En Route to the Waldorf, En Route to Life

A car glides to a stop across the street and I’m not sure if it’s my ride. The right blinker - blinks. Am I about to be harassed by a jolly old creep of a man in a livery car, or is that San I spot behind the wheel? I pretend to be on my cellphone to ignore imaginary driver trying to pick me up. Now I spot a hand waving in front of the wheel, and blinker flashes again. I run to the passenger side and pop myself in. I wonder if my doorman is questioning my whereabouts on this drizzly Monday night – its 10 pm, and does he know where his residents are? The watchful eyes of our dorm security never seemed to have left me, and I'm always slightly sheepish in front of my doormen when late hours are involved.

Did I imagine I got into a car with San or is it really a cab driver? Because before I know it we are careening down Central Park West and the girl is cutting off cabs left and right. There’s no traffic and the Upper East Side looks sad and empty. We’re on our way to the Waldorf-Astoria to meet our dear friend T before she begins a career in the foreign service and is shipped off to Nowhere Near Us. San will be driving back to New Jersey after this short stint as cabdriver, so I offer her a cookie and she offers up some new desi tunes. Our big gripes are the potholes, parking, and a pitiful attempt to muster up enough energy for a warm and sweet goodbye.

The whole scenario is not very becoming of us. We park in front of St. Bart’s church and I am confused – I thought St. Bart’s was a whole other kind of paradise. We trudge towards entrance in our non-Waldorf attire when it hits us –

Last we checked, we were 13. This is clearly no longer the case, at least in the way the case has presented itself to us.

We have no idea what we are doing in front of the Waldorf-Astoria at just past 10 pm (since San, aka, cabbie, utilized those driving skills to the max) on a random Monday night. The digital picture frame we bought for T is like a hot potato in our hands, and we want our homes and our beds. San has been making daily treks between 2 states and an island, and I have full-blown insomnia. How is that we’ve barely gotten through one day only to contemplate how we’re going to get through the next? When, why, and how did we fast forward so quickly, and does it have anything to do with the fact that San drives like a Pakistani cabdriver instead of a Pakistani business student?

But then a European tourist takes one last photo of all of us together in NYC. He’s kind and rather particular, and takes a few shots before getting it right (he thinks) – so that the “candles are in the frame.”

We crack up – no, we giggle. Last we checked, we were indeed 13. But maybe we can afford to ignore the years in between because there we were, three great friends still giggling together over nothing and everything - check.