By Alessia Pirolo
Where the Brooklyn Bridge reaches Brooklyn, just before the sunset of a perfect October day, a man put his arms around a woman’s waist. They looked at each other. They smiled.
“Stop. Stop. Don’t look at her,” shouted a photographer, who stared at the couple through the lens of a professional camera. The man, in a suit and purple tie, sighed and moved away from the stylish, woman, dressed in purple, who wore a two-carat diamond on her left hand.
Around the small photo set, tourists and people coming back from work crowded the platform. Together, they looked through their Canon, Nikon and small digital cameras at the sky turning pink and red over Governors Island. On Thursday the temperature was 75 degrees. The sky had been perfectly blue all day. The sunset looked as perfect as in the postcards sold in the stalls on the Manhattan side of the bridge.
While the photographer shouted new instructions to the betrothed, a gray-bearded man stopped his bicycle. He stood just few feet outside of the photographer’s camera range of vision. The man wore a new sweater twice his size, a white cap, short white socks and old sneakers. He moved his round glasses on his nose, and glanced at the sunset. Then, he slowly opened the fanny pack that he wore around is waist and took out a green ice cream pop.
The groom-to-be had turned his back to the red sky. He hugged his fiancée from behind. Next to her tanned face, he looked pale. The photographer shot the couple.
The gray-bearded man unwrapped his ice cream pop. He kept the packaging in his hand and read intently the list of the ingredients.
“Smile, smile again,” the photographer yelled to the couple. The woman moved her perfect black, long hair to her back and looked professionally at the camera. The man grinned.
In the background, the sun moved behind the Statue of Liberty. The light turned more and more red.
The gray-bearded man sucked noisily his ice cream pop.
The photographer snorted. He ordered the couple to look again at each other. The man happily hugged the woman. She raised her right leg, in precarious equilibrium on a 6-inch stiletto heel.
Behind her, the gray-bearded man sucked the last bite of the ice cream pop. He put the packaging in his fanny pack. He took out a digital camera, hunched over and pointed it at the sunset.
As the last ray of sun disappeared over the East River, the photographer shot the couple kissing.
The gray-bearded man snapped a shot of the sunset. Then he scratched his bottom, and pedaled away.
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