Originally posted 08.07.2005

Todd and I met up Thursday night to hear a free concert at Castle Clinton: McCoy Tyner and his trio. I was afraid this might be like every other attempt we’ve made to see each other this summer, the last minute call, lack of direction, and ultimate failure in meeting. The, I was there, where were you? outcome. Especially since I couldn’t remember exactly where Castle Clinton is, as I can never find anything in a park, and didn’t know if he was there already, or on his way, or stuck in traffic, or parked in Jersey City and waiting for the PATH. And he doesn’t have a cell phone.

But we managed to find each other and were among the last few people in, finding standing room only at the back, where the sound was muddy and the audience a lower caliber of jazz listener. The ones who talk a lot and line up their beer cans. But free is free, and McCoy Tyner is McCoy Tyner, with those fourths and modes. Some of my favorite stuff in jazz, right there, even without a violinist.

Afterwards, we sat on a bench outside the castle and caught up. His mom and sister and nieces are on a cruise, which he feels his mom was bullied into. She doesn’t want to go on a ridiculously big boat and eat her way through a 10-day vacation under the Caribbean glare. But the rest of the family doesn’t see it that way: who doesn’t like a cruise? It’s for her own good.

He’s lost weight since the near heart attack. “You think?” he asks? “Oh yeah you have,” I said, looking at his belly. Or where it used to be. “Aren’t your pants falling off?” He admits they’ve gotten loose. Salads are the center of his diet now. And his mom gave him a Foreman grill, and Nancy gave him a seasoning rub and chutneys she made in her kitchen. Lots of people checking up on him, making sure he’s got the right things around to eat. The way women take care of men, sons who left home long ago, bachelor friends on their own.

We watched the fountain outside the castle. It’s flush with the ground and consists of water jets in a pattern that spurt and collapse at various levels. It’s programmed into a little show, and if you watch long enough you know what’s coming, what’s the pattern. It’s clearly designed to encourage interaction, and it succeeds. Children dart in and out of the jets, soaked and giggling; lovers smooch over the bubbling water.

I make a motion to leave and he says, “not until you run through the fountain.” A dare? He knows I have no sense of play. No kids in my life, no dogs, I’m out of practice. I can run across fields, up and down hills, over fences, calling on-on all the way, but actual frolicking is not part of my lifestyle. Still, I feel I’ve been challenged to show my sense of humor. And the fountain is inviting. So I pull off my sandals, bundle up my skirt, and dash into fountain just as the jets collapse. A few of them burst upward at apparently random intervals, but not near me, and after a couple of minutes walking around dry from the ankles up, I return to Todd’s side at the bench.

“I guess it saw you coming,” he said.