Nick & Norah's Infinite Playlist

by Rachel Cohn

he’s so emo he’s practically a Muppet—

I’m on a date with a good guy and I’ve given him more mixed signals than a dyslexic Morse code operator.

Nick could mix Cesaria Evora to Wilco to Ani followed by Rancid, capped off with Patsy Cline blending into a Fugazi finale.

“There’s no such thing as ready,” she says. “There’s only willing.”

Right now I am thinking about ten things at the same time, and at least four of those things have to do with you.

There isn’t loneliness, only this intense twoliness.

My heart literally aches, that shit is not made up; it hurts for an unexpected, brief time warp of suddenly wanting and longing and believing, but then not having.

But I guess you don’t see the planets when you’re staring at the sun. You just get blinded.

We walk through Union Square, stepping over the detritus of the Saturday-night revelers. We pass the Virgin Megastore, the Strand, the old Trinity Church.

I

shouldn’t want the song to end. I always think of each night as a song. Or each moment as a song. But now I’m seeing we don’t live in a single song. We move from song to song, from lyric to lyric, from chord to chord. There is no ending here. It’s an infinite playlist.

I whisper in his ear, “I promise I will never break your heart.” Because without a doubt, I will fuck up many things in this whatever-we-have-here, but that, I will never do.

Nick asked for my phone number, but he never said when he was going to call me. We’ve only known each other a few hours, yet we’ve, um, gotten to know each other pretty well I’d say, so I would hope it would at least be implied that we’re going to see each other again soon, but he never said when. And I don’t like waiting to find out.

I hesitate even though I know my wavering could cost us the approaching train. If I make this jump, then this is real, he is real. I will have broken the law for him and that will bind us together forever, outlaws, like Bonnie and Clyde. And look how that worked out for them.