Department of Lost and Found

by Allison Winn Scotch

  “Natalie. You look great! Welcome back.” He offered a knowing and not entirely welcoming smile. More like one that a cunning boar might offer its next meal.

  “Thanks. Now get out of my office.”

  “No niceties? Come on, Nat. At least a big hello for your friend Kyle. Not even a thank-you for bailing you out of the sea of collapsing cocktail tables at the Christmas party?” He swung his shiny Pradas back to the floor.

  “Hello, Kyle.” I sighed. “And thank you. Now will you please get out of my office? I’d like to get started on the stem cell campaign, and I have phone calls to make.”

  He nodded and placed his chin in his hands. “I see. I see. Well, the thing is, I’m not sure that this is your office anymore. While you were gone, the senator bumped me up a notch.”

  “Don’t overinflate yourself,” I said. “My name has been on that door for over two years now.”

  “Ah yes. But check to see if it’s there now.” He raised his eyebrows.

  I stood up and walked to the door, swinging it toward me until I saw that, indeed, the gold “Natalie Miller” nameplate was no longer stuck to the outside.

  “You’re a fucking asshole,” I muttered underneath my breath.

  “Take it up with the senator,” he said, smiling. “She’ll be back in town next week. Until then, welcome to my cube. You know the one: toward the back by the water fountain? I’m pretty sure that you’ve passed it once or twice.”

  “Don’t get too comfortable,” I retorted, picking up my bag and slamming the door on my way out.

  “IT’S A LONG shot, you realize that, right?”

  I was on the phone with Senator McIntyre’s senior aide, Maureen Goodman. She had seven years on me and on paper, at least, we couldn’t have been more different—she was a lesbian from Oregon—but I knew that both she and Senator McIntyre were vigilantly pushing for stem cell reform.

  “I do realize that. But sometimes long shots bring in the best returns, right?”

  I pushed my pointer finger into my left ear to try to block out the incessant noise that hummed in the background. It had been two and a half weeks since I’d been back on the job, and I was still stuck in Kyle’s cubicle.

  “Okay, if we’re going to go after this, we’re going to have to go after it hard,” Maureen said now. “Make sure the senator is onboard, and then we’ll start lining up names.”

  “She’s already onboard. She wants this stem cell push done, and she wants it as much as anything this term,” I said. “Let’s fire up the big guns.” I paused. “Look, Maureen, I’m willing to take a gamble and play the odds here,” I said, as my voice got lodged in my throat. “I know that the president and his advisers are threatening to veto it. But let’s at least make him turn it down, push away the hope for the people who could use it most. Let’s put that on his lap, and rest easy knowing that we could have made a difference.”

  “Wow, spoken like someone who actually gives a shit,” Maureen said, as we began hashing through which senators were on our side and which needed a bit more persuading. We narrowed it down to eight critical players, and we each took four.

  “You’re sure that Senator Dupris is willing to go to bat for this?” she asked one last time, just before we hung up. “It could end up as egg on her face.”

  “I’m sure,” I said, and promised to e-mail her with my progress in the next few weeks. We had three months to draw out a majority. I didn’t see how we could lose. And though I was indeed sure that the senator wanted to pull out the stops in pushing forward this initiative, I wanted to be doubly sure.

  “Senator, I’m sorry to bother,” I said, as I knocked on her door, which was already slightly ajar.

  She looked up from an enormous stack of papers and told me to come in. On most days, even without the help of her on-call stylist and hairdresser, you’d call her beautiful. Once when we were stuck together on a long plane trip back from Europe, she confided that when she first started out, her looks got in the way. No one took her seriously, so she had to work twice as hard. Let that be a lesson, she said, Natalie. If they think you’re dumb, you bust your ass and then when you knock them out, they have no idea where the punch came from in the first place.

  Today, she looked worn, with dark circles receding into her pallid skin, a tiny fly behind her gigantic desk.

  “I’m sorry to bother you, Senator.” I took a step into her office. “But I just got off the phone with Maureen Goodman, Senator McIntyre’s aide. She and I are prepared to give a full push to getting a stem cell research bill onto the floor, and I just wanted to triple-check that you were onboard. That you’d helm it up.”

