“Well…,” she began with a half smile. “I did kind of used to… despise the girl.”
“Ahhh,” Josh exclaimed with a satisfied grin. He ran his finger down the center of Heather’s nose, inducing a full -body tingle the size of Canada. “A little honesty. That’s more like it.” He leaned toward her. “Okay, Heather,” he said with the mock seriousness of a Freudian psychotherapist. “This mystery girl. Let’s discuss your hatred of this mystery girl. I think it would be very good for you.”
WHAT TO SAY ABOUT THIS MORNING… How to do it justice…
* * *
Body Tingle
* * *
Back in Ed’s skating days, whenever he would take a massive fall, he used to leap right back up to his feet, grin from ear to ear, and scream out a hearty howl to the skies. As he would often explain it, he was announcing his total invincibility to the cruel and powerful gods of extreme sports. He didn’t just want the gods to hear him, he wanted anyone in his general vicinity to listen. He wanted the world to be clear on his personal philosophy. Shred’s Golden Rule: No setback was ever a setback. Life was something to be enjoyed and devoured at all times.
Particularly after his accident, people had always seemed awed by his ability to find joy in life no matter what the circumstances. They envied his ballsy nonchalance—his laughter in the face of near death, his humor in the face of self-pity and depression. He was a regular rolling bundle of joy. A French girl named Josephine had once told him he had joie de vivre, whatever the hell that meant. He was Shred—the eternal optimist.
But this morning, with his arm wrapped around the bare waist of a sleeping Gaia Moore, her tangled hair pressed against his cheek, her smooth shoulder peeking out from the rumpled purple sheets of his bed, Ed had begun to come to terms with something. Something he hadn’t even quite known or recognized until now. Something he probably would have denied for years, if not for the rest of his life, had this morning never existed. And that something was this: His eternal optimism…
It had always sort of been work.
In fact, sometimes it had almost felt like his job. Maintaining that smile, lusting for life, howling joyously at the gods of misfortune. Staying happy. At times it had been exhausting. Because it really wasn’t altogether true. That’s not to say there wasn’t a great deal of truth to it. Ed did have a kind of lust for life. He did find the joy and the humor in his existence at all times. But more of the time than he would have cared to admit, he was also kind of adding a little. Throwing in a joke when in truth he was in a crappy mood. Howling when he might have felt more like being silent or nursing his wounds.
In reality, he probably wasn’t all that different from the people who supposedly envied him so much. He, just like them, had always experienced the slightest, almost imperceptible sensation of something missing in his life. There was always some kind of void he was trying to fill, something good old Shred might have been trying to cover over.
Until this morning.
The combination of the last perfect night and this glorious morning had clued Ed in to the fact that there was an entirely other kind of happiness. The kind he was experiencing at this moment. A happiness that did not require any kind of work whatsoever. One that did not require that he hide behind a joke or a daredevil stunt or a philosophy. There had simply been no way of understanding the void in his life until he knew the feeling of having that void completely filled. This morning marked the first time Ed had understood what it felt like to truly want nothing more.
He moved his head over Gaia’s just to see her face—just to witness that golden, crisp detail that only morning sunlight seemed able to produce. If any part of their night together had been a dream or an illusion, the sun would surely expose it The sun would set him straight.
But the sun confirmed that it was still Gaia resting against his body, sound asleep. Its glittering raysrevealed every exquisite angle of her face. Every fleck of gold, bronze, and wheat hidden in her hair. The infant-like curves of her slightly too-small ears. The flush of light freckles that ran down from the bottom of her neck to the middle of her back. She wasn’t a dream or a panic-induced hallucination. Not a fantasy or some kind of deranged wish fulfillment. It was the real Gaia. Unquestionably real. Their night together had been real. Everything they’d done together… real. He would be continuously replaying the night in his head for at least the next forty-eight hours.
