As the line inched forward, Lucy glanced over at Owen, who was looking around with a dazed expression.
“You’d think there’d be looting or something,” he said. “In a place like this, you’d think it’d be mayhem. But it’s just a big party.”
“I told you it’s not so bad here,” Lucy said. “Give it a chance.”
“Okay,” he said with a little smile. “As long as you promise every night will be like this.”
“What,” she asked, “dark?”
“That’s the thing,” he said, looking up. “It’s not that dark. Not really.”
She followed his gaze to where the sliver of moon hung above the shadowy outline of the buildings, a thin curve of white against a navy sky that was dotted with stars. In all her years here, Lucy had never seen anything like it: a million points of light, all of them usually drowned out by the brilliant electricity of the city, the billboards and streetlights, the lasers and sirens, the fluorescent lamps and the neon bulbs, and the great white noise of it all, which left no room for anything else to break through.
But tonight, the world had gone quiet. There was nothing but the black canopy of the sky and the wash of stars above, burning so bright that Lucy found she couldn’t look away.
“He was right,” she murmured. “This must be quite a sight from up in space.”
Owen didn’t answer for a moment, and when he finally did, his voice was hushed. “I don’t know,” he said. “I think it’s even better from down here.”
4
By the time they made it back up the twenty-four flights of stairs—red-faced and panting and holding their sides—the apartment was like an oven, and there was nothing to do but collapse onto the cool tiles of the kitchen floor. There was no cure for this kind of heat, no fans and no air-conditioning and no breeze from the window, and even the ceramic tiles grew warm beneath them as they lay there in silence, still breathing hard.
Eventually, Owen sat up and reached for one of the water bottles, handing another over to Lucy, who was sprawled out beside the refrigerator, her white dress pooled all around her. She wiped at her forehead with the back of her hand, then propped herself up on her elbows to take a sip.
“That’s it,” she said when she was done.
Owen lay back again. “What is?”
“I’m never going downstairs again.”
“Until the elevator’s fixed…”
“Maybe not even then,” she said. “That elevator and I go way back, but after tonight, I’m not sure I can ever trust it again.”
“Poor old elevator.”
“Poor old me.”
There was a ceiling fan above them, and Owen stared at the outline of the blades through the dark for so long that he could almost imagine it spinning. His whole body was spiky with heat, even his eyelids, which felt heavy and thick. He reached absently for the flashlight on the floor between them, then clicked it on, shining it around the kitchen like a spotlight: circling the sink and zigzagging across the cabinets.
“There’s pretty much nothing in there. My mom doesn’t cook,” Lucy said, following the beam with her gaze. “None of us really do.”
“That’s too bad,” he said. “You’ve got a great kitchen.”
“Do you?”
“Have a great kitchen?”
“No,” she said, lying back again so that their heads were inches apart, their bodies fanned out in opposite directions. “Do you cook?”
“Yup,” he said. “And I clean, too. I’m a regular Renaissance man.”
He flicked the light over the dishwasher, then the oven, and finally up to the refrigerator, which was covered with postcards, each one pinned by a brightly colored magnet. He sat up to take a closer look, focusing the light so he could read the names scrawled over them: Florence, Cape Town, Prague, Barcelona, Cannes, Saint Petersburg.
“Wow,” he said. “Have you been to all these places?”
Lucy laughed. “Do you think I’m sending myself postcards?”
“No,” he said, his face burning. “I just figured—”
“They’re from my parents. They go to amazing places, and I get a piece of cardboard,” she explained with a shrug. “They always bring one of my brothers a magnet and the other a snow globe. It’s kind of a tradition. Apparently I asked for a postcard once when I was little, and I guess it sort of stuck.”
He scooted closer to the refrigerator, holding the flashlight in his fist. “So where are they now?”
“Paris,” she said. “They go there all the time.”
“They don’t ever take you?” he asked without turning around, and her voice behind him was quiet when she answered.
“No.”
“Oh,” he said, sitting back on his heels. “Well, who needs Paris when you live in New York, right?”
This made her smile. “I guess so,” she said, then pointed at the fridge. “I haven’t gotten one from this trip yet. That’s actually why I was downstairs before. I was checking the mail.”
There was a note of sadness in the words, and Owen cast around for something to say in response, something to fill the quiet of the kitchen. He glanced again at the mosaic of photographs. “Postcards are overrated anyway.”
“Oh yeah?” she asked, raising her eyebrows.
“Yeah, I mean, what’s the worst thing you can say to someone who isn’t on some beautiful beach with you?”
Lucy shrugged.
“ ‘Wish you were here.’ ” He rapped his knuckles against a scene from Greece, which was hanging near the bottom. “I mean, come on. If they really wished you were there, they’d have invited you in the first place, right? It’s kind of mean, if you really think about it. It should say: ‘Greece: Where nobody’s all that upset you’re not here.’ ”
There was a long pause, and as the silence lengthened, he realized his mistake. He’d only been joking, but it had come out sounding harsh and somehow too specific, and he was gripped now with a sudden fear that he’d managed to make things worse.
