Ghosts

It begins with a secret plan to escape the building together.

Our goal: to hit Hudson Street running, undetected by any and all of our co-workers. It isn’t quite as complicated as an escape from a POW camp, but it does require ultra stealth.

We wait until long after hours to coordinate our rendezvous. Even with all the planning, deception and tiptoeing, we end up riding the elevator down with an agency chief. Great. Just enough to fuel the kindling soon to be willed into a mythic inferno.

We’re together, finally, walking through the West Village (google it). Our first choice for dinner, The Little Owl, ends up offering us a 90-minute wait. We decide to keep walking, deeper into the Village.

We try the piano bar, but it’s weird and has no food. We try the jazz tavern, but it has no food and is weird.

We hit the intersection of 6th and west 4th and find Jekyll and Hyde. A restaurant. A bar. A haunted house of ghosts.

What an eerie place for a first date. Dark. Quiet. Cobwebs. And doorways disguised as bookcases.

I’m hoping it’s not one of those foreshadowing things that people only remember when they look back and recollect. I can’t imagine what she’s thinking.

It is a pseudo-theme café with a low budget wanna-be Disney Haunted Mansion theme. Ghost and monsters and a scarily defensive maitre-d pounce upon us.

Skeletons of the past brought to the forefront. We have no choice but to confront them. Even our conversation, slathered in laughter, can’t ignore the ghosts we’ve brought along. The café plays Greek chorus as we dissect past horrors and acknowledge dual personalities, nightmares and skeletons in the closet.

Truly, though, the food alone was a horror show. Someone should tell the café that they don’t need the monsters and creepy, out-of-work defensive maitre-d actor to scare people. A dull knife and a tough steak are more than enough.

We pay the bill and climb back up to the Village. We’re still speaking fear. I stop her on Hudson Street, swing her into my arms and our lips hit lightly with choreographic precision.