In fact, watching the peaceful expression on her glowing face, Ed found her to look as real as he had ever seen her. So comfortably vulnerable. Goddesslike, yes. Always. But utterly and completely human.
And so, of course, the only way to honor such a goddess… was to make her pancakes.
“Gaia,” he whispered, letting his lips graze her ear.
“Mm,” she grunted sleepily, smiling out of the corner of her mouth. She turned her head slightly toward Ed’s, keeping her eyes closed, letting her lips touch lightly against his. Maybe he didn’t have to do pancakes just yet….
“Are you hungry?” he asked.
“Mm,” she croaked happily, living somewhere between sleep and waking. “Pancakes…”
Pancakes. Of course she wanted pancakes. She wanted pancakes and he wanted pancakes. He should have just proposed to her then and there. Instead he kissed her on the cheek and on the shoulder and pulled himself carefully from the bed.
“I’ll be back in fifteen minutes” he whispered.
“Nooo,” she groaned. “Don’t go.”
“I’m getting the pancakes,” he said, pulling on a T-shirt and reaching for a pair of jeans.
“Hmmm… then you’d better go,” she agreed. “But come back soon.”
“Fifteen minutes,” he said with a laugh. He grabbed one of his crutches and leaned down to her in the bed. “I’ll be right back.” One more kiss, and he started for the door.
“Okay,” she mumbled sleepily, turning back toward the window and twisting herself into a ball under the sheets. “I love you.”
Ed froze like he’d just been zapped by an alien space ray in a C-grade Japanese sci-fi movie. He turned around and took two giant strides back toward the bed. She’d sort of said it to him last night. And it wasn’t that he didn’t know it. They wouldn’t have done what they did last night if she didn’t love him. But she’d never really said it said it. Not like that. Not so sweetly and easily and simply. “What did you say?” he whispered.
Asleep. She was fast asleep again. But he’d heard it. He knew he’d heard it.
“Make it ten minutes,” he said, even though she was asleep. “I’ll be back in ten minutes.”
SOMEONE ELSE’S LIFE. THAT WAS always how Gaia had experienced happy moments. She’d always felt like she was being granted a glimpse of some other life for a few hours, like she was in one of those ridiculous “switch” movies where two people exchanged bodies for as long as it took to learn a “valuable lesson.” One of those ultracheesy eighties flicks where, due to some mysterious act of magic, she had temporarily awoken to find herself swathed in royal princess robes in some strange, faraway castle, while the real princess (who just happened to look exactly like Gaia) would be waking up in a tattered black sweatshirt and a pair of army pants in some dusty beer-stained corner of the Port Authority bus station. Which is exactly where Gaia would have been, were it not for Ed Fargo.
* * *
Shiny Happy Couple
* * *
That was generally how happiness presented itself to Gaia. Like a very temporary magic spell. Like a beautiful illusion that could only be trusted for so long. As if the clock would strike twelve at any second and Gaia would wake up back in her own body again. Back in her dusty vintage clothes, trying to hitch a ride to Pittsburgh or something, while the true princess returned to her beautiful castle with her prince, having learned some valuable lesson, like how to flip a skinhead on his ass or how to open a can of tuna fish.
And that brief glimpse of someone else’s life would be all Gaia had to sustain her
for months as she traveled through her actual miserable life. A rather depressing take, she was well aware.
Only this morning was disconcertingly different. Gaia had finally given in to the blinding sunshine pouring through Ed’s window and allowed herself to wake completely. But her first truly conscious moment was a strange and incredible thing. She was unmistakably blissful, but she was also unmistakably… herself.
She didn’t feel as though she was inhabiting someone else’s skin. She didn’t feel as though the allotted time on her happiness clock had just started counting down. She got to fall in love with her best friend, spend the perfect night with him, wake up to a perfect morning of romantic banter and pancakes. All those things were happening, but they weren’t happening to “that girl”—that other person over there who was entitled to moments like these. They were happening to her, the actual Gaia Moore. And that was deeply, deeply bizarre.
