Martha made a so-so gesture with her hand.
Then Michael stood up. “You’re a terrific person, Patty. You know that, right? Owen is a… not-ready-for-grown-ups player,” he said. No beating around the bush about that.
“Thank you, Michael. Not your fault,” Patty said. “My fault.”
Then she picked up Holly and hurried down the front steps, with Martha right behind. “Owen is a shit,” Martha muttered to Michael as she passed him.
He watched the trio leave, ran up the four flights to his floor. With no plan in mind, he headed for Owen’s door, and was about to pound the hell out of it, but stopped himself.
Screw it! Owen Pulaski wasn’t worth it and probably never would be. Something had probably happened in his childhood to mess him up—in fact, it had probably happened to a lot of men—but he couldn’t fix that, could he? He couldn’t fix that little boys weren’t allowed to show their emotions, and that seemed unfair to them, and made them as angry as hell, sometimes for the rest of their lives, so that they took it out on everybody, but especially women.
Suddenly the door opened, and Owen was standing there. He looked startled to see Michael, and a guilty expression crossed his face. But he immediately wiped it away and put on a big shit-eating grin.
“Hey, Mike! What’s happening, bro?”
So Michael hit him. “I’m judging you, Owen. Consider yourself judged.”
But then, being Michael, he reached down and helped the big lug up off the floor.
“I’m telling you, Owen. You’ve got it all wrong. There’s nothing better than love in this life. This is a tall order—but find somebody to love you, and try your hardest to love her back, the best you can. And not Patty, or I’ll be back.”
Having said that, Michael hit the streets again. He needed to see Jane—now.
Fifty-four
TWENTY-THREE MINUTES LATER, maybe twenty-five but who was counting, Michael was in an elevator headed up to Jane’s office. This couldn’t wait. When the doors opened, he could tell that something was wrong. Instead of Elsie’s usual welcoming smile, she looked upset.
“I’m going back to see Jane,” Michael said.
“She’s not here. I was hoping she was with you. Jane walked out of here half an hour ago.”
Michael could hear Vivienne talking loudly behind the door. Then he recognized the shrill voice of the bad actor named Hugh. He couldn’t understand what they were saying but caught the words “Jane” and “crazy,” and they both seemed to be in some kind of panic. “That girl has no idea how much I love her,” Vivienne said, “no idea at all.”
“What happened to her?” Michael asked Elsie. “Is Jane all right?”
“Well, I’m not sure, but she had a terrible fight with her mother and her boyfriend—”
Michael began to interrupt—he’s not her boyfriend!—then he stopped himself.
Elsie continued, “All I know is… Jane stormed out of here, and she said, ‘Hold all my calls. Forever!’ ”
Elsie had barely finished when the door opened and Vivienne and Hugh stepped out. Hugh was holding a towel against his face. Michael hoped someone had hit him. Someone like Jane.
Vivienne’s voice was venomous as she spoke to Michael. “You! You had something to do with this. Jane has never acted this way before. You corrupted her!” She was wagging her finger at him like a stern schoolteacher at Superficial Academy.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Michael broke in. “Jane is an adult. And she’s incorruptible! Unlike Hugh!”
Hugh’s eyes narrowed, and suddenly he rushed at Michael and threw a haymaker sort of punch, the kind that would have been choreographed on a stage set. Michael blocked it easily and, without thinking, crunched an uppercut into the pit of Hugh’s stomach.
The actor doubled over and then sat down on the floor, more startled than hurt.
And Michael was even more stunned: two punches in less than an hour.
“I’m sorry,” Michael said, but then he changed his mind. “Well, I’m not. You’ve been asking for that, Hugh. I’m a little sorry about Owen. I’m glad I hit you.”
“Elsie, call nine-one-one!” Vivienne yelled, her face red. “Call security! Call somebody! And you!” She snarled at Michael. “You keep away from Jane, and Hugh, and don’t you dare come to this office again.”