  “I will.” She smiled. “I’d love nothing better than serving that bill to the president on a silver platter.”

  “Fair enough,” I said. “Consider it served.”

  “I CAN’T NOT go,” Jake said. “And it’s only for five days. Not even a week.”

  I didn’t answer him. I sat back on the couch, inhaled my joint, and reached for the orange juice on the coffee table. To Jake’s credit, he’d been kind enough to pick up the OJ. Fresh squeezed.

  “Natalie, I know that I said that I was back for good. And I mean it. But come on, every job requires some travel, and I have to go to L.A. This is a huge opportunity for us, playing on Leno.”

  I exhaled slowly, shooing the smoke away from Manny. I couldn’t imagine that getting my dog stoned was what the ASPCA had in mind for his future when I adopted him.

  “Nat, you won’t even know that I’m gone. You’re back at work. You’re looking great, feeling even better. You’re totally capable now.”

  “So you touched down just to be my nurse’s aide? My own personal Florence Nightingale?” I sucked on my joint.

  He sighed and rose from the dining table to come sit beside me. “No, I came back because I love you and didn’t want to be without you. And a few days in L.A. and a short stint in Tokyo doesn’t change that.”

  He was right. I knew that he was right. He was a freaking almost–rock star for God’s sake. I could hardly expect him to stay at my beck and call when his future came clamoring. I stubbed out my joint and went over to the fridge. He was still waiting for an answer. Well, not an answer, really; he was obviously going to do Leno. A girlfriend who had nearly kicked breast cancer wasn’t reason enough not to. And I say that without so much as a hint of sarcasm. It wasn’t.

  “Fine. Go.” And I reached for a chicken breast.

  “It’s just for five days, Nat. Five days. And then I’ll be back. Nothing’s going to change.”

  “Nothing ever does,” I said, as I walked into the bedroom with Manny to eat my dinner in better company.

  SEVENTEEN

  I realize now that I’ve marked my time since my diagnosis by my chemo rounds. If I were cancer-free, maybe I’d mark it by the seasons or by my work milestones. I imagine that’s what normal people do. If I were normal, I’d say that I was diagnosed back in September, that Jake came back in January, or that I shaved my head in late November. But instead, I say that Jake came back after my fourth round, and I cut off my hair on the cusp of my third. That’s what it’s like to live with cancer—it’s hard to remove it from your life, even when you’re talking about something else entirely.

  So when I say that Sally’s wedding invitation arrived just on the tail end of my sixth round, know that I’m not trying to overshadow her big day with my big disease. That’s simply how things work now. Time, just like everything else in my world, revolves around my cancer.

  It was fortuitous, I guess, that her wedding was ten weeks away. “I’m sending them early,” she said. “That’s the etiquette for a destination wedding. I wrote a story on it.” If you’re doing the math, this means that I’ll be chemo-free by then, assuming things all go as planned. I was running my fingers over the calligraphy on the envelope, “Ms. Natalie Colleen Miller and Mr. Jake Spencer Martin,” when the phone rang. I was so distracted by the invitation, that I didn’t even bother to
look at the Caller ID.

  “Natalie? It’s Susanna Taylor…” She paused. “The councilman’s wife.”

  Crap, I thought, and dropped the invite on the mounting mail pile on my kitchen table.

  “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to call out of the blue, but I spoke with one of your friends today, Sally Fisher. She asked me to call you again.”

  “You spoke with Sally? About what?” I stopped filtering through the mail long enough to register a look of confusion.

  “Oh, she interviewed me for a story she’s working on. We’d spoken a year or so ago and gotten on well, so she called me up again for something else. Anyway, I’m not normally this stalkerish, but Sally really thought that we might click.” She laughed. “And she told me that you’re not having the best go of it, so I thought you might be interested in joining the group for a get-together in two weeks. We’re meeting for brunch to celebrate the clean bill of health that one of our members, Olivia, just got. You’d like her. She’s head of marketing at ESPN. Has balls made of steel.” I heard her smile.

