Why I Wear Sunglasses in Elevators

No question about it, says the elderly man in the elevator of my building elevator. You’re off to dinner.

I’m holding a water bottle, a bike map and my iPod.

Then again, I’m also wearing a strapless dress with black Converse.

Just a bike ride, I say, from behind my sunglasses.

Well, you could go straight to dinner, he says. After.

Yes, I think, I could go straight to dinner. After.

If my date for dinner was around.

But he’s not, which is why I’m taking a solo bike ride on a Friday night in July.

I hold the lobby door open for this little pink man with good intentions and a beach towel tucked under his arm.

I watch him waddle down the street before heading for my bike, wishing that small talk in elevators didn’t still have the power to bring me to tears.

Aug 14, 2009: Tre Miller-Rodriguez writes birthday greetings to nowhere on her candlelit balcony at W South Beach. (4:08am  via Twitter)
Dear Alberto,
Happy birthday to you…from your birthplace. Your mom and I are spending it together, which is the next best thing to spending it with you. I’m remembering your last four birthdays spent at da Silvano with Barby and Tony and the surprise party weekend in Connecticut last year for your 40th. The cuatro leches cake, the bottles of Chivas, the afternoons in the Jacuzzi, the framed drummer-boy photo of you signed by 15 of our friends. How much you hated surprises yet how adorably you thanked me on Monday morning as we dressed for work back in New York. Thank you for the memories, my love: birthday memories, wedding, marriage and courtship memories, night-we-met memories. They are what keep me going, keep me smiling, keep me writing. Te amo lovely Leo, my sometimes pobrecito, mi siempre favorito.
holding a torch for you,
Tré


This afternoon, I fold the note, seal the envelope and wonder how to affix it to the helium balloons that Hilda and I will release on the beach before spreading his ashes in the ocean.
If I’d been thinking clearly in New York, I’d have brought a single-hole punch so I could string the balloon ribbons through a hole in the envelope corner. Hell, if was thinking clearly in New York, I wouldn’t have forgotten toothpaste, an iPod charger and liquid bronzer. Whatever. I can improvise.
In my hotel bathroom, I cut stems off flowers, dropping the buds into a Ziplock bag. Since the New Hampshire ceremony, I’ve decided that whenever I let his ashes go, I’m scattering flowers too. The surface of the water is just too sad without color. I check-list my props before heading downstairs: balloons safety-pinned to note? Bag of flowers? Box of ashes? Go.
In the crowded elevator, a Midwesterner asks if it’s someone’s birthday.
Yes, I say, unable to do anything but stare at my feet through sunglasses because riding the lift—a place where we always made out—while holding Alberto’s ashes is hard enough without strangers making small talk.
Well, he says, happy birthday.
I shake my head. And make a note to refrain from making perky remarks to people holding flowers or balloons. Seriously. You don’t know where they’re off to. A grave, a hospital, an ocean.