Night and day, and all the extremes of Mercury in retrograde continued on my second day in Boston. The day dawned in brilliant and sunny form – a rare gift in the midst of a few months when the only weekend weather seemed to be rain. The condo was flooded with morning light, and it was the kind of fall morning where you take a few extra minutes in your bathrobe to simply exist, to inhabit the moment and contemplate the day.

Outside, the fountain trickled its watery melody, and I put on a little Cole Porter to start the day. The sunlight was strong, and the crisp chill of fall looked to make for a beautiful day.

I took advantage of the weather and ventured downtown for some shopping. In keeping with the kookiness that this weekend was highlighting, an enormous turkey was trotting about Downtown Crossing – which is probably the section of Boston that would appear most inhospitable to, well, wild turkeys, but there it was, bobbing its head among the manicured landscaping of mums and crotons. 

Shoo, you fool beast! Thanksgiving is coming soon. You in danger. And when you find yourself talking to a turkey in the middle of Downtown Crossing, it’s time to check your sanity at the door. I walked toward Government Center, to scope out where Oceanaire was located. I was having dinner there that evening with a friend from high school, Paula, who had gotten in touch earlier this year. 

Unsure of how things would go (I was, in her words and my own estimation, a bit of a terror back in high school) I walked in expecting the worst and the best, and while she was armed and ready to cuss me out for previous transgressions, we had one of the best dinners I’ve had in a long time, complete with revelatory conversation, rekindled memories, and a new understanding of the past, and hopefully the future. 

As we said our goodbyes with a promise to do this again, the feeling that I was in a novel came over me again, and I recalled a November evening many years ago when I unexpectedly happened upon a guy I had been seeing and he dumped me on the spot. That’s a story I’m not sure I’ve ever fully told – and while that’s basically it, I’ll try to flush it out more fully later this fall. For now, I took the long way home for the second Boston night in a row, thrilled to be back in the city, happy to have found that I still get along swimmingly with an old friend, and somehow haunted for all that had happened that evening, and all the evenings so long ago.

As I walked back along cobblestone streets, and the increasingly quiet air of a city that was still slumbering in many ways, I opened myself up to the ghosts that seemed to be all around me. Who was it that so haunted Boston here? Which people from my past were whispering to me on this night wind? They felt so real, so tangible, so present… and yet I couldn’t quite make them out. They were familiar and so close and still tantalizingly out of reach. As I made my way back into the South End, to the streets where I first sought a home for myself, I finally realized who the ghosts were. 

There, near Union Park, was my former self – the young guy who was looking for a condo way back in 1995. There, too, was my high school self, laughing and joking with Paula in orchestra. There was the young man who kissed a guy on a September afternoon and felt his face almost bleed with the rough stubble of his facial hair. There was the boy who snapped a Chinese yo-yo into the air near the Boston aquarium after being utterly transfixed by an angelfish in the big tank. There was the guy who ruined the birthday dinner of his friend Alissa because he was so drunk in the messy aftermath of a break-up. And there was the man who married his partner Andy in the Boston Public Garden, kissing him and pulling him into a hug because he was so happy to not be alone. 

All of the ghosts who had been haunting me there for all these years had only been previous versions of myself. That’s why I could never fully see or place them, and why whenever I got close the image was distorted and blurry, like some funhouse mirror. I didn’t want to face them, until tonight. And once I did – once I saw them for who and what they were – once I understood that it was just me haunting the night and prowling the Boston streets – suddenly they dissipated and evaporated. By acknowledging my ghosts, I let them go, and felt the weight of years suddenly depart. 

Mercury was pure madness in retrograde when I ventured into Boston a couple of weekends ago. I hadn’t planned for, or known that it would be, the weekend that the Red Sox were heading to the playoffs, nor had I been made aware that the Boston Marathon was following on that Monday. The city was alive and full of energy not seen since pre-COVID times. None of it appealed to me, so I laid low with a few friendly visits and down-time at the condo. Still, the city would swirl me into its electric maelstrom whether or not I wanted it, like the leaves that were starting to fall. In many ways, Boston felt eerily like Savannah – haunted and enchanted and at its most beautiful when night fell. 

The fountain in the middle of Braddock Park was still running, and I would leave the windows open to listen to it through the night. For some reason, it is more of a comfort at this time of the year than any other – maybe because it means the air is still warm enough for water to run. Holding onto that somewhat-unseasonal warmth made it easier to celebrate fall. The falling leaves felt less sad. 

After an early-bird dinner (because I’m old now) I found myself drawn to the Boston Public Garden, and as I headed in that direction I remembered my friend Kira, who was probably getting ready to finish her shift for the day. Shooting off a quick text to see if she wanted to say hello, I felt, and not for the first time the weekend, as if I were part of some Edith Wharton novel, where people from the past were re-populating the present moment. Kira wrote back she was ending her work day in an hour or so and would stop to say hello. 

It had been a few months since I’d last seen her, and that time was brief and bothersome. I hoped we were both in different places, and that we could start hanging out again. Forgiveness seems hard for both of us. Talking things out does too, but there’s no other way to forge a friendship. The night teased with a warm breeze. Drama was in the air. And Mercury remained stubbornly in retrograde motion. It would either be a really good meeting, or a really bad one, and I couldn’t be sure which way the wind would take us. 

We decided to meet up in the lobby of the Liberty Hotel, where we’d spent some happy holiday strolls, and which seemed like an auspicious way to rekindle what we once had. I arrived early, and settled in with a sparking water and lime, while a wedding party bustled about the space. Kira appeared shortly after, and we sat down to talk. It was just like no time had passed, the way two friends – if the friendship is pure and true – can simply pick up a year or two or ten later and nothing has really changed. 

We were enjoying each other’s company so much that she decided to take a later train. I offered to walk her to the station to extend our time together. Now that everyone was vaccinated, we’d be able to do this again in time for the holidays. We’d missed out on that last year when the world lost its way. 

We walked through the Boston night, with all its requisite magic and mayhem, and everything felt old and new and comforting and exciting all over again. We also made tentative plans for a Friendsgiving weekend in a few weeks. At South Station, she showed me where her train would depart from and we shared a quick hug – our first in almost two years. 

Instead of taking the T back to a station near the condo, I walked the whole way, passing the preparations for the Boston Marathon, and all the places we once frequented. A new/old friend was in the city as well, and we had a dinner planned for the next day. The drama had just begun…