad. And I made it there, eventually. But first, I made the unregrettable mistake of getting off at the Brooklyn Bridge stop from the 6.

Seemed logical at the time.

“You’re in the wrong borough,” Tony projected into my ear. I could hear Janeane Garofalo in the background, someone laughing. “Cross the bridge!”

It was a long walk. Other tourists bustled around, always, I’d noticed in particular today, always so many other people, making noise, unpredictably swooping like schools of fish, elbowing in. What’s with all these people all the time, anyway? I’d thought just hours before, attempting to exit a train, Can’t they just leave me alone for a goddamn minute? But over the water, it felt different. The eyes had space to settle.

Bicycles swept past, bringing the soft thudding chime of rubber against wood. The Watchtower sign glowed against the darkening horizon like a vestige from some imagined past, couples reached for each others’ hands, and groups of teenage boys posed on the bridge beams for another’s iPhone, their arms crossed, chins out. It felt, for a moment, that all anyone needed was here, that it existed now.