Harry’s wistful expression was starting to get to me. “Please tell me this has a happy ending.”
“I think it would be safe to call forty-eight years of marriage a happy ending. Her father was a cantankerous bastard, but even he came around after a while.”
He chuckled and I chuckled along with him. “That’s a good story. But I’m really starting to believe that I missed my chance at having one of those.”
“That’s a load of crap,” he said sharply before turning to face the flight attendant who’d come by with a drink cart. I took a Coke while Harry frowned at his tomato juice. “The doctor says I should drink this instead of beer.” He sneered. “Yeah, tastes great ice-cold when you come in from the broiling Arizona sun.” He took a swig and put down his cup. Then he turned back to me.
“Anyway, like I was saying, your whole thing about missing your chance is a load of crap. If this woman means as much to you as it sounds like she does, you gotta get off your ass and make something happen. You act like you’re invisible and she’ll treat you like you’re invisible.”
“It’s not that easy,” I said.
Harry leaned across his seat and pointed a finger three inches away from my nose. “No one said love was easy,” he said sharply. He leaned back in his seat. “And if you think you can live without it, you’re a fool.”
This guy wasn’t anything like what I’d expected. As though I needed to be told by this point that appearances could be deceiving. “Your wife is a lucky woman,” I said with admiration. “Are you off to see her?”
“Not quite yet,” he said with a sad smile. “She’s in heaven now. I hope I’ll be joining her some day.” His sinewy fingers squeezed the cup, flipping a drop of tomato juice on the gold wedding band he still wore.
“I’m sorry.” Why couldn’t I think of anything better to say?
Harry’s broad shoulders relaxed as he shrugged off memories. “That’s life. It’s hard to complain when I was blessed for so long.” He coughed and looked down at his seat briefly. Then he turned to me again. “But I never would have been blessed at all if I had given up. Just remember that, Ken. Don’t give up, or you’ll regret for the rest of your life what you might have had.”
“Yes, sir,” I said with a smile and a tiny salute.
He saluted back and then returned to his drink. I would have bought him a beer if it wasn’t against doctor’s orders.
*
I still had no idea what my next step should be. Unfortunately, my situation was just a little harder than Harry’s had been. It wasn’t simply a matter of avoiding a surly dad, and I had no excuse to see Melissa, no delivery I could make to her. I needed to find a way to reach her, to get past her coterie, and to let her see what things could be like between us. The enormity of the distance between my desires and where I stood right now was daunting.
I went to see Stephon again. He was dressed in a blazer and open collar today, still more formal than he had been in the other world, but less so. An entire display case in his store was dedicated to intricately carved green crystals. I never saw him carry anything like this in the store before. Maybe his clientele was changing – though I still had absolutely no idea who that clientele was.
He was dusting a mirrored shelf when I came through the door. He glanced over at me and gave me a nod. “Good to see you, Ken. How are you faring?”
“I’m all over the place. Good days, bad days, hopeful days, desperate days.”
“Sounds like most other people in the world.”
“I guess. But not exactly for the same reason.”
Stephon finished dusting and gestured me toward the counter. Without asking, and seemingly without any effort, he produced two steaming glasses of tea.
“Oh, I don’t know,” he said. “It seems to me that consternation over love is one of the universals in our world.”
He was right of course. “I don’t know what I should do next,” I said, feeling the desperation creep into my voice as I spoke.
“What are you trying to do?”
“You know what I’m trying to do.”
“So you’ve decided to try to reconnect with Melissa.”
“There was never any other acceptable alternative.”
“No, I suppose not. Have you found her?”
“Finding her isn’t the issue. She’s a public figure, as it turns out. Getting to her is the hard part.”
Stephon took a sip of his tea and seemed to consider this. “I can see how that would be difficult.”
He seemed even more obtuse than usual. He was like a therapist asking me how I felt about something when I really wanted his opinion. “Look, I know you can’t send me back in time again, but is there anything you can do? Could you maybe send some kind of psychic message to Melissa, let her know that contacting me would be a good thing?”
Stephon laughed. “You want me to act as your cosmic matchmaker?”
“I’m really flailing around here.”
He put his teacup down. “I’m sorry, Ken. I truly am. But I can’t make someone fall in love with you. I can’t even put the idea in her head. I’m afraid you’re entirely on your own with this.”
I leaned heavily against the display counter. I saw Stephon’s eyes dart down to check for fingerprints. “What would you do if you were me? I’m asking you as a man, not a…magician.”
“How did you meet her the first time?”
“A mutual friend introduced us at a party. The place was really noisy, but when we started talking there was suddenly no one else in the room. Things just took off from there.”
“The two of you just ‘clicked.’”
“Instantly.”
“Then there’s every reason to believe that it could happen again.”
“I know that much. Even though she’s a star now, I think the same thing could happen between us. If I could only get that far.”