Michael said, “How about two out of three?”
Fifty-five
THE NEXT THING MICHAEL KNEW, he was out on the street again. He experienced the same symptoms he had earlier, but in a more troubling way: anxiety, fear, an uncomfortable pressure on his chest. He had the same questions about Jane, and about himself too. One thing he didn’t have was Jane’s cell phone number. He thought of that as he passed one of the few public telephones left in New York.
There was no point in going to Jane’s apartment. If she’d left her office in a fury, she wouldn’t go someplace where Vivienne could easily find her. So where would she go?
He kept walking, and when he got tired of walking he began running and when he got tired of running he just ran faster. People gave him a wide berth on the sidewalk, as if he were crazy, and maybe they were right about that. New Yorkers knew crazy.
He slid on his headphones and listened to Corinne Bailey Rae. That helped some. Corinne was a calming influence. Not heading anywhere in particular, he ran up Riverside Drive, and at 110th Street the soaring spires of the Cathedral of St. John the Divine began to fill the sky.
Actually, this street was known as the Cathedral Parkway, and St. John the Divine was the largest cathedral in the world. That was because St. Peter’s in Rome wasn’t classified as a cathedral. Michael knew about such things. He had always read a lot, considered himself a student.
He pulled open one of the smaller doors that was cut into the huge ones. Then he walked in, knelt, and blessed himself.
The church was enormous, at least a couple hundred yards in length, and suddenly he felt small. He remembered hearing or reading somewhere that the Statue of Liberty would fit comfortably under the central dome. That looked about right.
Michael felt so… human, kneeling here in the cathedral. And he wasn’t sure if he liked it. But he also wasn’t sure that he didn’t.
Fifty-six
MICHAEL TURNED OFF the music in his headphones and began to pray. He wanted answers, needed answers, but none seemed to be coming his way. Finally, he raised his head and looked around the magnificent church. He’d always liked everything about the cathedral: the blend of French Gothic and Romanesque styles; the chapels radiating from the ambulatory; the Byzantine columns and arches; voices echoing, an organist practicing somewhere. God lives here! He must, Michael thought.
A calm came over him as his eye fell on the magnificent Rose Window situated over the altar. His heart quieted some.
Then, to his utter amazement, a tear formed in his eye. It welled up, blurred his vision, and rolled down his cheek.
“What is happening to me?” he whispered. He’d cut himself shaving, knocked down two guys in the same day (though both had deserved it), and now he was crying. In fact, an overwhelming sadness was overtaking him. So this is what sorrow feels like. This is the ache in the heart, the catch in the throat, that he had heard and read so much about.
He’d never felt it before, though, and it was so painful and unpleasant that he wanted it to stop. He snapped his fingers, but nothing happened. He really wasn’t in control here, was he? He was lost, floundering, confused. The intense pumping in his heart had been replaced by a small, stabbing hurt, and with the hurt came clarity, a sense of knowledge. A horrible sense of knowledge.
And maybe… a message. Was that what was happening?
Michael thought that he had an answer to his prayers, but he didn’t want this to be it. He thought he knew why he was back in New York, and why he’d met up again with Jane Margaux. These feelings, kind of like premonitions, had always preceded his new assignments, and he was having one now. The message w
as very clear, and he couldn’t remember any of the feelings ever being so anguished before. Not once, not ever, as far back as he could remember.
“Oh no,” he whispered out loud. “That can’t be it.”
But it was, wasn’t it? It made sense of everything that had happened up to now. This was the missing piece to the puzzle that he had been trying to solve. It explained why he had found Jane. Of course it did. It was the perfect answer.
He looked up at the glorious Rose Window again. Then at the altar. This couldn’t be happening. But clearly it was.
Many years ago Michael had helped guide Jane into this life. He had eased her way, been her imaginary friend until he’d had to leave her when she’d turned nine.
