Autumn in New York, cliché yes, but indescribably beautiful. Lush rusty colors, greens fading into brilliant scarlets and rich ochre. Addison loved the fall, watching everything change, and then the snow, when her entire world was covered in a blanket of sparkling white. This of course disappears very quickly in the city, what was pristine and glittering snow turns to a gray noxious sludge.
A metaphor perhaps. Addi was a closet optimist, though with her cynical and wholly sarcastic take on everything, most people didn’t seem to notice that part. Then again take a look at the world it’s not exactly a place cut out for those bright-eyed optimists with all the hope in the universe is it? Maybe it is? Addi’s life had a not so typical cast of characters. There was Marvalla (formerly Mildred Rubenstein) the actress, so it was three off off off Broadway shows. However, Marvs is convinced she’s a shoe in for a Tony this year. Then there was Cynthia, pure Upper East Side, who occasionally came from her perch on high to slum it with her East Village friends. Terence was there as well, a high strung financial manager, and closet Drag Queen.
Addison was however the most perplexing of them all. A starving, struggling artist, with her fifth floor walk up. Usually chain-smoking covered in paint, a mouth like a sailor, and drank like a fish. Yet she cleaned up as good as any of them. This allowed Addi to float in and out of the Cynthia’s parents austere social hierarchy. Guys, there were guys, sometimes. Addi seemed to be something of a bum magnet.
There was Liam, the composer without a green card and an axe to grind against the man. Deported, after a bar fight ended with him in hand cuffs and Addi stuck with not only his tab, but the rent. She’d dated artists and investment bankers, married men with families looking to escape, who latched on to the freedom her lifestyle afforded her. No rules, no real commitment, really it was everything the average guy could dare to dream of.
However they always left her a little colder a little more empty inside. One can only handle so many secret trysts after gallery openings. She had great steamy stories about back alley’s and bars and the inside of limousines, but no great love stories. At 25 years old she’d never fallen truly in love with anyone. Little did she know that before she got to 26 that was all going to change…