“And so the parky weather returns.” Heath stood and offered Flannery his hand.
She took it as if she were a geriatric who needed assistance rising from a park bench, and oh, the briefest touch of their lifelines, of all those random events that had to occur for this moment to take place …
“How’s she doing coming down off the Nardil?”
“Not great. She’s close, though. She’s in the lobby of the Broadway Hotel and Hostel.” Flannery took out the book to check the address, feeling like a plucky girl detective from a ’40s film noir. She pined for stacked heels, brick-red lipstick, and a slim pencil skirt to complete the picture: Whatever angel was orchestrating the day had committed a serious sin of omission in the wardrobe department.
“The Broadway Hotel and Hostel is at 101st and Broadway!” She tucked the book close to her again, glad to be topping her stupid uniform with Heath’s dreamy leather jacket, which made her feel like an ’80s punk rock girl with her favorite Dead Kennedys cassette in her Walkman, or a ’50s motorcycle chick with a switchblade and pack of Lucky Strikes in her pocket, a syrupy song playing in her heart. Each night I ask the stars up above/Why must I be a teenager in love?
“Poor woman. That place is a bit heavy on the hostel and light on the hotel, if you know what I’m saying, Flannery. I stayed there when I first arrived in New York. It looks loads better on the Internet. Though I suppose anyplace with shared bathrooms cannot be mistaken for the Waldorf.” He visored one hand over his face as looked down at Flannery. “I’m sorry I didn’t bring an umbrella.”
“Me too!” She hoped it didn’t sound like she was faulting him for not bringing an umbrella. She only meant that she, too, was sorry she hadn’t thought to bring an umbrella. Conversation: It was hard.
He stuck the newspaper beneath the rock on the park bench, leaving it for the next reader. “Flannery, if the powers that be went to the trouble to make this bit of park in upper Manhattan, they should have gone all the way and built a shelter of glass walls, a lucent way station in the middle of Broadway, where you could observe the world while also being protected from it.” He looked at Flannery. “What’s the word for it?”
“Um. Like, a glass house? An atrium?”
“Hmmm.” He tapped is finger on his bottom lip. “No, not that.”
She thought of Wuthering Heights, of Heathcliff looking through the window of the Lintons’ plush drawing room: “A shower of glass-drops hanging in silver chains from the centre, and shimmering with little soft tapers.” His description for chandelier was more luminous than the word itself.
But what could top Heath Smith’s description of the word he didn’t know? Flannery wanted to stop time and live forever in this moment, in Emily Brontë’s shower of glass drops, in the lucent way station of Heath Smith. But he was looking down at Flannery expectantly, waiting for the word.
“Gazebo?”
“Gazebo,” Heath snorted meanly.
But Flannery was uninjured, still thinking of Wuthering Heights, how Emily Brontë had given such sonorous dialogue to the scarcely educated orphan from Liverpool, and of Heath’s own words from earlier, “I’ve never been one for school.” And then Heath Smith said something very nice: “Should we hurry down to the Broadway Hostel and Hotel and have a hunt for your elusive Caitlin Sweeney?”
Flannery leaned over and zipped the book in her backpack, her thoughts jumbling wildly: This British Boy! Wuthering Heights as narrated by Miss Sweeney! Lucent way stations! The Broadway Hotel and Hostel! She tried to clear her mind by physically shaking her head, imagining her soft gray cerebellum sloughing open and releasing confetti of confused neurons and synapses that sparkled and swirled in her snow-lit skull. But even as she envisioned this, Flannery heard Miss Sweeney’s red-pen voice: Perhaps Google “basic anatomy of the brain” before you indulge in these neural snow globe musings.
But it was Miss Sweeney who was shocking her, revealing a life with all the verve and passion and stormy regret of Wuthering Heights itself. Flannery longed to be a heroine, to rescue Miss Sweeney from the Nardil withdrawal and her doomed, delusional pilgrimage of living in some futuristic bubble with Brandon. And here she also fancied herself a sort of modern Saint Augustina, because yes, she truly wanted to help Miss Sweeney, but … not quite yet.
If Flannery walked into the lobby of the hotel at this very moment and found Miss Sweeney, the day’s adventure would come to a quick close. Good-bye, Heath.
Perhaps she and Miss Sweeney would share a meal at Grand Central Station (that would be nice) and then take the train home. God no, thought Flannery. For life at home already seemed so far away, an extraneous, murky scene from a black-and-white movie. Or maybe Miss Sweeney would be horrified to see Flannery walking into the Broadway Hotel and Hostel; the rest of the school year would be fairly awkward if Miss Sweeney had Flannery arrested for stalking. But either way, her time with Heath would be over.
The thought of never seeing Heath again was already forming a knot in her throat: The world without him would be flatter than Kansas. As they cut from Straus Park back to Broadway, Flannery realized she would need to work hard in the next nine blocks to be memorable, in case she had to bid him farewell, in case this was the best day of her life, the day that would bolster her during those countless blue days of the future. And so Flannery mentally whispered the mantra that had formed in the margin of her thoughts when she’d taken her SAT last year—after three previous practice PSATs—knowing her future would be dictated by the results. This time everything counts. This time everything counts. This time everything counts.
“So, Heath, what exactly brings you to New York?”
Flannery noted how false and pathetic she sounded. To stray from conversation about poetry or grilled cheese sandwiches was to risk smothering the itinerant magic of life. What tricky business it was, this trying to delicately impose an implicit promise of permanence.
“Well, well,” Heath said. “You’re a curious kitten, are you not?”
