OH MY GOD, YOU LOOK GREAT…

Last week, I wrote about the New York run-in, and I learned two things. First, everyone has one. Second, a lot of you think you're the person I was writing about. (You aren't. Except you, Deborah.) So I've been thinking about all the other ways this city staple drags us into unrehearsed little performances, where we're expected to keep our decorum, or at least our dignity, and usually manage neither. Eight and a half million people, and the odds still say you'll run into the one you owe a phone call.

The Window Seat

Every restaurant in Manhattan has a window table, and every one of them is a trap. You sit there because the light is nice and you want to feel like the leading lady in a Nancy Meyers movie, splitting a branzino and having a meaningful conversation. What you've actually done is put yourself in a display case on a sidewalk where everyone you have ever met will eventually walk by.

And they do. You look up mid-bite and there she is, a woman from Canasta, or your kid's old soccer team, or possibly both. She's already seen you, so it's too late to look down at your phone. Now the two of you are talking through the glass like amateur sign-language interpreters who learned from YouTube and quit halfway. She points at you, then at herself, then holds a hand to her heart, which could mean "so good to see you" or "I've had a cardiac event." You mouth "Hiiiiiii...." with the vowels stretched so far you look like you're getting a dental cleaning. She makes the phone gesture, the pinky-and-thumb one nobody under fifty uses, which means "call me," which neither of you will do. You give an enthusiastic thumbs-up, cringing at your own theatricality, but there's a pane of glass between you and you've panicked.

Meanwhile your dinner companion is sitting there, fork in the air, watching you act out a silent movie, waiting for you to come back to the conversation you were having about her divorce.

And folks, that’s  the good version. The bad version is when the buoyant woman on the sidewalk decides waving isn't enough and comes inside. The hostess asks "Just one?" and she says "Oh no, I'm just saying hi," which is the scariest sentence in the restaurant business. Now she's standing over your table in her puffer, carrying a large tote or a dog, and the waiter has to turn sideways to get the burrata past her. You introduce her to your friend, who has to act delighted, and the three of you agree it's been way too long, which is exactly why it should have stayed a wave. After four minutes she says, "Okay, I'll let you eat," and takes a piece of your bread on the way out. You watch her pass the window. She waves with the bread. You wave back. You will be waving at this woman until the end of time.

The Run-In(vitation)

And sometimes the run-in doesn't end on the sidewalk. Sometimes it follows you home.

You run into her on Madison with a friend, and it's all going fine, the hair compliments, the "we have to get together," until the friend says, "Can't wait for Thursday!"  

Oh no she didn’t!  It's her birthday party, you weren't invited, and all three of you realize it at the same moment. The friend studies her shoes. The birthday girl studies you. You study a passing cab like you might get in and start a new life in New Jersey.

So she does what any polite person does when she's been caught. She lights up and says, "Oh my God, you should come! It's just a few people. Super casual. Come as you are."

So you go, and you come as you are, which on a Monday at 7 p.m. is leggings and a sweatshirt from your kid's college, because you're a supportive parent and because it was on the chair. The doorman looks for your name on the list, doesn't find it, and sends you up anyway with a look. The elevator opens directly into the apartment, and there they are, a few people, meaning forty, in cashmere. The birthday girl is in a "throw-on" dress that she did not, in any physical sense, throw on. Everyone looks at you kindly, like you came straight from the hospital.

"You look so comfortable!" she says, which is what people say instead of nothing. Someone asks if you just came from the gym, and you say yes, because it's better than the truth. Then you spend the rest of the night stretching your quad against the kitchen island and telling people who didn't ask, "I'm going to feel this tomorrow.

The next time you see her outside Via, you'll cross the street. 

The Who Are You

And then, my friends, there's the run-in with no context, which may be the worst of them all.

You're at Bergdorf's, trying to buy a pair of shoes in peace, when a vaguely familiar woman lights up at the sight of you, and you light up back, because your face is faster than your brain. "Oh my God, you look great," she says. "Oh my God, hi!" you say, matching her energy exactly, the way you jump into the hora at a bat mitzvah for a kid you've never met.

You know this woman. You're nearly sure. Your brain starts running through the files. School? The gym? Jury duty in 2014? Is she my dermatologist? Did she do my taxes? Did we once share a very long elevator ride and somehow bond?

She asks about the kids, by name. So now you're describing your own family in terms vague enough not to get caught. "They're great. Busy! You know how it is." She does know how it is. You don't know who she is.

So you start fishing. "And how's... everything?" "How's work?" You pick topics that apply to everyone, like a psychic at a county fair. "Still at the same place," she says, and you nod like you know exactly where that is.

Eureka! She's the mom from the swim team carpool, the one whose husband did the barbecues! Emboldened, you go personal. "And how's Jeff?"

She pauses, and her face goes slightly polite in a way that tells you nobody has asked about Jeff in a while, and nobody should. "Oh, you know," she says. And just like that, the pleasantries are over. You both say "So good to see you," and you both mean it a little less than you did five minutes ago. You walk off in opposite directions; at least the two of you got that part right.

I've been on the other side too, telling someone all about my week while it slowly dawned on me, from the friendly emptiness in their eyes, that they had no idea who I was. I helped them fake their way through it, because what else can you do?

But here's the part that really gets me. That night I look her up on Instagram, mostly so I can feel better about Jeff, and there she is, definitely her, definitely the swim team mom. She's also, according to a post from four hours ago, in the South of France, on a boat in Antibes, in a linen dress that I'd bet she said was casual, holding a glass of rosé and looking very tan.

So who did I talk to at Bergdorf's? Who knows my kids' names? Who did I ask about Jeff? Somewhere in this city is a woman who had a very strange conversation with me on a Tuesday, and she's probably on Instagram right now, trying to figure out who I am.

I hope she finds me. I'd like to wave.