“They’re quite fashionable,” he says, deflecting his nerves even though his intentions are obvious.
She does not respond as the house lights dim, nor does she respond while the previews play. When the film begins, he fears he has made the biggest mistake of his three-decades-long life.
Until he feels her head fall to his shoulder. Until he feels the warmth of her whisper on his ear.
“It’s nice to know you were listening.”
TO DO
It was left to Jon to organize his father’s belongings. Jess had to be back to California and Jimmy, well, Jimmy was good at many things, but organizing documents was not among them.
Jon slid himself into his father’s office chair, the old oak swivel his father had taken from his own father’s law office, first transporting it to college in Indiana, then trailing him in every move since.
From this chair, Jon’s father ran his “Empire,” which is no more than saying it was the place where he, for the bulk of seventy-nine years, orchestrated the business that was his life—a career as an actuary, the organizational aspects of raising a family, as well as all the vague and endless requisites that obligate a man to sit at a desk.
More than the actual news of his father’s passing, even more than the funeral, Jon finds sitting in his father’s chair extremely affecting. Less ceremonial, but not so different, he imagines, than what it must feel like to inherit the throne of a king.
The chair, he knows, he will keep.
Atop the desk are piles and piles of notepads and envelopes, each stacked neatly, mini towers of white with clear plastic address windows. Jon will do these second. The more important documents will be filed.
He opens the left side drawer. The manila folders inside are neatly tabbed: Bank Accounts, Car (Lincoln), Health Insurance, Home Mortgage is struck through with a pen. Income Taxes, a very thin folder marked To Do.
Intrigued, Jon pulls To Do. Wedged by itself at the very bottom is a large note card, wrapped in a Ziploc bag.
“To do,” the card reads, same as the file, hand-written and dated July 9, 1956.
Beneath, is item one of a list: “Career – Take pride in your work.” To the side, in darker ink, is a check mark.
“Own a home.” Two checks this time. One in black, one in blue ink. Lake Forest would have been the first, Jon remembers, and here, Bernardsville, is the second. Forty-five years in Bernardsville.
“See Cubs win W.S.” No check mark.
“Write a book.” This is written in thinner ink than the previous three. Added later it seems. More interesting are the several dash marks beside it. Had his father actually written a book? Is it in this office? Jon’s mind races to know, but first he reads the fourth item:
“Be a good husband.” Jon’s mother passed away in 2012. The check mark beside this note is the clearest on the card.
Finally, number five, “Be a good father.”
This is the only item that is circled. Several times, in several different colors and ages of ink, his father had circled the words. Beside them, the space is empty.
Jon searches the desk. He finds four Bics in the top shelf. He wishes he had an expensive fountain pen for the occasion, but this is his father’s desk, he is in his father’s chair.
He pulls the card from the plastic, places it flat on the single empty lot of space atop the desk. With the blue Bic pen, he checks the space beside his father’s words.
“You did great, Dad. You did great.”
THE LINE
It’s like there’s this line, you know. I got my toes right up to the very edge of it, like where the front of my sneaker’s peeling off, and I can see the flap hovering right above it, almost touching it. I want to get as close to the line as I can. And behind me, it’s like a storm, with all the million things I want to say to her, like how I’ve liked her since the fourth grade and how I know on her right arm those six freckles are shaped like the Big Dipper and how when we danced that one time I had to keep my hips back—okay, maybe I won’t tell her that—but it’s like that. Like how in the summer, how it gets all humid here and you can feel the pressure building up right before the storm comes through in the afternoon. I feel like I got a storm cloud’s worth of things to say to her, and she’s standing just on the other side of that line, where the sky’s perfectly clear, perfectly blue, and even behind her the grass is perfectly green, and she’s just standing there, totally unaware, looking perfect, and I don’t want to ruin that. I don’t want to ruin it.
THE SPOILER
I could write this story
A full novel long
But you haven’t got time
For even a song
So here is a spoil
That skips many wrongs
The boy loves the girl
He did, all along
SOLEMATE
In five minutes, I will meet my SoleMate. Or, rather, there is a 99.994% chance that she is my actual one true love. She will enter the door wearing a green scarf around her neck and a pin over her right ear. She will know me by my navy sweater and green checkered shirt. So that is the first giveaway: we both prefer green.
I do not know if this makes me feel more or less confident, knowing my search has been narrowed down to an absolute. A part of me envies my roommate. He is among the half-population for which SoleMate produced no match. I congratulated him on still being free to choose. He locked himself in his room for five days.
Her name is Lara. I know only her name and her green scarf. I assume she lives here in Philadelphia. The meeting place is the female’s choice.
The rest is still a mystery: the color of her hair, her age, or where she grew up. What her favorite song is, if she even likes music, or what she hopes to be one day, if she isn’t already it.