  Goddamn it, I thought and felt my jaw clench up. This is so my mother. When did Sally become my mother? I inhaled deeply and unintentionally reached up to touch my necklace, as if the gold clover would grant me kindness, understanding, more compassion. I unwittingly touched it so often these days that Sally had deemed it the “portent of good karma.” And then she made an om and pretended she was having some sort of spiritual awakening like all the celebrities claim they have during hatha yoga.

  “Um, well, honestly, Susanna,” I answered, as I tugged off my shoes and massaged the balls of my feet. “The next few weeks are a little crazy for me. You know how it goes—new term and all.”

  “I do, I do.” I heard her thinking. “The thing is, Natalie, it’s just brunch. If you hate us and want to flee down the street shrieking at the top of your lungs when we’re done, you’re welcome to. Honestly, it’s just brunch.”

  I sighed. This woman should have run instead of her husband: She clearly wouldn’t take no for an answer. “Fine,” I said. “Just brunch. But other than pancakes, I can’t promise that I’ll get much out of it.” At least she was forewarned.

  We hung up, and I grabbed Manny’s leash to head out for his evening walk. For February, it wasn’t bad out. Crisp but not biting in the way that New York in February can be, when the wind whips through the buildings and leaves your cheeks burned with an afterglow. It was already dark, too late for the park, so Manny and I just wove our way through the streets, him lunging for discarded bagels on the sidewalk, me scolding him but only halfheartedly so.

  I heard my name being shouted down the street, and Manny took off like a bolt toward it.

  With a deep green scarf wrapped around his neck, tucked safely into his herringbone overcoat, Zach looked like he’d stepped straight out of a GQ shoot. And I mean that in the most delicious of ways.

  “Natalie.” He waved, as we drew closer. “Hey! I thought that was you. I’d recognize this guy anywhere.” He leaned over and nuzzled Manny’s nose. “How have you been?”

  “Fine. Good, even. Only two rounds of chemo left. Hard to believe. Oh, and I’ve scheduled my nipple surgery for next week.” I managed a half-grin. “Which is a good thing because I’m a little wary of these globes that I’ve been carrying around. Yahoo. Nipples here I come.” It came out as unenthusiastically as I meant it.

  Zach smiled. “No, I meant how have you been otherwise? Dr. Chin has kept me posted on your progress, so I know how well that’s going. I always knew it would.”

  He did, I thought. That was right. “Oh, I’m doing well. You know, back at work, same old, same old.” I didn’t know if he knew about Jake, and I hardly wanted to bring it up. So instead, I beat him to the punch.

  “How’s Lila?”

  “She’s fine.” He pressed his lips together into a thin smile, then waved me off. “I tell you what. In honor of your remarkable progress and overwhelming ability to kick cancer’s ass, let’s go to dinner.”

  I paused and looked down at Manny.

  “Unless you have other plans,” he added.

  “Uh, no. Not really. But I can’t take Manny into a restaurant. The pesky health department and all of that.”

  “Fair enough. So how about we order? Whatever you can stomach.”

  The electronic clock that pulsed on top of the bank on Seventy-second Street declared that the night was still peaking, just 7:05, so I figured why the hell not? Jake was in L.A., and I wasn’t planning to work that night anyway. And besides, it was Zach. Really, though I didn’t admit it to myself, that was selling point enough.

  WE SETTLED ON pizza, and after two slices (and a joint—I always carried one on me), a glass of merlot, and a heated game of him versus me versus the real contestants on Jeopardy!, I could barely remember why I was mad at him in the first place.

  Manny was begging from the bottom of Zach’s leather couch, so I tossed him a crust and told him to scram.

  “With that hair, you could practically be a supermodel,” Zach said, reaching out to touch the long, winding strands.

  “Yeah,” I snorted. “As if.” But he looked at me like he meant it, so I ran my fingers through the tips of my wig and wondered if it could be true. He stared at me a second too long, and I felt myself blush.

  “Are you looking forward to the wedding? It should be fun, right?”

  “You’re going?” I asked. This Sally had failed to mention.

  “Not sure yet.” Then he went quiet. “Lila asked me to come along, but…”

  “Wow. I didn’t realize.” I started twirling the ends of my hair.

  “Didn’t realize what? There’s nothing to realize.” He got up to clear our plates.

