Santa

In the winter, Washington Square is a gauntlet of ice and snow, with pigeons peppering the walkways in their chest-ruffed beauty. Stanford White’s Washington Square Arch – the gateway between uptown and downtown for neighborhood residents – tells time with its shadow over the square.

It was here that I met a man dressed in a light gray bomber jacket, light pants, and a feathered fedora. He had a fleshy pink-cheeked smile and a rounded nose with wire glasses. He leaned against the interior of the arch on one black-gloved hand and crossed his ankles. With his other hand, he sighted up the sidewalks of Fifth Avenue and back down to the park with pale blue eyes until he saw me.

Photo by Shutterstock.

“You look like Santa,” I said. I shuffled my running shoes and flapped my loden green coat. “You look like an elf,” he countered. And thus began something that many people remember from some point in their lives – a Christmastime romance, with tree-toting, wreath-hanging, roast-cooking, and party-going.

In April of the next year, just as the snow had thawed and buds began to dot the park landscape, I happened onto a 3-bedroom apartment in Washington Heights (about 155 blocks north). My friend helped me carry 4 boxes of belongings from the bedroom I rented on Fifth Street over to Astor Place. After a disagreement about eating and the boxes, he put them down, hailed a cab, and left me there.

About 2 months later, I received a letter written in architectural print:
“Dear Elf, I want to place a personal ad in the back of New York magazine. Could you help me piece one together?” I responded by letter, “Dear Santa, Christmas came and went.“