Stephon looked me squarely in the eyes. I don’t think he’d ever done that before, and it was a little unnerving. Those eyes seemed to have been alive for centuries.
“You aren’t using all of your resources,” he said plainly.
“Is that the man or the magician speaking?”
“What difference does it make? Ken, use all of your resources.”
*
Kate was a resource – even if she didn’t know it – but I was reluctant to use her after our dinner together. Things had become so good between us, and while I couldn’t get involved with her romantically, I really wanted to keep her as a friend. Whether I brought Melissa back into my life or not, I wanted Kate to be a part of it.
Still, as distant as it was, Kate had the closest connection to Melissa of anyone I knew. There had to be some way for her to reach out to Melissa as an old friend, and I needed to ask her to do that for me. Regardless of the consequences.
That afternoon, I called Kate at her office.
“What are you doing for dinner?” I said.
“I was thinking Mexican.”
“With someone?”
“Who knows? There are still a few hours until dinnertime.”
“Let me take you to dinner. There’s something I want to talk to you about.”
“Is this something I’m going to want to hear?”
“Probably not, but I sort of need you to hear it.”
Kate picked a Mexican restaurant near her office and I got there a little before 7:00. I had a Margarita waiting for her when she arrived.
“Getting a head start on me?” she said when she saw the two drinks. I hadn’t touched mine, which was a challenge under the circumstances. I decided to dive right in.
“Listen, I haven’t been entirely honest with you.”
Kate took a drink and her eyes narrowed. “About what.”
“About Melissa Argent.”
Kate sh
ook her head slowly. “Are we really going back there?”
“I need to meet her.”
“So you can tell her how much you love her concertos?”
“Because we’re supposed to be together.”
Kate stared at me dumbfounded. “Please don’t tell me this is the reason you refrained from kissing me the other night.”
“I’m afraid it is.”
Kate laughed so loudly that several people from other tables turned in our direction. “You really are out of your freaking mind. You know, you do a good job of hiding it for short periods.”
I took a long sip from my margarita and delicately returned it to the table. While my emotions were raging at this moment, I wanted to show Kate that I was under control. “Look, I know this sounds insane. It even sounds insane to me – and I haven’t told you the really crazy part. But there’s a lot more to this than a fan’s adulation or a fixation on her beautiful eyes. Much more. You have to trust me; Melissa and I are destined to be with one another.”
“Why, exactly, do I have to trust you?”
“Because I’m not the kind of guy who does irrational things.”
Kate smirked. “What part of this conversation illustrates that?”
I cradled my forehead in my right hand and then rubbed my face before speaking again. “Is there any way you could introduce the two of us?”
“No.”
I was a little surprised by Kate’s bluntness. “Just no?”
Kate laughed again. “Okay Ken, let’s cover the logical reasons first.” She used her fingers to tick them off. “I haven’t seen Melissa in more than a decade. I don’t know how to get in touch with her. There’s an excellent chance that she doesn’t have any real memory of me. And even if she did, it’s unlikely that she’d want to get together for coffee so I could fix her up on a date.”
“You were her best friend for years. She remembers you.”
“Maybe she does, but that brings us to the most important reason why I won’t do it: because Melissa was once my best friend and best friends don’t knowingly expose each other to CRAZY PEOPLE.”
This was going so much worse than I’d anticipated. I assumed Kate would react skeptically. I even assumed that she would roll her eyes over the idea that Melissa and I were “meant to be together.” But I didn’t expect her to shut me down completely.
“Take some time to think about it,” I said.
“I don’t need to take some time. Do you really think I’d change my mind if I gave this some thought?”
I buried my head in my hands. “Kate, you’re my best shot,” I said. Even I realized how pathetic I sounded.
My head was still down when Kate stood next to me and put her hand on my shoulder. “Ken,” she said, “I had a really good time the other night. A really good time. I thought it might even be the start of something, at the very least a nice friendship. But I’m not going to do this with you. I just simply won’t.”
I looked into her eyes and saw genuine sadness there. She was about to walk out on me again, and it pained her. “You can go if you want. I’ll get the check.”
She kissed me on top of the head. “Take care of yourself. I hope this passes.” She patted me on the shoulder one more time and left.
I signaled to the waiter and ordered another Margarita.
Chapter 20
For a Fact
I was rudderless again. Harry might exhort me to never give up. Stephon could tell me to tap every available resource. But since I’d found myself in this situation, I had done everything I could think of and I’d come up totally empty.
In the days after Debacle Two with Kate, I tried to push Melissa to the edges of my mind. I submerged myself in work, so much so that Sharon asked if I could hire a temp to help her out. I went out drinking again with Marty and considered it progress that I was able to get myself home.
