“I’m over it. I promise. It was a little episode and it’s done.”
“If you mean it, then you’re forgiven. You know, when you weren’t being a psycho, you were kind of fun to be with.”
“Thanks. That’s the other reason I called. I wanted to see if I could make it up to you by taking you to dinner tomorrow night.”
“It’s gonna have to be someplace fabulous.”
“I know a few of those.”
She chuckled. “I guess you would. Where and when?”
The thought came to mind that pursuing a friendship with Kate was disingenuous; that I was only doing it to get her to introduce me to Melissa, regardless of what I was saying here. Certainly, that was part of it. I would have felt guilty about it if not for the fact that I had another need that was nearly as pressing: I really wanted a friend. Other than Paul, who saddened me, all the people I hung out with in this world were overgrown children, work hard/play hard types who were no more interested in what was going on in my heart than they were in a quiet evening at home. Though I’d managed to freak her out, I got the sense from Kate that she wasn’t the same as these people. She might have liked loud bars, but she was more interested in talking there than drinking. I really wanted someone I could talk to.
We met at a stylish New American place. Kate wanted fabulous and this was the most fabulous place I knew. The chef was a regular guest on the Food Network, and his creations spawned imitators all over the country.
Kate was twenty minutes late, which I guessed had more to do with our drinks date than with a holdup at the office. I stood to greet her as she walked toward me. She was wearing a sleeveless knee-length black dress that made her look both formidable and sexy.
“Nice choice of restaurant,” she said as she sat down. “I’ve been meaning to come here. Who did you have to pay off to get a table on a day’s notice?”
“Some of us just know the right strings to pull,” I said smugly. “Actually, the owner is a client of the firm.”
“I should have guessed that.”
The waiter came by with menus and a wine list. I was still a little repelled by the notion of drinking, but a fine wine in this setting seemed about as far away from the Shamrock as possible. I chose a Jordan Cabernet, and we made small talk while we decided what to eat. As our appetizers came, Kate shifted into another mode.
“Do you ever think about the fact that with every day that passes you become more of the person you will always be?”
This was quite a switch from talk about new movies. It took me a second to adjust. “What does that mean to you?”
“I guess that would depend on the day. On some of them, I feel pretty satisfied. On most, though, I think about all the things that I planned to do with my life that I know now I’ll never do.”
“Kate, you’re in your early thirties. Unless you have a terminal disease, you have plenty of time to do everything you ever wanted to do.”
“That’s not true, though. Not really, anyway. I mean, when I was a teenager, I had such huge dreams. I was going to act. I was going to invent something. I was going to play professional basketball. But as time passes, I realize that those dreams are not only gone, but they’re essentially unattainable.”
“Are you saying you’re unhappy with your life?”
“No, I’m not saying that. That’s the thing. I like my life. I like that I’m fast-tracking through my career and that I live in a great city and do lots of great things. But, you know, you make all these tradeoffs along the way, and every now and then I feel like I’ve let too many things go.”
I nodded slowly. “Trust me, I know what you mean.”
“Do you? I mean, you sort of got me thinking this way with that stuff about Melissa.”
“I promised I wouldn’t mention her name.”
“I know you did, and you’re being a very good boy about it. But I started to think about all the stuff we used to do together. We really were great friends, and yet it was the most natural thing in the world to just let it slip away. Our lives weren’t meant to stay in synch with one another. But the person I was back then didn’t expect to be the person I’ve become. Like my friendship with Melissa, I let a lot of ambitions dissipate naturally over the years.”
“At some point you have to choose a path.”
“Of course you do, and like I said, my path is very nicely paved, but sometimes I wish I could go off-road for a while.”
I took a sip of my wine and watched Kate. The Kate I knew was never this contemplative in front of me – even in the wake of the numerous breakups she’d endured while Melissa and I were together.
“Tell me one of your dreams from when you were a teenager.”
She laughed softly and lowered her eyes. “I wanted to be an astronaut.”
“Wow, really?”
She wrinkled her nose. “I really did. I would watch those transmissions from the space shuttle and imagine myself up there performing experiments, launching satellites, walking out into the blackness to make some essential repair. It seemed unbelievably appealing to me.”
“Why didn’t you do it?”
She tossed her hands out to the side and then looked down at her meal. “Reality just took over for me. I knew I had the talent to be a good lawyer and the odds of making it seemed to be a whole lot better. I mean, how many people ever get to go into space?”
“It would’ve been fun to try, though.”
“Yeah, I suppose. But that’s what I was talking about before. That’s something that I really wanted and now it’s something that I’ll never be. It doesn’t make my life emptier because of it, but one of the things that defines me is not an astronaut.”
I took some time to ponder this. How had I been defined by the chances that passed me by? Was Melissa one of those chances? I refused to believe so.
“A lot of guys would have laughed or made a joke about that,” Kate said.
“About the astronaut thing?”
“Yeah, that.”
“No, I think it’s a great dream. I was just at the Air and Space Museum yesterday.”
“I love that place.”
“Me, too. We should go sometime.”
Kate nodded slowly. “I’d like that.”
