of weekly dinners & zombies in the park

Dan, Nick, Evan, and I were walking south along Central Park West yesterday evening after our weekly dinner. (These weekly dinners of some iteration or other of this little foursome have become surprisingly dear to me, and those weeks during which one or the other or more of us are out of town leave me feeling ever so slightly bereft. Funny how friendships wax and wane, and blossom within specific circumstances, within certain exacting parameters, and sometimes become so much a part of our individual tapestries that we think not much of them until they are missed.)

As I was saying.

My boys & I were walking south yesterday along the western edge of Central Park, and it was such a beautiful, shimmering, perfect April evening that at every subway stop one or the other of us would say, "Let's keep walking." And so we did, all the way to Columbus Circle where we finally parted ways: Dan off to peruse the Whole Foods aisles, Nick off to the downtown A to head back to Brooklyn and his Sarah, Evan and me to the uptown A to watch yet another episode or two of Big Love (oh the ridiculous and frustrating wonderfulness of it all!) and eat the last of the strawberries and vanilla coconut ice cream.

We swear we saw a zombie heading north, just south of Tavern on the Green where 66th Street cuts west out of the Park. It was an older middle-aged man, perhaps 55, 60, lurching with a distinctive sideways gate, dragging one foot slightly behind, and harboring a grizzled look that can come only with being one of the living dead. We couldn't help but stop and stare, mouths slack and gaping with surprise, and one or two amongst us may have taken a step or two in his direction, dragging one foot almost imperceptibly behind. I felt a disconcerting bile rising in the back of my throat, and that nervous gigglyness that comes over me in times of disaster or bad news. The boys wanted to keep watching him but I dragged them away, dreading looking over my shoulder to meet baleful eyes as he looked over his.

It was an odd moment caught in this otherwise idyllic evening, and of course I don't really believe in zombies. And yet. This is a big city, this city of mine, and teeming with people and things and situations I don't understand and might not want to imagine. Who's to say that we can ever fully know all that walks amongst us?

I was glad to get home last night, to curl up on the couch with my knitting and my cat and my boy, safely tucked away from the darkness pressing up against the windows outside.