This is all by design, to keep alive “The Thrill of Discovery.” More scientifically, the FAQ explains there is a balance to preserve, a way to bay this sudden near-perfection of the mating process by introducing at least some level of natural disorder. In other words, we cannot be trusted with being handed all the candy at once. Not digitally, anyway.
A woman enters the coffeehouse with a brown scarf and my heart leaps at the false signal. I have spent two weeks thinking about only Lara, but have not yet come up with my first words. What do you say? How do you introduce yourself to your one and only?
A married couple enters, laughing. I wonder what their reaction to SoleMate has been. Are they tempted to look? Or are they confident enough to never glance, never see if their “perfect” other exists outside themselves.
The door jingles again. A man about sixty. I told my parents about my SoleMate and how I would essentially be flying five-hundred miles for a blind date. By the sound of their voices I could tell they were shaking their heads. “Good luck,” they said. “Call us for the wedding.”
It is the sort of skeptical I have tried to maintain. At least a sense of humor to go with it. What can an algorithm feel for itself? And it seems important to remember that I loved once, too. That is me. That was real. I am certain we left no footprints with our kisses and scars.
“Hello,” she says, unwrapping a green scarf.
She is beautiful. My God, she is beautiful.
“I’m Lara.”
ENTER JOY
“I’m scared. I don’t know if I’m ready.”
“You’re ready.”
“How did you know? How did you know you were ready?”
“I didn’t.”
“Well, weren’t you scared?”
“Scared would be an understatement.”
“Then what happened? How did you get through it?”
“You happened. Not knowing is always more frightening. When I saw you, I knew. You brought too much joy for me to ever be frightened. Joy chases the fear away. You’ve been my joy ever since.”
ATL
“Hi,” they speak simultaneously, meeting at the terminal’s security exit.
They each notice the other
had dressed up for the occasion. She wears a flower print dress, he dons a gray wool sweater over a button-down collared shirt.
“You look beautiful,” he says.
“And you look very nice, as well.”
Their conversation pauses. He has a gift in his suitcase but that would be strange to open here. He should have bought flowers, too. He had been worried there would not be room in the overhead bin, but there had been plenty of room.
“Good flight?” She asks.
“Yes, very good, thanks. Smooth. On time.”
“Excellent.”
“And the weather here,” he grimaces for mentioning the weather but it’s too late. “It’s nice,” he finishes.
“Yes. A bit warmer here, I imagine.”
Had this been a terrible idea they each wonder? How many couples go on long distance first dates? It is only nerves, they hope. Maybe they are only a single laugh away from feeling like when they first met in New York, how it’s been in all their messages to and from each other since.
“I parked this way,” she says.
“Great,” he answers, following stride.
Their walk to the lot is a sequence of pleasantries. “How have you been?” lasts until the end of the concourse, “It’s nice to get away” survives the exit past baggage claim, and “It’s beautiful out” is every bit as agonizing as it sounds crossing the parking lot until they enter her car, a rusty blue Jeep.
Inside the vehicle, they are perfectly silent. There is still time for him to turn around, or reversely, for her, to send him back.
“I’m glad to be here,” he says finally, lending his best olive branch.
She stops. Her eyes well up and a smile breaks through—it is the smile he remembers, the one that kept him up for five straight weeks, the one he told his friends about, saying, “Trust me, this one’s special.” It is the smile that brought him to Atlanta.
“I’m really glad you came, too,” she responds. “I’m really, really glad.”
OBSERVATION DECK
At the top of the Empire State Building, it is twenty-two degrees. The wind chill is six. The observation deck is nearly empty. In the southwest corner, a Scandinavian couple laughs. The temperature does not bother them. To the west, a ladies’ retreat howls back at the cold, heated by a night of wine. On the northern deck, two teenagers stand alone. This is their city. All they know, their entire existence, is within its limits. Anywhere they look, they have been. Buildings they can name with their eyes shut, street corners they can visualize down to the color of the awnings. The bodegas, the playgrounds, the pawn shops, and the parks. Even the displays on Madison Ave. Those stores weren’t built for them, but they are still theirs to know. Which is why they came here—to lay claim to the one view that had escaped them. To at last stand atop that zenith of every morning, that dial during the day, that beacon which seems to power every New York City night. All their lives, spent looking up, orbits around a single heaven-piercing spire. Tonight, they look down. Above the world. Tonight, the city emits from them. She skips right and he chases, racing circles around the deck, blitzing past the huddled tourists. This is their town. This is their love. Spin it round again. This is Brooklyn, this is Queens. This is Staten Island, this is Manhattan. This is the Bronx. “New York City!” They shout. “Look up! Look up! At the red light! This is love! This is love! Now take it back!”
ABOUT THE COVER
In November 2012, One Page Love Story was barely a month old when several school friends of mine traveled north from Philadelphia to New York to play a concert in the basement of an Upper East Side club. Among those in attendance was Amanda Laird, who at the time was girlfriend/boyfriend with the band’s lead singer and also, in her spare time, an artist.