We changed courses and the conversation changed course. We talked some more about work and then I remembered that Kate was a huge women’s basketball fan. Though I didn’t know nearly as much about the Washington Mystics as I did about the other local teams, I could keep up my end of the conversation and let Kate wax effusive. I suppose she would have given me equal consideration if I wanted to talk about the O’s, but I decided not to find out.
We finished the bottle of wine and then had an after-dinner port and then another. I knew there was no truth to the notion that finer liquor gave you a more refined buzz, but I didn’t feel drunk at all. Just comfortable. For really the first time since I’d arrived in this world, I felt at ease.
I didn’t even notice that the restaurant had emptied out. Eventually, we were the only diners still seated, and from the expressions of the waitstaff, we weren’t nearly as welcome as we had been a few hours earlier. I asked the waiter for our check.
“We can split this if you’d like,” Kate said when I got the bill.
“No chance. This was an apology dinner, remember?”
Kate smiled. “Actually, I forgot.”
That was good to hear. “My treat.”
I walked her back to her car, a red Lexus. The temperature had dropped and Kate was probably a little chilly without sleeves. I thought about giving her my suit jacket to wear and then decided against it. When we got to the car, she turned to face me.
“This was really nice,” she said.
“It was. Thank you.”
“Turns out you haven’t turned into a craven maniac.”
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sp; “Or I’m just really good at hiding it.”
She laughed and dropped her gaze. “Maybe that.” She looked up at me and our eyes locked. It was a remarkably intimate act. “Want to come back for a nightcap?”
The fact is I really wanted to. At that moment, Kate was the realest thing in this world and I was desperate for something real. She moved a little closer to me and I felt myself drawn to her.
All at once, I pulled back. It probably looked hilarious, though Kate wasn’t laughing.
“Is something wrong?” she said.
“I can’t do this. I’m not ready.”
“I thought we had a good time tonight.”
“We did. A great time. You have no idea how much I appreciate it.”
“But…”
“There’s someone else.”
Her eyes dropped. “Oh.”
I felt the need to explain. “We’re not together now, but I’m not ready to start something, and I don’t think things would be casual between you and me.”
Kate chuckled sadly. “Just once I want to find a man at the right time.”
I took her hand, careful not to suggest too much with the gesture. “If things were different, I would beg you to be with me. But I need to work this thing out, whichever way it goes.”
She squeezed my hand. “Then do it.”
“I’m trying. I can’t begin to tell you how glad I am that you’re back in my life, though.” I grinned at her. “You are back in my life, right?”
She squeezed my hand again and then kissed it. “I’ll see if I can make room for you.”
I reached across and kissed her on the cheek. Even this simple contact made me long for what I’d had with Melissa. My body ached for her touch. For her unimaginably soft skin. For the gentle sighs she breathed when we exchanged tender gestures.
Kate squeezed my hand one more time, then got into her car and drove off. I stood in the parking lot until she was gone. This night had been both fulfilling and disquieting. It was great to have Kate as a friend. Maybe she would even lead me in some way back to Melissa.
However, the thought of what might have happened between us made me miss Melissa more than ever.
Chapter 19
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Melissa bowed as the audience gave her a standing ovation for yet another brilliant performance. I jumped from my aisle seat and clapped until my hands ached. I never grew tired of hearing her play.
Melissa’s beaming face swept the crowd, her yellow chiffon gown sunshine in the spotlights. I looked around me, feeling prouder by the second as the audience saluted her. No one was left unmoved by what she gave them.
But one man in another aisle seat three rows down was not applauding. His face was steely and tight. He had stringy blond hair and a cadaver’s face ghostly in the reflected glare of the stage lights. He reached into his pocket and made his move toward the stage.
Time slowed for me. Melissa was still standing on the stage. Why was she still there? She never stayed on stage this long at the end of a show. She was completely oblivious to what was coming. The man pulled a gun from his pocket, holding it in two hands. He bore down on Melissa’s chest. His lips moved as his left hand cocked the weapon.
I leaped at him like an NFL free safety trying to prevent a game-breaking score. I flung him down on to the floor as the audience gasped. He fought like an animal, trying to point the gun at my head. I wrestled his arm down and drove my fist into his jaw once, twice, until he moaned and lay still.
A crowd gathered around me as the theater exploded in frenzy. I grabbed the gun from his limp hand as the man moaned again. “Melissa, I love you,” he said crazily. “I can’t live without you. If I can’t have you, nobody will.”
A police officer approached, his own gun drawn. He took out his handcuffs and bent over the assailant.
“Good work, sir,” he said to me solemnly. “You might have just saved Melissa Argent’s life.”
Melissa reached down and lifted my hand tenderly. Gently she pulled me to my feet as the spotlight bathed us. “Thank you,” she said softly as she kissed my cheek.
My arm drew around her waist as I whispered in her ear. “It’s over. You’ll never have anything to fear ever again.”
She touched me lightly on the shoulder. I moved into her caress and was surprised when she started shaking me.
“Sir? Sir?”
