First Witch: When shall we three meet again
In thunder, lightning, or in rain?
Second Witch: When the hurlyburly's done,
When the battle's lost and won.
Macbeth, 1. 1

I've always thought of my friend Linda as a practical woman. So I was surprised when I looked at the map that she'd given me the night before. I had just alighted from the bus on Madison Avenue and was preparing to work out just where in Central Park, we were going to meet.

Central Park is large - 843 acres (341 hectares), and is criss-crossed with lots of windy tracks. A map is essential, unless you are going to meet at a small predesignated landmark. But what was this? It was a map of Central Park with a PostIt note on it. On the PostIt note was a small arrow, pointing to ... well it had moved.

I remembered earlier finding it detached from the map, in my bag. It was about 300 degrees whatever scale you use that day, with 90% humidity. Great Linda! Nope, there was no other arrow on the map. I tried to relocate the PostIt note to somewhere near the theatre - we were to see a "Shakespeare in the Park" production that evening. It was no use. So I headed in the general direction of Shakespeare's Garden and took it from there. I'd only walked a mere three miles when I came to it. Ah yes, there was Turtle Pond and Belvedere Castle. She'd be somewhere around here - but WHERE?

I wandered past the theatre, around Turtle Pond, climbed up a path to the castle. Words from a Hughes Mearns' poem scrambled their way into my head,

As I was walking up the stair
To meet my friend who wasn't there.
She wasn't there again today.
I wish, I wish I'd stayed away.

For Linda had the tickets. Yes, I know - she'd queued for five hours to get them. The box office opened at 1:00 p.m. and when she arrived there at seven in the morning, there were already 200 people ahead of her. And she was bringing a picnic dinner to the park - with wine. But where the bloody hell was she?

I asked a group of people on one of the park benches. "Have you seen an Australian-looking woman in jeans?" They looked at me with pity. "What does she look like?" "An n Australian-looking woman in jeans?", I answered stupidly. And added, "She might be carrying a picnic basket. And she doesn't have a cell phone; what sort of person doesn't have a cell phone?!" My voice was rising in pitch.

"I don't have a cell phone!" said woman #1 on the bench.

We exchanged names and I moved on. I wandered here, I wandered there. My feet were hurting. Eight hours in the office and then this, I've walked a hundred miles I was thinking, while around me happy people were chattering - an absurd background to my scowling mood.

And then I saw her. In a relatively quiet area, cut off from the path by a loose-meshed fence. Lying on her Billabong picnic mat with her picnic basket. I yelled her name. She beckoned to me that I had to walk to a break in the fence about 1,000 metres away. Oh well, at least I'd found her.

I sat down and she started to unpack her picnic basket. I told her about the PostIt note and Woman #1 on the bench who didn't have a cell phone.

"I bought a quiche but it was mouldy and I chucked it", she told me, as she served up some macrobiotic salad and prawn cocktail New York style. We drank some water, and then some shiraz. I started to feel happy. Macbeth is my favourite play in all the world. I was with a friend, a good friend who had stood in line for hours and who had put together a pleasant, albeit healthy meal.

And then, everything changed. "Is that rain?" Linda asked. Couldn't be. After a week of bad weather, this was the first clear day, and clear skies been forecast. Then I noticed the couple under the New York Times umbrella. It was rain.

We thought it'd ease. It didn't. Instead it became heavier, and heavier. We packed up the picnic things, the Billabong rug, our empty wine glasses, the map and the detached PostIt note, and headed for a clump of trees. No good; the leaves collected water and instead of non-stop drizzle we were repeatedly drenched with intermittent splashes.

Deciding on a change of scene, we did an exuant stage left to the restroom where two ladies from Texas were applying even more hairspray and makeup. They were wobbling around on their stilettos, oblivious to the sneaker-footed rain-drenched New Yorkers around them. Their Texan drawl started to remind me of George Bush, and we left, preferring the rain.

By this time we'd been in the park for over two hours and it was about the time that the play was scheduled to start. "The interns will be drying the seats," Linda explained to me. This was the first time she said it. For some unknown reason she was to repeat it a hundred times that night. "What's the use of them drying the seats in the rain?" I snapped. It was getting dark.

Across from our tree we could see the crowd under the roof of the theatre's verandah, and we decided it was better to be dry and squashed, rather than wet and free. It was a tight squeeze but we made it.

Oh no, what was that I could hear? Could it be a Texan twang?

It was. Impeccably groomed, the Women-from-Texas had emerged from the restroom and were pressed against the theatre wall, not two feet away. Their chiffon scarves were still as dry as they were colorful. We all said hi, and '"it's wet" and "do you think the play'll be on?" just like all the other people huddled together under the narrow roof.

When I tired of looking at the Women-from-Texas, I looked up. On the beams that held up the corrugated iron covering, birds had built mud nests. Bits of mud and pigeon pooh started falling on one of the Women-from-Texas. She gave a feminine little Dolly Parton scream. I thought she would faint. Little did I then know, that this would be later be remembered as the fun part of the evening.

Showing her practicality - the PostIt note episode apparently being an aberration - Linda offered the Ladies-from-Texas some Wet Ones.

Kevin Spacey and his friends walked past. "Look there's Kevin Spacey," said one of the women. "The interns will be drying the seats," said Linda.

I couldn't stand it anymore so I went for a walk. A lone Scott was standing on an outcrop of rocks, playing his bagpipes. What next? Was I to be subjected to the three witches and their pot of offal?

It was getting on to nine and there was no let-up in the rain. I'd had enough. I wandered back to find Linda. She was chatting to the Ladies-from-Texas. I couldn't get to her so shouted through the torrent of water that was dripping from my hair, "You stay, I'm going!". "The interns will be drying the seats," said Linda. Bloody hell. But she joined me. "Let's go and have a drink. I know a nice bar with a log fire just over the road". I couldn't think of anything worse, but the guilt was setting in. After all, this woman had waited in the heat for hours, made a picnic dinner, and anyway she was my friend, a rare thing to have in this city.

So I tried to keep up with her as she walked briskly out of the park. And walked, and walked in a westward direction (I live on the East Side) until I feared we were going to New Jersey. "Are we there yet?" I whined. I was starting even to dislike myself. How could she put up with me?

"Aussie whinger!" she snapped. Aussie whinger? How could a gal from Benalla say that, I was thinking, when she lied to me that there was only two blocks to go.

Two hundred years later and we were there. Of course there was no log fire. After all it was mid-summer. But there was a bar and as we entered, a truly wondrous thing happened.

Liev Schreiber could not have timed it better. The heavens closed. No more rain. The sky was clear. Except for the sparkly black sidewalk you could not have imagined that a drop of rain had ever fallen.

We were served by a young woman who looked around size 0 (yes that IS a size "0" in New York). Her youth, her short black hair and her black cocktail dress were in fitting contrast to our soaked white tops, dripping hair and jeans. I felt completely out of place. My reflection in a mirror reminded me of a New York homeless derro I'd seen on the sidewalk, earlier in the day a lifetime away. I looked around. Jokers were glued to that damn baseball game, à la Joni Mitchell Raised On Robbery lyrics. Linda likes baseball so she started to watch.

As for me, I thought back on my day, as I stared out the window at a New York with no rain.

I thought about my trip back from work, and the bus on Madison. I'd waited at a bus stop to go north to 91st street, before I knew about PostIt notes and the woman #1 on the bench who didn't have a cell phone, and interns drying seats in the rain.

The bus stop was next to a DNKY shop. I'd taken a photo.

It seemed somehow now quite appropriate.

Till next time,


Kate Juliff
New York
July 2006