He walked to Hudson Street with his father's old green sweater under his coat and his mother's dare humming under his skin. The lot smelled like a forest that had agreed, reluctantly, to visit the city. Families argued in cheerful clusters. A couple debated Scotch pine versus fir with the intensity of people choosing a mayor. Dez moved past the reasonable trees, past the medium trees, past the trees that would have made Gus applaud, and stopped at the giant in the back as if he had an appointment.
"That one's a project," the salesman said, pompom bobbing. "Ceiling issues. Girlfriend issues. Existential issues."
"I collect those," Dez said, and paid.
Dragging it downtown became a parade of commentary. A woman in a fur-collared coat told him he was ambitious. A bike messenger swore admiringly. Two teenagers offered to help for five dollars and then did help, badly, cheerfully, and left him nearer to Brick & Bean with his arms screaming and his heart weirdly light. He had not felt light about December in a long time. Light was suspicious. Light was also, he decided, allowed.
When he shouldered the coffeehouse door open and announced that nobody should panic, he saw Wren and Gus on the orange velvet couch exactly as he had hoped to see them: mid-sip, mid-life, mid-sentence about something that would not matter in an hour. The treetop knocked the tinsel down in a glittering cascade. Wren's eyebrow rose with the precision of a woman who had practiced skepticism as self-defense. Gus lunged for the trunk with academic urgency. The wobble. The tip. The pin. The laughter that hurt Dez's ribs in the best way. Later, upstairs, the scissors. The spring. The lights. The clink. Wren's head on his shoulder. The words best tree we've ever had leaving his mouth like a promise he did not yet know how to keep.
But promises, like trees, need root systems. And Dez's had been planted in Queens long before Greenwich Village learned his name.
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