But to his relief, she began to laugh. “ ‘Rome: Where it’s so beautiful, we’ve pretty much forgotten about you,’ ” she said, sitting up. Her arms were looped around her bare legs, and her mouth was twisted with the humor of it. “ ‘Sydney: Where you’re really missing out.’ ”
“Exactly,” Owen said. “That’s a lot more honest anyway.”
“I guess you’re right,” she said, her face growing serious again.
“But I bet your parents really do wish you were there.”
“Yeah,” she said, but her voice was hollow. “I bet.”
He switched off the flashlight, then pivoted so that his back was against the refrigerator, the postcards fluttering above his head, and he thought of the notes his mother used to leave for him around the house, little yellow Post-its scrawled with blue ink, reminders to clean his room or to heat up the casserole she’d made. Sometimes she left them before running out to do errands, or going to dinner with Dad, but other times she wouldn’t be far, just out in the backyard, weeding the garden. It didn’t matter whether she’d see him again in two minutes or two hours or two days; the notes always ended the same way: Thinking of you.
“I have an idea,” he said, and Lucy let her head fall to one side so she could look at him, her eyes dark and searching. He reached into his pocket and held out the keys to the roof. “It’ll be a hike,” he told her. “But I think it’ll be worth it.”
They loaded a backpack with water and snacks, candles and a blanket, and then Owen led them back toward the stairwell, flashlight held before him like a sword. The hallway was still quiet, and he wondered what he’d be doing now if his father were home. He would probably just be waiting while he went door-to-door through the building, pretending as best he could at this new role of caretaker, as Owen sat alone in the basement, pretending not to notice that he could hardly even take care of himself these days.
They started up the stairs at a brisk pace, but their footsteps soon slowed, and by t
he time they passed the thirty-fifth floor, they were walking side by side, hauling themselves up on opposite railings, one sweaty hand at a time. When they finally reached the metal door at the top, Owen gave it a push, but it didn’t budge.
“A lot of the time, they leave it unlocked,” he explained. “Which is why I don’t feel too bad about the key.”
“Aha,” she said. “So you’re not as much of a badass as you would first appear.”
He laughed. “I’m not a badass at all. I’m just a guy with a key.”
When he unlocked the door, they stumbled out onto the darkened roof, their eyes focused on the ground as they picked their way across the tar-covered surface.
“Over there,” Owen said, pointing at the southwest corner, and Lucy walked over to the ledge that ran along the perimeter, where she stood looking out.
“Wow,” she breathed, rising onto her tiptoes. Owen dropped the backpack before joining her, positioning himself a few inches away. The wind lifted her hair from her shoulders, and he caught the scent of something sweet; it smelled like flowers, like springtime, and it made him a little dizzy.
They were quiet as they took in the unfamiliar view, the island that was usually lit up like a Christmas tree now nothing but shadows. The skyscrapers were silhouettes against a sky the color of a bruise, and only the spotlight from a single helicopter swung back and forth like a pendulum as it drifted across the skyline.
Together, they leaned against the granite wall, invisible souls in an invisible city, peering down over forty-two stories of sheer height and breathless altitude.
“I can’t believe I’ve never been up here,” she murmured without taking her eyes off the ghostly buildings. “I always say the best way to see the city is from the ground up, but this place is amazing. It’s—”
“A million miles above the rest of the world,” he said, shifting to face her more fully.
“A million miles away from the world,” she said. “Which is even better.”
“You’re definitely living in the wrong city then.”
“Not really,” she said, shaking her head. “There are so many ways to be alone here, even when you’re surrounded by so many people.”
Owen frowned. “Sounds lonely.”
She turned to him with a smile, but there was something steely about it. “There’s a difference between loneliness and solitude.”
He was about to say more but was reminded of the postcards just downstairs, dozens of monuments to one or the other—loneliness or solitude—depending on how you looked at them.
“Then I guess you’ve come to the right place,” he said, watching her fingers drum an unconscious rhythm on the rough stone of the ledge. “Even though you’re not technically alone at the moment.”
“No, that’s true,” she said, fixing her gaze on him again, and this time the smile was real.
They spread the picnic blanket on the uneven surface of the roof, then spilled out the contents of the backpack. The sun was long gone, but it was still warm out, even up here, where the wind made it difficult to light the candles. After a while, they gave up and dined in the dark instead, sharing an assortment of cookies and crackers and fruit, and Lucy’s eyes kept straying back up to the sky between bites, as if she couldn’t trust the unfamiliar stars to stay put.
When they were full, they dragged the blanket over to the wall so that they could lean against it, sitting side by side, their heads tilted back, their shoulders nearly touching.
“If you could go anywhere in the world, where would it be?” Lucy asked, and Owen felt a flash of recognition; it was a question that was always on his mind, and the first thing he usually wondered about other people, even if he never got around to asking.
“Everywhere,” he said, and she laughed, the sound light and musical.
“That’s not an answer.”
