Kendra didn’t bother waking Bryan, not even when two more old men appeared, and then three more. Soon twelve old men were there, sitting on benches, talking among themselves, changing their shoes and stretching their legs. At first Kendra was puzzled by the group, until she remembered the posters for early-morning se -nior tai chi sessions. Apparently they actually happened this time of year.

She watched silently as the old men spread out and spaced themselves into three equal rows and then, together, began carving their mysterious shapes in the air.

They lowered their hips and raised their hands, softened their wrists and pushed their palms outward. They craned their necks and raised their palms toward the sky. The poses flowed smoothly, one into the next, and watching them, Kendra began unconsciously to breathe in time, matching her own rhythms to the gentle arcs of the men’s arms and legs. She inhaled as they opened their arms. She exhaled as they swept their arms across their chests. She inhaled. She exhaled.

If only the morning session could go on forever, she thought. The longer it lasted, the less she cared about anything else. She didn’t care about the money anymore. She didn’t care about Bryan.

Soon she didn’t give a shit about anything at all. The only thing she found interesting was the old men, and the secret, graceful knowledge they seemed to have unlocked in their bodies. She watched them lunge, hands floating to their waists. She watched them pivot, crouching low in their centers of gravity. Someday, she vowed, she would greet the day with that kind of peace.

New Shoes

NEW SHOES

THE FACT THAT Guy was talking about the traffic in New York told Dan there was no real news to report. If there had been news, Guy, Dan’s producer, would have said something already. He would have said congratulations, or sorry, not this time, or get ready, are you sitting down, this is going to take some explaining. But the longer Guy went on narrating his walk down Sixth Avenue, describing every odd detail of the passing pedestrians, the more certain Dan was that the fate of the movie, which was to say, the fate of his career, of his life itself, remained yet, as ever, undecided.

“This cab driver is actually getting out of his car,” Guy said. Dan, sitting at his desk in the suburban hush, could hear honking and shouting on the other end of the line, a filtered hubbub of urban street noise, in stark contrast to the glazed fir trees outside his window.

“He’s walking over to the dude in the SUV,” Guy said. “They’re yelling at each other. I swear to God, Dan, someone should make a movie about this. It’s a true human drama happening over here.”

“A movie about a pissed-off taxi driver in New York City?” Dan said.

“Yeah.”

“I think someone beat us to it.”