Sometimes the dreams were so vivid that it was physically painful to come out of them. Even as I realized what was going on, my subconscious fought in vain to send me back under.
I opened my eyes to find a flight attendant gazing down at me with concern on her face. “Sir, are you all right? You seemed to be very upset. Can I get you something?”
I shook my head and ran a hand over my face. “No, I’m fine. I’m sorry if I caused a disturbance. When will we be landing?”
The woman smiled at me, seemingly relieved that I wasn’t having a psychotic episode. “The captain estimates we will be getting into Chicago in about two hours. We’ve run into a little bit of a headwind. You’ll still have plenty of time to make your connection to Washington.”
“Thanks.”
“Are you sure you’re okay now?”
“I’m fine, really.”
She continued her way down the aisle. Two days after my dinner with Kate, I needed to make an emergency trip to Los Angeles. The nonstop meetings of the last forty-eight hours had been draining, and I was definitely running on empty. The intensity of the dream had taken what little energy I had left in me.
I leaned my head against the tiny double-paned window. Beneath us, the Rocky Mountains stood triumphantly, seeming huge even from this distance. Off to the right – close enough to be seen but too far to be dangerous – another airliner was flying in the opposite direction. Its navigation lights winked as it slowly lost altitude.
I stretched out my arms, grateful that the seat beside me was empty. It was good to have a little breathing room for once. Attorneys at Warwick & Gray used to fly business class until the firm decided to cut expenses. It was hard to consider business class a necessity, but when you’re more than six feet tall, it borders on that. I tried stretching my legs, but that only made me feel more cramped.
“That was quite a performance,” the man in the aisle seat next to me said.
I turned in surprise to my row mate. His belly was bulging through his yellow golf shirt, and thinning gray hair covered his suntanned scalp. Yet his arms were as thick as telephone poles, and he had the look of someone who could do pushups until the day he died.
“Excuse me?”
He smiled, displaying jagged teeth with a gold cap glittering in the corner. “You were jumping around your seat like you had a snake in your pants.” The way he cut off his syllables said he was from the New York area.
“I was just stretching.”
“Looked like you were doing a full cardio workout in your sleep. Guess that’s one way to make the most of your time.”
I offered a half-smile; enough to stay polite while clearly indicating that I wasn’t really interested in talking.
“Something troubling you?” The man said, oblivious to my signals.
It was going to be a very long flight. I glanced around. There were some empty seats to escape to if this became a problem. “Not really, but thanks for asking.”
The man laughed and nodded sagely. He stuck out a tanned, hairy hand. “Name is Harry Goldberg.”
I shook his hand and wondered if I could get up to go to the bathroom and simply never come back to my seat. “Ken Timian.”
“Nice to meet you, Ken. So who’s this woman you’re all worked up about?”
“I’m not worked up, and what makes you think it’s about a woman?”
“It usually is. It could be about money, but people don’t usually wriggle aroun
d in their sleep over money. They just get really, really depressed. Seems to me that what you’re going through is definitely a woman issue. Did she dump you or did you dump her?”
Who was this guy to think he had me pegged? On the other hand, he did have me pegged. Though my better instincts told me to exit this conversation immediately, I ignored them. “There’s a woman I love. If she knew me, I think she might love me too, but she doesn’t even know I exist and I can’t think of any way to get her attention.”
He shrugged as if what I told him was the most inconsequential thing imaginable. “Gotta do something about that.”
“I’ve tried doing something about it. I flew clear across the country to see her. I brought her flowers. I couldn’t even get her attention.”
“Might as well give up, then,” he said sarcastically.
His attitude was starting to annoy me. “I can’t give up.”
“No, I don’t suppose you can.” He turned toward the aisle and I assumed he’d said everything he planned to say. He barged into my life and then simply walked away. I felt frustrated and unsatisfied, but I wasn’t going to chase after him.
“You know,” the man said, still facing away from me, “before I retired to Arizona, I drove a bread truck in New York for thirty years. I started when I was fresh out of the Army. Drove a tank, I might add, and earned a Bronze Star. If I could drive a Sherman tank, why not drive a truck? It paid well and no one tried to blow them up. So every morning I delivered bread to all the little grocery stores.” He turned back to face me. “One morning, I saw this young lady opening up her father’s place. She was gorgeous – more beautiful than anyone I ever saw on a movie screen. And I think to myself, that’s a girl I’d like to meet. So I timed my stop so I got there just as she opened. I always gave her the best loaves of bread I had.”
The guy was fully immersed in his story at this point. We went through some turbulence and the plane rocked, but Harry just kept on going, his eyes fixed somewhere on the distant past.
“One day she said to me, ‘the customers really like the bread you bring.’ She told me her name was Sarah. I wondered if she wanted to get to know me, but that was all she said. I told myself that a classy girl like Sarah – a college graduate, I might add – wouldn’t go near a guy like me. Her father hated me, I knew. He’d see me talking with his daughter and tell me to get on with my deliveries, like a truck driver wasn’t good enough for his family. But something inside me told me not to give up. So I kept bringing her the bread and smiling at her and asking her how she was, all the while ignoring her father’s evil eye.”
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