A chance encounter // Nico & Päivi
Sitting in the airport lounge, Päivi glanced at the people passing her by. What was she waiting for? She didn't know either. Something about the sheer size of this town scared her. But she had to stop hiding at some point. Determined, she got up and strode towards the revolving doors. As soon as she set one foot over the treshold, the first drops of rain fell in her face. Why could New York not put on a more...friendly face on her first day here? Well, whatever, she was gifted with the ability to solve THAT kind of problem, so she would just close her eyes, think of the grey clouds and push them away to reveal beautiful sunshine... Stop it, she told herself. You're not in your little village anymore where no one ever cares. This is different. You have no idea of the range of your power. What if the rain were only to stop in a radius of a couple of kilometres. Like nobody would notice if it stopped short of a clearly demarcated circle. She was fooling herself. She would have to put up with whatever the skies had on offer for the next few weeks. Thinking about home made her nostalgic.
Still walking, Päivi took out her mobile phone and dialed Kirsi's number. Just going to ask her what the weather's like, was her last thought, before her hands, chin and knees painfully connected with the sidewalk. She had tripped over a bag standing on the sidewalk. She had taken like two steps on American soil and the first thing that happened was that she FELL? What were the odds of that happening? Well, she already knew that. Close to zero for everyone else, infinitesimmaly huge for someone as stupid, clumsy and inattentive as her.
„Are you okay?“ she heard someone say. She looked up into the face of a brown-haired man her age, the apparent owner of the bag that had ruined her first two minutes on this continent. Don't think about it, she thought to herself. Just go and talk. Move on. This is what you came here for. Don't forget: Nobody knows you here. „I guess I am.“ she managed to say. „That's good.“ she heard the young man say „But no such luck for your phone, apparently.“ Indeed it lay shattered on the sidewalk a few steps in front of her, reduced to tiny scraps of metal.
The one thing that she would need, that she would depend on.
She knelt and crept towards the heap of metallic parts that had once been her phone. Seeing the expression on Päivi's face, the young man said: „I'm sorry. You know, I was just somewhere else with my thoughts. With something that just seemed more important to me than to be careful that I wasn't going to accidentally kill someone.“ „It's fine, it's not your fault, really, I should have looked where I was going.“ She got up, wiped the dust off her black knee-length coat, grabbed her bag and was about to turn away when she stopped. I'll be better. I CAN do this. All the things she had repeated to herself before her departure, and she was busy blowing her first chance at actual human contact. „Would you, I mean could you, uhm....help me get a new phone? You know, I really need one, seeing as I just arrived and I have no clue about what's on offer over here, and seeing as I'm obviously not even a native speaker, they would probably rip me off wherever I would go.“
She had expected polite refusal from the young man (weren't New Yorkers always oh-so-busy?), but to her astonishment he agreed. „Come, I know a good store right around the corner“ he said to her. „Where are you from, then?“ he asked on their way there. „Finland. Ever been there?“ „I've been lots of places.“ was the enigmatic reply. „Are you from New York?“ she asked him. „Well, kind of. I know my way around here. See, we're already there. Now I'll demonstrate to you the amazing skill that is buying a phone in America. Sorry, but I guess they don't have Nokias here.“ And against all odds, that made her smile again.
Minutes later, they came out of the store with Päivi brandishing a new iPhone. „Wow, that was cheap! I would've expected them to be so much more expensive, what with the contract and everything.“ „Guess we were just lucky. That's a phase-out model they usually don't have in stores anymore.“ They stood on the sidewalk in front of the store, and once again, Päivi's instinct was to thank him, to turn around and to just walk off. To vanish from his life like she'd vanished from everyone else's. But something inside her was growing. A feeling of comfort, of confidence, of opportunity. „Since you're from here, could you give me some tips on what to see in New York? I really want to get the most out of my short stay here.“
