Free Heart of the City by Ariel Sabar Page B

it came to straightening out his career, he had been an ace. After a disillusioning stint in the music business, he spent nights and weekends teaching himself computer programming and had recently won a well-paying job as a software engineer at a financial firm. Why couldn’t reordering his love life be as easy?

    THE INCONGRUOUS quiet of Midtown beckoned to Sofia, who had graduated from college four years earlier but in many ways still felt like a wanderer. Her degree was from Harvard, a place that was supposed to turn out graduates with a sense of their place in the world. But Sofia wasn’t one of them. While classmates were heading off to law and medical school, she threw a few sets of clothes in a backpack and set off on a fourteen-month solo trek across Asia and Australia. She hitchhiked, shot down rivers in bamboo rafts, stayed in the homes of oddballs she’d met on the road. A walk though Midtown on a Tuesday night wasn’t exactly a safari. But even after moving back to New York and taking the lab job, her thirst for adventure had persisted.
    She decided to pass up the Columbus Circle subway station for a more distant one, several long blocks away. She walked onto Broadway and listened to the soft night music of a lonely city. She looked at the blurry pastel lights reflecting in the windows of the skyscrapers. A taxi sped past, then was swallowed in the darkness. For a long time, the only sounds were the clop of her old wooden clogs against the sidewalk.
    She had no sooner turned onto Fifty-seventh Street than an old childhood memory caught her. She was eight years old and sitting in a row of chairs at Carnegie Hall, her violin in her lap. Her music school had brought students there on a field trip to see the auditorium and meet the violinist Isaac Stern.
    Isn’t Carnegie Hall near here? she thought. It was . But where?
    Then, out of nowhere, her name.
    “Sofia,” a high-pitched voice cried. “Sofia Feldman?”
    Sofia wheeled toward the voice. Standing beneath the sign for the crosstown bus was a woman about her age who looked familiar but whom Sofia couldn’t quite place. Next to her was a man—both were smiling.
    “It’s Emily, from Harvard,” she said. “This is my husband, Sam.”
    “Oh, my gosh! No way!” Sofia shouted, dashing over to embrace her. She and Emily had been friends freshman year, but Sofia hadn’t seen her in—what was it now?—something like eight years.
    The night, it seemed, was full of surprises.

    THE CAT-LIKE grin, the laugh, the expansive hand gestures—Matt wasn’t sure what first drew his eye. But as he neared the woman talking with two friends at the bus stop catty-cornered from Carnegie Hall, he felt his legs almost involuntarily slow. An attractive, open face was framed by twirls of dark wavy hair. There was a tossed-off quality to her clothes that made her look approachable: olive corduroy pants, a threadbare hooded sweatshirt under a short brown corduroy jacket. He had once been a musician—he had gone to the Berklee College of Music before switching careers. He could tell she was carrying an instrument of some kind on her back.
    He felt an aching somewhere in his chest. A conversation with her—or a woman like her—would save him the way no end of therapy could. He immediately recognized his irrationality. He knew nothing about this woman. But the way his life had been going lately, he couldn’t help but feel everything deeply.
    He was about five steps from her, passing on the inside of the sidewalk, when he was almost certain she looked at him. There was a weak smile, too, but was it meant for him or the people with whom she was talking? He had no idea. He kept walking, but his brain churned. Was there a way to cut into their conversation gracefully? Was there some clever thing to say?
    Then a rush of self-doubt. Who am I kidding? he asked himself, feeling something tighten in his gut. And so he crossed to the other side of Fifty-seventh Street—which was