While The Carpet Squares tuned their instruments, Amanda and I discussed her art, along with my new project, and how one day I’d want my very own “Amanda Laird” to hang on the wall. She then remembered a story her Uncle Nick once shared with her—a myth about an invisible red string and how each of us are connected and that this was how he had met his own wife, Amanda’s Aunt Mieko.
Knowing that I was her only friend who went around writing short love stories, she thought I might be intrigued and impressed. Of course I was. She said she would ask her uncle for the story and two days later it arrived in an email with a short note beneath: “Amanda…here’s the Red String Story as it pertained to Mieko and my life…I’m surprised you remembered it…Uncle Nick.”
I remember that last line, not only because I thought it was a sweet thing to say and acknowledge, that Amanda had remembered this story told to her so long before, but also because the story seemed to stick with me, as well. At the time, I did not have an immediate outlet for it, but like any good story, I knew it was one I wanted to eventually share.
Fast forward to May 2014 in Savannah, Georgia. “Share the Love” was five months strong (It was Rachel Harvest’s turn to wow the world with love that week) and nearly all our friends from that same New York show were down in Savannah to see Amanda marry her singing sweetheart, Nick.
The red string tugged.
I see this as a project of connections now. Writers not only from across the country, but across the world. A few I knew before the year began, a few I have since met, and several I look forward to one day meeting in person still. How unlikely, in retrospect, that many of us should have connected at all. How very glad I am that we did.
In Savannah I saw Amanda, whose own red string story involved meeting Nick at a bar in Atlanta, going on a long-distance first date to a music festival in Maine, before ultimately taking a chance and moving to Philadelphia, and I saw these connections at play. Once again, events so unlikely. Once again, so fortunate and thankful that they did.
That weekend I asked Amanda if she would paint her Uncle Nick’s story, “The Red String,” as the cover of this book. Even though I’m sure her thoughts were spinning with a million more pressing details, she said yes.
I also asked her Uncle Nick if he would allow me to reprint his original story. It fits so perfectly well in a collection like this. He kindly agreed to do so. You can read it on the very next page.
So thank you Amanda—for sharing a good story in the first place, and for the amazing painting which now hangs in my living room (I’ve finally got my very own “Amanda Fazzini!”). Thank you also Nick Poppin for allowing me to share your story in this book. And, finally, since he is my direct link to Amanda, and I know this will make his day, thank you Nick Fazzini. You dance very well.
—Rich
THE RED STRING
Since my retirement, Mieko and I have been traveling a lot and most of the time to Japan. The travel includes a lot of windshield time by bus so the karaoke machine often came out for some entertainment. There was always a few volunteers but after Mieko sang there were none. She was a hard act to follow. I have yet to hear someone else sing on the machine.
One of the songs Mieko sang on the last trip was called “The Red String.” Many people in the group did not speak the language so Mieko explained what the song was about. I heard Mieko sing this song several times before but this was the first time she explained what the song was about and it made me think.
The Red String is a story of true love. At each end are two people destined to meet. Whomever travels toward the other depends on who pulls the string harder. Mieko pulled harder.
Mieko’s string started out to be approximately 8,000 miles long. I was in Mississippi and of course she was in Japan.
I can think of 3 instances that occurred which drastically changed my destiny, hopefully by her tugging on the string.
Instance number 1 was while I was at Keesler Air Force Base in Mississippi training to be a radio operator. My class was told that upon completion of the course we were scheduled to ship out to Germany. I think that during the final exam Mieko tugging on the string distracted me so much that I ended up sending 3 messages to the wrong person and was held back from graduati
ng. My fellow classmates went to Germany and I was sent to March Air Force Base in California two weeks later. The string was now reduced to 6,000 miles.
Instance number 2 was after several months at March AFB. My NCOIC asked me if I wanted to go overseas. I said yes and asked where to? He told me either Korea or Japan. I told him I’ll take Japan. He asked my best friend the same thing and his answer was the same thing…Japan. My NCOIC flipped a coin and tug tug I won and was on my way to Japan. The string was now reduced to 50 miles.
I was now in Japan but not where Mieko was working. She was working at Fuchu Air Force Base and I was up in the mountains about 50 miles away at a communication station.
Instance number 3 was I eventually found out that Fuchu had a baseball team and that in order to play I had to transfer, so with my love for the game and a tug tug I ended up where Mieko was working. Clayton Snedeker was the catcher on the baseball team and also worked in special services where Mieko was. He set us up on a date and finally we were together.
What a journey…I enjoyed every minute of it and was greatly rewarded at the end. Those 2yrs 8mos and 10days in Japan were the most enjoyable days of my life.
—Nick Poppin
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One Page Love Story- Share the Love Page 21