And now he was the one who’d been chosen to bring Jane out of life. He understood this now. He got it. This was about human mortality, wasn’t it?
Jane was going to die.
That was why he was here in New York.
PART THREE
Candles in the Wind
Fifty-seven
CALL IT A MESSAGE, maybe. Or a wake-up call. An instinct?
I felt the need to come to one of our “places”: the front steps of the Met, my favorite view in New York since I’d been a little girl and had come here with Michael.
I’d been sitting on the steps for a while. When I had stormed out of my mother’s office, I’d automatically told the cabdriver to take me here. Now my anger had faded and transformed itself into something vaguely resembling strength. At least that’s what I was telling myself. What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, right? I’d never particularly liked that cliché, but I wasn’t above using it now.
And every spring flower seemed to be in bloom. From where I sat, I could see pink apple blossoms, azaleas bursting with dynamic red. A gold-and-orange checkerboard of newly planted marigolds filled a garden near Fifth Avenue.
That’s better, much better.
Schoolchildren tumbled out of school buses in front of the museum. Old ladies with canes walked carefully up the steps, probably to see the Jackie Kennedy costume exhibit. I’d been there, done that.
A teenage couple sat a few steps away from me. They kissed longingly, and I enjoyed watching them, because for this moment, at least, they were hopelessly in love. Was I in love too, and was it hopeless?
The good news was that I felt like a huge weight had been lifted from my shoulders. I was free of Vivienne, free of Hugh, free of the pressures of my job, free of nine to five (or, rather, nine to nine), free of worrying about whether I looked good or bad. At least for the next hour or so.
I wanted one thing in my life: Michael. I knew his presence was unreliable, and that it wasn’t entirely in his control. I knew he might disappear on me one day, and probably would. But love takes chances, and I wanted to take a chance right now. For once in my life, I knew what I wanted.
That was a start, wasn’t it?
I heard a voice, and I looked up and had to shade my eyes from the glare of the sun.
“Excuse me, miss. Is this step taken?”
It was Michael.
“How do you know I’m a miss?” I asked.
Fifty-eight
IT REALLY WAS MICHAEL. He’d found me. But, God, did he look like crap!
“What happened to you?” I asked, after I’d given him the once-over.
“What do you mean? What’s the matter with me?”
“You look like you haven’t slept in days. Your eyes are all bloodshot. Your clothes are wringing wet with perspiration. You’re…”
He sat next to me and held my hand. “I’m fine, Jane. I’m really fine.” He leaned in and kissed my neck. Gentle, strong. I didn’t know which, and I didn’t care. Then Michael kissed me on the lips, and every nerve inside me lit up. He kissed me a second time. And a third. I stared into his eyes and felt my whole body start tingling.
“Why aren’t you at work?” he asked.
With great effort, I concentrated on what he’d just said.
I could tell that he was wise to what had happened.
“Jane?”
“Why aren’t I at work? Because I punched the crap out of Hugh McGrath? I think I bruised my knuckles, too.” Michael kissed my hands.
“Because, for once, I told my mother where to stick it, and it felt just great, Michael. Because I quit my day job, which also happened to be my night job most of the time.”
Michael gave me a loving smile. “Hooray for Jane! Good for you!”
I laughed. “Hooray for Jane? Good for me? I hope this doesn’t mean you think your work is done here. Because it isn’t, not even close.”
“You are an endless project,” he said with another smile. “Changing, evolving, surprising.”
“Excellent sentence fragment. You’ve been practicing.”
Then I leaned over and kissed him again. “I’ve decided I’m done with being miserable and oppressed. I want to actually enjoy life. I want to have fun. Doesn’t everyone deserve that?” I asked.
“Absolutely,” he said. “And you most of all.”
Suddenly he looked very serious, and his eyes avoided mine.
Uh-oh. “What?” I said.
“Jane, do you remember that time when you were little—and your dad took you for that long spring weekend in Nantucket? Remember that?”
