#third rail projects

Are you sure? Last chance to avoid spoilers. 

Okay...

Here we go:

My companion (let’s call him Mr. C.) and I arrive at a fancy bar in Tribeca. There are a few patrons, but overall it's not busy. We check in and in a few minutes are brought downstairs with another pair who is also there for the show. There we check our bags and are advised to use the restrooms. Then we are given black tote bags and brought into a sitting room and given cocktails. After a few minutes, Mr. C. and I are asked to follow a woman, who takes us into a walk-in fridge. It's not actually cold in there, and it's set up like a secretary's office, with yellow accents. A secretary, also in yellow, greets us and asks us to sit. She works for some sort of messaging/communications company, TTMS. We're given headphones attached to a cassette player and a voiceover tells us the story of what we are doing in the present moment (you are sitting in a room that should be colder, a woman sits across from you, etc). The secretary prepares two packets with a letter, cassette tape, and stamp/address label, and instructs us to put them into our bag. She takes Mr. C. out of the room leaving me behind. Another secretary of sorts comes in on a cell phone. She hands it to me and asks me to recount the first time I met Mr. C. I do, after which she gives me a clipboard with questions about him (height, place of birth, would he get lost in a city, etc). A stranger (half of the other couple) comes in and sits next to me. We are again given headphones and listen to a Walkman. A voice tells us about coming with a person and losing them -- it’s a story we'll hear many times throughout the evening.

We're asked to stand and are brought up out of the basement and onto the street. The woman who brought us there waves as the door closes behind her, but we are not left alone for long. Another woman in bright clothes walks up to us. In a thick, rushed New York accent, she takes us on a walking tour, explaining about the buildings (a firehouse and chapel) that once were and how the city has changed but the memories are still there. She runs into a man she knows, who gives us tea and a fortune cookie in an alley. "Remember what you're looking for or you won’t know it when you find it." My lucky number is 309, a number that was also on my envelope earlier that evening.

We continue on, splitting from the man (but not before he hands my companion a plastic bag of something), and are brought to an apartment building where we buzz 309. Our tour guide takes a letter out of the mailbox and hands it to me. We are to go upstairs and give it to the person there. So up we go. We knock on #309 and an esoteric woman in giant glasses opens the door, asking if we are some restaurant's delivery people. With hesitation, she lets us in, and I give her the letter and my companion hands her the plastic bag. Inside is a box of dumplings which she offers to share. We sit and she takes out the letter and reads it to us. She has been getting the exact same letter for years. It's from a man who writes about being in a basement in a room that's not as cold as it should be, and a firehouse and chapel, maps, a window, a hotel room, a mailbox. She takes out two maps and has us mark out the places (basement, firehouse, chapel) and then it hits her. She's maps. So she must take us to the window.

She brings us to the street, gives us headphones and a Walkman, and brings us to stand on a street corner. We look up and there in a window across the street, two floors up, is a bed positioned upright so we can see a scene unfold between a couple lying together. We listen to a sad story about the two of them, and when the woman leaves, a man in a suit stops by us to tie his shoe and the man in the window makes a phone call (all of this is narrated on the Walkman, too). The man in the suit answers the call and hands it to me. Could I come upstairs?

Upstairs we don't go to the bedroom, but a dingy room filled with wires and lights. The headquarters for the messaging service. We prepare letters for ourselves, using the supplies from our tote, addressed to a place we no longer live so that it will get returned to sender (the company headquarters). That's the only way to ensure we'll get them.

Back downstairs with a man holding a boom box. We walk down the street, a nostalgic song blasting. We meet a young man on the street (we'd previously seen a Polaroid of him at the secretary's office). He's excited. Tonight's the night! He brings us to a hotel, where we are given cocktails. He then takes us aside into a little seating area. He's been getting postcards from his future self. We read some of them. "Don't go to the bar on June 19, 2019." "Tell your mom you love her before May 25, 2016." Etc. One of them has a chunk missing but it advises him to be in a hotel room at 10:18. The date is unknown. It's almost time. We head up and help him clear away his clutter. He hands me a clock and we countdown to the fateful hour. Nothing happens. We wait another minute. Nothing. The man, dejected goes to a calendar posted on the wall and crosses out yet another date. Maybe tomorrow. The three of us sit on the bed and color with him, which cheers him up. Then it's time to go.

We walk back out onto the street and he brings us to a mailbox. He looks in our bags and takes out the envelopes we'd prepared at the headquarters. We slip them in the slot and are given headphones and a cassette player once more. This time we insert the tape from our bag. It's the same voice as before, but this time he is recounting the story of how I first met Mr. C. The voice narrates that I walk down the street and wave good-bye to my companions, so I do. 

I walk alone past the scaffolding to an old red emergency box, where I see - who else - but Mr. C. coming down the street! We don't have much time to talk because suddenly the tour guide lady is back. She takes our bags and hands us each an envelope and sheet of paper. A limo(!) pulls up and we get in. She says goodbye and it's just Mr. C. and I being driven around Tribeca. The paper is a copy of the missing person’s report I had filled out for my friend. The envelope: half of the map I had prepared with the lady, fortune stuck in the middle. Mr. C. has the other half. After a few minutes we arrive back at the original bar and just like that it's over!