  “Well, I mean, it seems like there’s something to realize if you’re flying to Puerto Rico to attend weddings with her.” It came out colder than I intended.

  “That’s where the ‘but’ comes in.” He sighed and walked back to me from the kitchen. “I didn’t mean for it to get this far.”

  “So it’s far? In that case, should I even be here?” I rose to leave, but he grabbed my hand and dragged me back onto the couch.

  “It’s not far. At least not to me. But that’s part of the problem. Anyway, it seems to me that you have some entanglements of your own.” My cheeks flushed like they’d been bitten by fire ants. I looked at my cuticles and started to pick them. “Why didn’t you mention him?”

  I shrugged. “Dunno.”

  “I thought that you weren’t available. I thought that’s what you said.”

  “I’m not. And I did.” I sighed. “I don’t know. Jake came back, and I’m lonely, and I loved him, and he promised to stay with me, which is all I ever wanted from him when we dated before, and so I just sort of agreed to it.” I paused. “But we haven’t been together together yet, so really, I mean it. I just don’t feel available.”

  “So he gets a second chance but Lila shouldn’t?”

  I stared out his picture window. “It’s complicated.”

  “It shouldn’t be.”

  “This coming from the son of two shrinks who is presently hanging out with an ex-girlfriend and contemplating entangling himself even further though he suspects that he doesn’t even like her? Thanks for your advice, but I’ll pass.” I got up and walked to the window, staring out at the skyline of the city.

  “Where is he tonight?”

  “In L.A. Playing Leno. They couldn’t postpone. Then he’s going to Tokyo for a few days since he’s already on the West Coast. Shorter flight.” I lowered my eyes so he couldn’t see that I felt the sting of Jake’s betrayal.

  “But he wants to stick around?” He looked at me. “Is that what you want?”

  I picked some dirt from under my thumbnail and raised my shoulders. “I don’t know. Sometimes.”

  He sighed and got up to pour himself another glass of wine.

  “You know, I didn’t quite tell you the whole story with Natasha, my med school gir
lfriend. After I’d accepted my residency in New York, she changed her mind. Decided that she couldn’t live without me, even though I’d finally figured out how to live without her. We didn’t get much time off, but whatever she had, she spent flying back and forth. Each visit, she’d whittle her way back in until after a while, I couldn’t believe that I’d ever let her go.” He took a sip from his glass and let it linger.

  “This went on for six months: We were talking about moving to be with each other, planning our future, and eventually, I made my way to the diamond guy my brother recommended. I’d already bought the ring when she called me to tell me that she couldn’t do it anymore. That she just needed to confirm that she definitely couldn’t live without me, and it turned out that once again, she realized that she could.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said softly.

  “Don’t be.” He waved his free hand. “Even the second time around, I realized that she was right. But my point here is that sometimes people come back into our lives because it’s what they think is good for them. And it has absolutely nothing to do with what’s good for you.”

  Dear Diary,

  It’s been a strange few days. To say the least. Jake called yesterday before he took off for Japan, and by all accounts, his stint on Leno was a tremendous success. We didn’t talk about what that meant—what his record company did to promote bands who were considered “tremendous successes”—but I think that we both pretty much knew what it involved. The thing about Jake is that it’s not that he makes promises that he has no intention of keeping, it’s that he makes promises that get in the way of his other plans.

  When he asked what I thought of the show, I told him that they were amazing. And they were. They played their new song, “Miles from Her,” and even Leno came out and said that after this performance, he was buying the CD. What I didn’t tell him was that I watched the show at Zach’s. I know, I know. Who am I to call out Jake on his broken promises when I’m spending lingering evenings with my gynecologist who may or may not be dating one of my best friends? But I almost couldn’t help it. No, that makes me unaccountable, so let me rephrase because Janice and I have been working on that: my taking accountability. Certainly, I could have helped it. Certainly, at any point in the evening, I could have gotten up, thanked him for the pizza and the company, and walked Manny the five blocks home. But what I mean by this, by the fact that I felt helpless, is that for the first time in a long while, I felt like I belonged in my own skin. I didn’t worry about the pallor of my cheeks or the bulging shape of my new breasts that resemble flotation devices on a747. In fact, I barely thought about them at all.