“Sure it is,” he said, because it was true, possibly the truest thing about him. Sometimes it seemed as if his whole life was an exercise in waiting; not waiting to leave, exactly, but simply waiting to go. He felt like one of those fish that had the capacity to grow in unimaginable ways if only the tank were big enough. But his tank had always been small, and as much as he loved his home—as much as he loved his family—he’d always felt himself bumping up against the edges of his own life.
New York City wasn’t the answer. What Owen wanted was something wider, something vaster; he had applications ready for six different colleges that ranged up and down the West Coast, from San Diego all the way to Washington, and he couldn’t wait for the day when he could take off to start a new life out there, crossing through states heavy with vowels beneath skies flat as paper, through the impossible bulk of jagged mountains, all the way to the silvery ocean.
For as long as he could remember, he’d felt the pull of the road, an itinerant streak that chimed from somewhere deep inside him, perhaps inherited from his once-restless parents. One day, he hoped to find their kind of peace, too—a home that was nothing special until they’d deemed it so—but that would come later, and for now there were thousands of places he burned to see, and next year would just be the start of it.
He could feel Lucy’s eyes on him, and when he turned to face her, she dipped her chin. “Okay then,” she said matter-of-factly. “Everywhere.”
“What about you?” he asked, and she considered this a moment.
“Somewhere.”
He grinned. “How is that a better answer than everywhere?”
“It’s more specific,” she said, as if this should be obvious.
“I guess that’s true.” He looked down at his folded hands. “You know, I’ve never really been anywhere. New York, obviously. And Pennsylvania. We went to the Delaware shore once when I was little. And crossed through New Jersey a few times. That’s what? Four states.” He shook his head and smiled ruefully. “Pitiful, huh?”
“What about next year?” she asked. “College seems like a pretty good excuse to get out of here.”
“It is,” he agreed. “I’m looking at a lot of places out west. California, Oregon, Washington…”
She raised her eyebrows. “Those are all really far.”
“Yeah,” he said. “That’s kind of the point. They’ve all got pretty good science programs, too.”
“Ah,” she said. “So you are a science whiz.”
He shrugged. “Whiz might be taking it a bit far.”
“What about your dad?”
“What about him?” Owen asked, but he knew what she meant, and he felt something go cold in his chest at the thought. There were so many parts of this—this lonely next chapter—that he dreaded now, most of them having to do with his mother: that she wouldn’t be there to watch him walk across the stage at graduation, or to help him pack, or to make the bed in his new dorm room the way she always did at home. But the worst of it was actually this: that, after dropping off his only son, his dad would have to come back to this miserable basement apartment on his own.
That was the part that knocked the wind out of him every single time.
He swallowed hard and raised his eyes to meet Lucy’s.
“Won’t he miss having you nearby?” she asked, and he forced himself to shrug.
“He’ll come visit,” he said with as much confidence as he could muster. He felt beside him, where there was a small piece of gravel, and then used it to scratch absently at the black surface of the roof. “What about you?”
“Will I miss having you nearby?” she asked with a grin, and he smiled in spite of himself.
“No,” he said. “Tell me where you’ve been.”
“Well, New York, of course,” she said, holding out a hand to tick off her fingers as she counted. “Connecticut, New Jersey, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Florida. I was hoping to get to California when my brothers left for school a few weeks ago, but they ended up just driving out together. My cousin’s getting married there in a few months, though, so I guess I’ll be able to add it to the list th
en.”
“Pretty good list,” he said with a little nod.
“Oh, and London,” she said, her face brightening. “Almost forgot about that. Just twice, though. It’s where my mom’s from, so…” She shrugged. “But that’s it for me. Not all that impressive, either.”
He sighed. “When my parents graduated from high school, they bought a van and saw the whole country. Two years on the road. They went everywhere.”
“I’m more interested in going abroad,” she said, her voice unmistakably wistful. “I want to see all the places on those postcards. Especially Paris.”
“Why Paris?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “All those beautiful buildings and cathedrals…”
“You mean all those postcards.”
“Yeah,” she admitted. “All those postcards. They’re very selling.”
“What do you want to see most?”
“Notre Dame,” she said without hesitation.
“Why?” he asked, expecting to hear something about the architecture or the history or at least the gargoyles, but he was wrong.
“Because,” she said. “It’s the very center of Paris.”
“It is?”
She nodded. “There’s a little plaque with a star in front of it that marks the spot: Point Zero. And if you jump on it and make a wish, it means you’ll get a chance to go back there again someday. There’s something kind of magical about that, don’t you think?”
“It’d be nice if every place came with that kind of guarantee.” He leaned over to draw an X between them with the piece of gravel, then rubbed it out with the heel of his hand and replaced it with a crooked star.
“Does that mean we’re in the exact center of New York?” she asked, nodding at it, and he felt momentarily unsteady beneath her gaze.
“I think,” he said quietly, “that we’re in the exact center of the whole world.”
She held out a flattened palm, and it took a moment for him to realize that she was asking for the rock, not his hand. He passed it over, and she drew a circle around the edges of the star, then scratched the words Point Zero along the outside.
The Geography of You and Me Page 4