She’d spent years training herself to lie still and let the pain wash over her. But for a moment like this one, she’d have to think back to when she was eleven or twelve years old. That was the last time she could remember lying still just to bathe in her own happiness. That was the last time she could remember a kind of happiness that didn’t make her nervous, that didn’t feel fleeting and precarious and moments from destruction.
There would be no disappearing glass slippers and no dress to return by midnight. Midnight had long since passed, and Gaia was still here. Breathing regularly. Joyful and still and grounded.
She stretched herself out in Ed’s bed, extending each of her limbs to its limit, just as she would have at age twelve. She rolled her face into Ed’s pillow, where there was still the slightest scent of his shampoo, and perhaps a touch of his soap, and something else. The faint but intoxicating sweet smell of his sweat. Or was it their sweat? The scent brought back a series of vivid physical memories from their early morning together, and Gaia suddenly found herself digging her head deep under the pillow with a certain gleeful embarrassment.
She knew there was nothing to be embarrassed about, but still, she couldn’t imagine the shade of red her face must be under that pillow. Thank God, she was at least alone for this particular moment.
Sex. That was what was making her blush. Yet another thing she had come to believe was meant only for “that girl.” That “normal young adult girl” over there with more than two pairs of shoes and a name that people could pronounce on sight. Somebody’s prom date. The kind of girl who was entitled to major life-altering events that didn’t revolve around superhuman genetics and national security.
But she was apparently very wrong about that as well. Because, as it turned out, she had something that no “normal young adult girl” had. Ed Fargo. And when the moment had finally come with Ed in the blue light of the very early morning, he had been just…
He’d known exactly what…
The blushing was out of control again. She could feel the heat emanating from her face, toasting Ed’s pillow. Apparently she was too embarrassed to even finish certain sentences in her own head.
She could only go as far as to think of it this way: Whatever “fears” she might have had about her first sexual experience, Ed had put them all to rest. His sensitivity and his tenderness had made her feel so… safe. Was safe the right word? It was one of them. He’d made her feel much more than safe. All she wanted now was for him to get back to that room as soon as possible.
She finally removed the pillow from her face and reached down to the bottom of the bed, sifting through the tangled purple sheets until she located her T-shirt and her crumpled-up pants. She put them on under the sheet, and then she rolled out of bed, walking back around to the sun-drenched window to look for signs of his return. She shoved the window open as far as it would go and leaned her face out into the sun, letting in the chorus of New York morning sounds.
Birds were chirping from the sidewalk’s trees, blending perfectly with the distant sound of a hip-hop beat pounding through loudspeakers from blocks away. Maybe a street fair? She leaned her head a bit farther out the window, where the smell of crepes, sausage sandwiches, grilled corn on the cob, and fried dough combined, wafting gloriously, almost visibly through the streets and over the stoops of the old New York brownstones. The perfect moments seemed to be coming in droves. Maybe she and Ed could take a walk through the fair after breakfast?
Wait. Had she really just suggested that to herself? This next-morning-bliss thing was getting weirder by the second. She’d just comfortably placed herself in yet another of those idyllic relationship scenarios from the world of the Shiny Happy People, where the only thing more utopian than the combination of sex followed by morning brunch was the combination of sex, followed by morning brunch, followed by a leisurely walk through a street fair while holding hands.
Gaia had witnessed this Shiny Happy Couple phenomenon several times at street fairs while she’d been waiting in line for chocolate crepes. The man was always wearing roomy shorts and a sweater regardless of the weather. The woman always in low-hanging pants and a formfitting shirt regardless of the weather. Both with designer sunglasses, both with slightly mussed-up postcoital hair. Both holding hands loosely and always walking slower than everybody else, as if they no longer needed to get anywhere now that they’d found each other.