“It was to make up for not taking me anywhere for my fifth birthday. Or my fourth. Probably my third, too.”
“Yeah, it was.”
“It was the first time I ever remember being really happy,” I said, smiling at the distant memory. “You and I built sand castles with my stupid Barbie doll pail and matching shovel. We went to some ice cream place in town where they mixed chocolate chips and peanuts right into the coffee ice cream. We went swimming every day, even though the water was freezing, with a capital Brrr.”
“Good times, huh?” Michael asked.
“The best. Remember the Cliffside Beach Club? And Jetties Beach?”
“Let’s go back there, Jane.”
I smiled. “I’d love to. When?”
“Right now. Today. Let’s go. What do you say?”
I stared into Michael’s green eyes and I sensed that something was up, but I didn’t want to ask him what it was. I figured that he’d tell me soon enough. Plus, there was chicken Jane again. The fantasy is much better than the reality.
“I’d love to go to Nantucket,” I said. “But you have to promise to answer a few questions while we’re there.”
Fifty-nine
“FIRST QUESTION,” Jane said on the ride out to the airport. “You weaseled out of telling me if you ever dated. But have you ever fallen in love?”
Michael made a face, sighed, then said, “The way it works, Jane, is that after a while, I seem to forget what happened in the past. That’s not my choice, by the way. In answer to your question, I don’t think so.”
“So this would be the first?” asked Jane, and Michael smiled at her confidence in assuming that he had fallen in love with her. He hadn’t said so, but she’d been able to tell. And she wasn’t wrong.
“How about sex?” she asked next.
Michael started to laugh. “Let’s ease our way into this. One question at a time, okay? Now, let’s talk about something else, Jane-Sweetie.”
“Okay. When I was a wee, small, little girl, I remember that we used to take Eastern Airlines up to Cape Cod. We’d go a couple of times every summer,” Jane said as the cab rattled up to the old Marine Terminal at LaGuardia Airport.
Michael gave her a kiss, lingering on the softness of her lips and noticing the twinkle in her eyes. She was a grown-up woman, but he loved the innocent, childlike quality she still had.
“Are you trying to shut me up?” Jane asked. “This kissing thing?”
“Not at all. I just… like it.” And he kissed Jane again.
The cabdriver finally barked back at them, “You two gonna get out of the cab, or are you going to sit here and make lovey-dovey all day?”
“Lovey-dovey,” Jane told the guy, laughing, and he almost smiled back.
Michael paid the driver and grabbed their two small suitcases. Once inside the old terminal, he paused and peered around.
“What are you looking for now?”
“Him.”
Michael pointed to an old guy in a floppy brown windbreaker with the letters CCPA on the chest pocket. His face was sunburned and covered with age lines.
“Cape Cod Private Air?” Michael asked as he walked up to him.
“The one and only,” he answered in a gravelly voice. “Follow me, folks. You’re Jane and Michael, right?”
“That would be us,” said Jane.
They followed the old man, and in a few minutes they were boarding a small plane that looked suspiciously like the one Michael had seen in pictures of Lindbergh’s transatlantic flight.
“You think this plane’ll make it to Nantucket?” Jane asked, only half joking. Michael hoped she wasn’t remembering any recent crashes of small planes.
“Have a little faith, lady,” the pilot said.
“We’ve got plenty of that,” said Michael. “You have no idea.”
In a few minutes, the propellers were spinning, and the plane was cruising down the runway like a drunk stumbling around the Bowery.
“When I imagined my own death, I hadn’t actually pictured a plane crash.” Jane tried to joke, but her hand gripped Michael’s firmly.
Michael felt his throat tighten and his chest start to hurt again. Jane was being funny, but he’d gotten a bad feeling about what she had just said. Were they meant to crash, and then, what, he would die too? After all, he had experienced a number of firsts lately. Was death to be the last first for him, as it was for everyone?
“We’re not going to crash, Jane,” he said, and held her hand more tightly.