From the rumble of his voice on the phone and my stereotypes about small-business owners, I’d formed a picture of Gregg that didn’t flatter him: I saw a paunch straining against a stained button-down shirt, a bald spot poorly concealed by a comb-over, skin roughened and grayed by tumult and soot.
So I was surprised when Julian said, “Hi, Gregg!” to a trim, sturdy young man with pink cheeks and thick curls, stepping through the back door. He wore soccer flats, shorts, and a short-sleeved sports jersey. His shorts showed off his powerful quads and calves—a by-product of pedicabbing passengers around Midtown during the evening rush. Julian introduced me to him, mentioning our link through Zendik. Gregg wiped his fogged glasses on the hem of his shirt. “Welcome,” he said.
As Gregg laid out the demands of the delivery job—hauling heavy loads through heat, cold, rain, and snow; handling aggressive motorists; negotiating pickups and drop-offs (notoriously tricky in Midtown office buildings)—Julian vouched for my grit and social skill. Couriers also needed to know the streets.
“Do you know your way around the city?” Gregg asked.
“Of course. I grew up here.”
“Okay. How about if you come back Monday?” A veteran driver would train me to ride the trike in the RR parking lot; then Gregg would take me out for a road test.
On Monday afternoon, after I’d mastered the basics, Gregg glided through the gate on his Brompton, looking sharp in wingtips, slacks, and a dress shirt. He flipped the bike’s rear wheel forward to park it and pulled out one of the pedicabs lined up along the fence. He hadn’t worn shorts because he’d be in the passenger seat. I’d be driving.
Feigning calm, I pedaled, as directed, up Eighth Avenue to Thirty-Sixth Street and turned east.
“Now go back to Thirty-First.”
“Does Broadway go south? Or should I take Seventh?”
“I thought you knew your way around,” he said, teasing me for my I’m-a-New-Yorker arrogance.
“I do. But there’s no such thing as a one-way sidewalk.”
Back at RR, Gregg cleared me for the next step toward employment—filling out W-4 and I-9 forms at the old shop on Ninth Avenue. He released his bike from park and grabbed the handlebars. “I’ll walk over with you.”
On the way, one of us—probably me—brought up the bailout. A House vote on TARP had been set for that afternoon, and I’d adopted the view of writers on sites like Prison Planet and Blacklisted News that its true purpose was to speed the country toward tyranny by grabbing power for President Bush and his cabal. It had to fail.
At the shop, Gregg slid into a seat behind the office iMac and pulled up a news article on the vote. “The House of Representatives rejected the bailout package, two-twenty-eight to two-oh-five,” he read.
“Yes!” I said.
His eyes continued across the screen. “An hour later, President Bush and his entire cabinet were seen boarding a plane to Toronto.”
“What? Really?”
A smile tugged at his mouth. His gaze stayed on the screen. “Bush said he feared for his life, now that his fascist ambitions had been exposed. A rotten tomato hit him in the back as he stepped through a metal detector.”
The smile won out. When his eyes met mine, they twinkled with mischief.
“You’re kidding,” I said, smiling back.
“Yeah.” He glanced down at the keyboard, in mock contrition. “I made up the part about the tomato.”
That was the first time Gregg made me laugh.
In late October, a month into my stint at RR, Gregg—as president of the New York City Pedicab Owners’ Association—received a couple dozen complimentary passes to a preview of Cirque du Soleil’s Wintuk, at Madison Square Garden. Enticed by the promise of stunning acrobatics—if repelled by the holiday theme—I accepted his offer of a ticket. He paused to study the sheaf in his hand before picking one to give me.
I didn’t realize till Gregg arrived, shortly before the show started, that he’d seated me next to him. For ninety minutes my eyes tracked the lead skater, swooping and leaping through a sleeping cityscape in his awful Christmas sweater—while every other sensor patrolled the few inches of armrest between Gregg and me. My skin tingled each time he leaned in to whisper a quip or a question.
Ten days later, we met for our first date—on a Friday night, in Times Square, at the close of the evening rush. When Gregg pulled up on his pedicab, I guessed from the shine in his eyes that riding gave him the same high I’d felt while selling. Getting fares took vigorous pitching; getting “on” meant wads of cash. Midtown seethed like Bourbon Street—with less piss and more plate glass.
We’d agreed to dine at an organic vegan restaurant on the Lower East Side. Gregg was sweating. I was fresh and rested.
“Get in,” I said. “I’ll drive.”
After dinner, we cut over to the Hudson River Greenway and up to 125th Street, taking turns in the saddle. Driving, I savored the strength I’d gained making deliveries; resting, I relished Gregg’s exuberance—and ogled his firm butt. A waxing moon dappled the river silver as the West Side Highway roared beside us.
Back at RR, after midnight, we parked the pedicab and moved toward the gate. Steps from the sidewalk, Gregg stopped. “How do you feel about kissing?” he asked.
“I like it,” I said.
He grabbed my waist and pulled me into a lusty smooch. A motorist waiting for a green signal whooped his approval.
With that, we were off.
Shortly after New Year’s, I traded my mother’s two-bedroom for Gregg’s Hell’s Kitchen studio. The following October, Leah, now settled in San Francisco, paid a second visit to New York—this time with her boyfriend. She’d moved in with him before I’d met Gregg. Sharing a tiny table at a candlelit bistro, our mates at our sides, she and I raised our glasses to toast the two of them—and living in an apartment.
We stood at the front of the Great Room of the Old Stone House in Park Slope, about to take our vows. Sixty grown friends and family members, plus a number of their children, had gathered to witness our wedding. Among the guests were seven ex-Zendiks. Zeta, who’d explained how Zendik dating worked, who I’d sworn would never laugh again, was quickening the ritual with her violin.
It was October 8, 2011. Late afternoon. Gregg had proposed twenty months earlier, on Valentine’s Day, saying, “Would you marry me?” I’d asked him to ask again, switching “will” for “would”; a wholehearted commitment didn’t belong in the conditional mood. Now we faced each other, sharing the rug marking our “altar” with Gregg’s best man, my sisters, and a British friend serving as “vicar.”
Gregg spoke first, eyes moist with the risk of great trust—I open to you; I drop my husk.
Then it was my turn.
“I vow to tell the whole truth with love.”
Writing life stories, I’d learned to see each feeling, each fact, as one node in a web of context. The more of my web I revealed, the more of his web I explored, the closer we’d come to communion.
“To nourish your good with all my heart.”
In the front row sat my mother, beside her beau of two years. She’d walked me down the aisle. As I’d promised in my poem to her, I had found another way to be with men—modeled in part on her constancy. She had been there, tending my well-being, when Arol had not.
“To be with you and grow with you always.”
That was it. Our vows were complete.
The vicar nodded to Gregg. “You may now lift the bride.”
Gregg picked me up, spun me around, and set me down, to clapping and laughter.
Then—to gasps, and more clapping—I lifted him and spun him the other way.