I thought about moving. Maybe that small town in Maine I mused about. Maybe New York or Los Angeles. The idea of going to a place where no one knew me and where there were no reminders of the life I once loved was very attractive. One thing was entirely certain: I couldn’t stay where I was when everything brought another heartbreaking memory of Melissa.
I perused real estate websites for other cities. I found a four-bedroom, three-bath house thirty miles outside of Portland whose mortgage payments would be a little more than a third of the rent on my apartment. I found a one-bedroom place on the Upper West Side in Manhattan that cost about the same, and learned that I could live in a two-bedroom in Brooklyn Heights as long as I maintained the income I made now. Finding a job wouldn’t be difficult. I had plenty of clients to recommend me, and even Harrison Warwick would probably give me a good reference in spite of our recent sparring. Maybe I’d start my own firm and get so caught up in it that I wouldn’t have time for a life outside of the office. That would be merciful.
A week after I failed with Kate, I got a call from Paul asking if we could get together. We agreed to meet at the Angus Steakhouse in Arlington. It was in a strip mall off Wilson Boulevard, the sort of place that looked dark and smoky even though it was illegal to smoke there. I arrived a few minutes early, and found Paul waiting for me. He looked dreadful. He was dressed in a rumpled tan suit, and his tie was hanging loose from the opened button at his collar. In front of him was an empty glass, and the waiter brought him another scotch as I sat down. I didn’t bother with pleasantries.
“You look like hell. What’s going on?”
Paul lifted a glass and toasted me halfheartedly. “I left Angela last night.” He took a drink and then looked at me as though he himself wasn’t sure what to make of what he’d just said.
“I’m sorry,” I said, though both of us knew I wasn’t.
“Yeah, thanks. I had to do it, you know. I just couldn’t keep going.” Paul’s voice was flat and emotionless. “We had a big fight last night. Right in the middle of the kitchen – the spaghetti sauce was burning on the stove the whole time. I can’t even remember what we fought about. Maybe it was doing the laundry or unloading the dishwasher or something. When you have the same arguments over and over again, you do it on automatic pilot. She said something that got me especially riled up and I slammed the kitchen door and stomped into the living room. There was a mug on the coffee table. Angela’s college roommate and her husband had given it to us years ago. It said TO OUR VERY SPECIAL FRIENDS. And I looked at the mug and it just got to me, you know? I realized that there was nothing special about us. We were just two people who’d learned to hate each other.”
This was the longest speech I’d ever remembered Paul delivering, but I realized I needed to simply let him keep going.
“Angela came stomping into the room a few minutes later. She must have been working up another head of steam. Behind her was that big framed photo of us above the fireplace. The one we took about a year after we got married. Everyone always tells us how great we look in it. But you know what? At that moment, I remembered that I was pissed off at Angela that day, too. I couldn’t remember the last time I haven’t been pissed off at Angela.
“So before she could start another argument, I just put my hands on my hips and told her I was leaving. Just like that.”
“What did she do?”
“Nothing. She didn’t yell. She didn’t cheer. She just looked at me like she didn’t know me. Then she nodded and went back to the kitchen. I packed up some stuff and headed out. I think she was more relieved than anything. I know I am.”
“I can understand that.”
“You really can’t, buddy. You really can’t unless you’ve been through it. I mean I know I’ll have a lot of garbage to go through in the coming months, but it’s a huge weight off. A huge weight.”
“So where did you go after you left?”
“I wound up in a second-rate motel in Prince George’s County. Not exactly lu
xury living, but the TV works and the price is right.”
“Do you want to stay with me until you find a place?”
“Thanks for the offer, but I think I’m going to enjoy being by myself for a little while. I can’t begin to tell you how peaceful it felt in that place last night. Even though the guy next door was on the phone until one in the morning and I could hear every word.”
“Maybe you can find a better hotel.”
“Nah, I think I’ll stick this out for as long as it takes. It’ll inspire me to move quickly to find an apartment. I’m going out with a realtor tomorrow night.”
Paul looked terrible, but he sounded okay. He sounded resolute. He knew he’d made the right decision, even though it was a long time in coming.
“You had a lot to do with getting me off of my ass,” he said, as though he’d heard my thoughts.
“Me?”
“The last couple of times we’ve been together, you’ve come at me from a different angle. Believe me, I knew you weren’t the president of Angela’s fan club, but you always stayed out of it when we started clawing at each other. Until recently.”
“I’ve been thinking about a bunch of stuff myself.”
“Well, it was good for me. Remember at dinner I told you that I’d been thinking about leaving Angela, but I didn’t want to be alone? A few days ago, it dawned on me that you were perfectly happy being alone. Different girlfriends all the time. I don’t know why I never looked at it that way before. Suddenly, it didn’t seem so scary. I guess that prepared me for what came next.”
“Don’t give up so soon on finding the right woman and settling down.”
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