Page 25 of The Incredible Kindness of Paper
“Un día a la vez, Ricardo,” he reminded himself.One day at a time.
When he opened his eyes again, he looked down at the paper rose still cradled in his hand. Its folds had started to loosen, as if the flower wanted to come undone.Exactly how I feel, too,he thought.
Ricky tugged on the corner of a petal, and the paper unfurled.
To his surprise, there was a handwritten message inside:
You cannot disappear if you refuse to be invisible.
It was signed with a tiny heart-shaped rosebud.
Ricky started to laugh. At first, it was just a small sound, but then the words in the yellow rose washed over him like a revelation, and it felt ridiculous and true all at once.
You cannot disappear if you refuse to be invisible.
He had allowed himself to vanish. When Ricky had first started driving for the car service, he had chatted with the people he picked up from the airport, from hotels and offices. Even if they only said a few sentences, there had been a brief intersection of their lives.
But then he had gotten worn down by the effort it took to break the ice. Being an immigrant in a new country was exhausting; every detail of life required more energy than it ought to, from navigating subtle cultural cues to grocery shopping to dealing with passive-aggressive resentment against foreigners. So Ricky eventually gave in to the tendency of New York passengers to construct walls around themselves. Silence was easier to succumb to than trying to push through the initial resistance of connecting to another human being.
That’s how conversation died. How Ricky became easy to ignore, because he had unwittingly erected his own walls around himself.
And then he gasped. Because he’d been feeling so sorry for himself being invisible that he hadn’t realized he had also made his passengers feel unimportant by not engaging with them.
It took effort on both sides for people to be seen.
“Basta, Ricardo,” he said aloud to himself.Enough.
He headed toward his next assignment two blocks away. When he pulled up to the curb of Intelligentsia Tech and a thirtysomething executive slipped into the back seat, he turned and smiled and made sure to meet her eyes. “Good morning. I’m Ricky. How are you today?”
She seemed caught off guard at first that he was talking to her, but then a smile crept onto her face, too. “I’m well, thank you. I’m Claire. How are you doing?”
“Nice to meet you, Claire.” He turned back around and pulled away from the curb, but once he merged into the street, he waved the yellow square of paper in the air. “I’ve had an interesting morning. I found this in my car—”
“Oh! It’s one of the origami flowers that are spreading around town,” Claire said, leaning forward.
Surprised, Ricky looked up at the rearview mirror. “You’ve seen one before?”
She nodded. “I go running in Central Park every morning. There’s awoman there who folds them. Sometimes a couple older ladies help her. But I don’t know why they do it.”
The center of Ricky’s chest warmed. Claire might not know the point of the paper roses, but Ricky had a guess as to the reason behind them.
It was this. The little purr of hope that now pulsed where his heart was.
Gracias,he thought to the woman in Central Park who had shown him, a total stranger, this small gesture of kindness.
And in return, he would pay it forward.
Chloe
Hi, Thelma, we’re back!” Chloe herded Rufus and his five other doggy friends into apartment 1A. The entire living room had been converted into a play area, layered with washable rugs and chew toys and ringed with cozy dog beds of various sizes and thicknesses. A sign on the wall read: “Welcome to the Happiest Place in New York!” in bold primary colors, like the letters in a preschool classroom.
Thelma’s business was thriving but she herself couldn’t take the pups out for walks, so Chloe had offered to help. Since she didn’t have a job right now, she’d take any opportunity to make some money.
“Oh, lovely! Come in, I was just making coffee.”
Walking the dogs had become an unexpected delight. Of course, Chloe had anticipated the joy that their unfettered enthusiasm would bring. Dogs loved you unconditionally; if you simply scratched behind their ears, you became their best friend for life.
But what Chloehadn’tanticipated was how friendly New Yorkers could be. Usually, they averted their eyes as they walked past on the sidewalk, pretending you didn’t exist. But when Chloe was dog walking, she was shocked by how chatty these normally aloof strangers became. Suddenly, they paused to bend down and say hello to the dogs, and then they’d turn their attention to Chloe and strike up a conversation—about the dog breeds, about the lovely weather, about anything, really—and when they were finished, they would smile and cheerily say, “Have a great day!” or “I hope we run into each other again!”