When Gaia had first come to the city, this kind of brazen display of togetherness had made her ill. It had seemed so self-congratulatory. So in your face. But now here she was, picturing herself and Ed holding hands as they meandered through the street fair, perusing cheap imitation South American sundresses and tables covered with refrigerator magnets, totally unaware of any people other than each other. Did she have no shame? Pretty soon she’d be picturing them searching for loft apartments in TriBeCa and the perfect golden retriever.
Apparently being in love had the hypnotic effect of turning you into one of “them.” One of those “other people” that Gaia had spent the last five years of her life simultaneously despising and envying. It was more than a little freaky. But Gaia didn’t mind so much. Especially not this morning. As long as Ed would turn into one of “them” with her, she’d be happy. They could turn into artsy New York intellectuals, or faux punk runaways, or even yuppies in search of the perfect cappuccino. Gaia didn’t really care. As long as Ed was with her, she’d be willing to try just about any future.
As if on cue, Ed appeared at the end of the block, lit up by the glaring sun as he smoothly carried himself home on his crutches with a shopping bag dangling from his wrist. Should she call down to him? Would that just be too Romeo and Juliet/West Side Story? No, she was through worrying about what role she was playing or where the real Gaia fit into this situation. She wasn’t a sixteenth-century naïf and she wasn’t a Latina by any stretch of the imagination, nor was her singing voice much to speak of. No, she, with her rumpled-up clothes and desperate need for pancakes and sausage sandwiches, was most definitely Gaia. And he, with his rumpled-up hair and bold, confident strides despite his crutches, was quite specifically none other than Ed.
“Fargo,” she called down to him. But the combination of street sounds and distance left him unable to hear her.
He continued his fast-paced leaps down the block, totally unaware that he’d nearly jabbed the man walking behind him with his crutches. The man flashed Ed a dirty look, shoving his hands stiffly into the pockets of his black suede jacket. A classic frustrated response to the oblivious Ed Fargo. “Ed,” she called down again. But he still couldn’t hear her.
And when the man behind him pulled the gun from his coat pocket and aimed it directly at the back of Ed’s head, Ed still couldn’t hear her screams. There hadn’t even been a split second to warn him.
ED WOULD NEVER KNOW WHICH THING he’d heard first: the sound of Gaia’s desperate voice screeching his name or the deafening gunshot in his ear. But something made him turn around to see the barrel of the gun, just centimeters from his eye line, as it went off.
* * *
Private Frequency
* * *
A din of high-pitched screams erupted from various corners of the street as the man repeatedly fired his gun. But all the screams seemed to echo from so far away. No one rushed toward him to help, shot after shot. No one came near the man in the black coat with the gun in his hand and the robotic sneer on his face.
Ed’s crutches gave out under him as his legs buckled and twisted him off balance. He heard himself scream, “No!” as his right crutch scraped across the asphalt, sweeping the man’s legs out from under him as they both collapsed to the ground.
There had been no time for thoughts. No time for his brain to tell his limbs to move. Just chaos. That was all Ed’s brain could register. Loud, horrible sounds in his ear. Only the slightest comprehension of being shot—of being suddenly murdered in broad daylight, for no reason. His field of vision was flipped on its side as his head collided with the sharp sidewalk, only adding to his confusion. In front of him were the tangled arms of his assailant and the thick black handle of the gun. Behind him was a sudden stomping sound coming from a distance like a mild earthquake, vibrating throughout his entire head as his ear stayed painfully pressed against the rugged gray street.
That’s the gun, he registered semiconsciously, staring at this oddly static image of the oversized smoking weapon that had shot him. He couldn’t see his blood anywhere. He still couldn’t feel where he’d been hit, but he’d know that soon enough. For now, only one thing mattered. Still alive, Ed assured himself, repeating the fact again and again in his head as he tried to breathe. You’re not dead yet. Not dead yet.
But a moment more and he realized how many precious seconds he’d wasted already. It had taken that long for his brain to catch up with him. The gun. Grab the gun, Ed, or you’re dead for sure.
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