He draped his arm around her shoulders in a manner that she guessed was merely companionable, but her snow globe brain was not sending out the correct Hey, no biggie! message: Instead, her neurons flashed just one word, spelled out in four neon-pink letters and chanted like an overwrought cheerleader: Give me an L, O, V … E!
Oh, God, thought Flannery: Cheerleader love?
“Are you asking me what specifically brings a lad of my courage, integrity, and devastating good looks to your fair city?”
She was not by nature a giggler; she either laughed loudly or didn’t get the joke. But Flannery giggled along as Heath answered her question and O, the weight of his arm on her shoulders was the opposite of depression: not the old gray veil, but a warm bolt of orange-yellow sunshine. “Well, Flannery, I could ask the same of you, could I not? Flannery, are you leading me into temptation? Could the whole missing teacher fiasco in fact be a ruse? Will I wake in a dark alley and discover that more than one of my valuable inner organs have gone missing and my incisions have been sewn up with dental floss? Oh, sweet Flannery, if it’s mint dental floss my stitches will sting like the devil himself is flogging me. I’ll have to tell the police: I was walking with a magical girl in possession of a most magical book.” Heath pleaded with an imaginary officer: “Stay with me, Mate. Things get sticky here: The book was transformative. I’m not speaking of any deep personal experience possible whilst reading the novel, but the actual pages transforming into something else, a new story. If there are any new stories. In any case, my girl was searching for her missing teacher just as I shall now search for my left lung and my kidney.”
The weather was clearing up again, a good thing, because Flannery’s face burned so ferociously it seemed as if the last few droplets of rain falling on her head might sizzle like hot oil in a pan. She wondered if pinprick streams of smoke rose out of her pierced lobes and rued the fact that her ghostly pallor served as an honest barometer of her inner life. Still, how could anyone retain a semblance of
emotional calm if they were living this day, walking down Broadway and against all odds had turned into someone’s magical girl?
“Alright, I’ll come right out with it. Darling, I’ve sailed to the new world to make my fortune.”
Darling! Yes, he’d said it in a snarky way, but there it was, along with the weight of his arm on her shoulders … And yet, Miss Sweeney was not only missing and in distress, she was withdrawing from her antidepressant cold turkey, she was delusional and physically ill, and still happiness rose in Flannery’s heart.
“So, you’re doing, like, a gap year?”
“I suppose I am, Flannery. Though I’ve no plans to go to university, so it may be a gap life. And making your fortune in Manhattan is a touch more difficult than I’d imagined. Now, are you in need of any other pertinent facts about me? What have we learned thus far?”
“You are on a gap year, which may be extended to a gap life, and your name is Heath Smith?”
“Flannery, you are a genius.”
“Thanks for the news flash.” She had meant to sound only sporty, lighthearted, and so the note of irritation in her voice took her by surprise.
“Snippy, snippy!” Heath scissored his hands in the air.
Snippy was not what she was aiming for. All those long days at Sacred Heart when she should have been at a charm school in the Swiss Alps, if such a thing still existed. “And you’re, of course…” Flannery’s lips had already met and formed the pressed curve precipitating the B sound, when she panicked: Maybe Heath wasn’t even British, but Australian? Was he a New Zealander? Flannery’s voice was an uncertain whisper: “You’re British?”
“It’s a terribly embarrassing thing to be, so I appreciate you asking so delicately. Yes, it’s true.” He winced, approximating Flannery’s tenuous question. “I am indeed British. I’m from the North—Yorkshire, a two-horse village called Haworth. But originally, I was from a bit further out, in Liverpool…”
Of course Flannery knew the locale of her favorite novel, so she knew the moors were in Yorkshire! “Oh! Just like…” She bit her lip, her heart banging. Maybe Heath was just making fun of her by concocting a geographical trajectory that matched up with Wuthering Heights’s Heathcliff, the starving orphan found in Liverpool by Cathy Earnshaw’s father, and taken back to Wuthering Heights—which, according to literary speculation, was closely based on a real house in the village of Haworth, where Emily Brontë had lived most of her short life. Now Haworth had an established Internet presence; all the posted photos implied that earnest tourists—dorky but dear—with floppy hats and easels and journals were now a permanent fixture on the Yorkshire moors.
“Liverpool and Haworth do seem to be … rather notable towns,” Flannery said archly, trying to allude to the fact she was in on the joke, a skill honed but never perfected at Sacred Heart.
“I suppose.”
He supposed? Well, Flannery subscribed to the Haworth Village Twitter feed, so if Heath actually hailed from Haworth, she supposed she could blow his mind by bringing him up to speed on the local news: Rose & Co. Apothecary, the pharmacy where Emily Brontë’s wayward brother had once purchased his opium, was undergoing renovation, and the Sainsbury’s in the neighboring town of Keighley—free from the inflated prices of Brontë tourism—had a terrific sale going on Galia melons and cantaloupe.
Flannery gave a sarcastic, in-the-know nod, or what she hoped might pass as one. “So. A notable town with some very notable residents.”
“So I’ve heard … John, Paul, George, and … who’s the other chap?”
“That would be Ringo, Heath.” Flannery could hear the trace of exasperation in her voice, and she was about to tell him that she was obviously referencing the Brontës of Haworth, not the Beatles of Liverpool, when he said: “So your Miss Sweeney, she’s in serious trouble, yes?”
Heath was trying to keep her on track. Oh, even a complete stranger to Miss Sweeney showed more concern than Flannery.
Stay focused, she scolded herself.
“Yes, Miss Sweeney keeps trying to connect—I don’t know what other word to use—with Brandon, whom she clearly loved a lot. He moved to Manhattan with her when she started school at Columbia.”
“With a love like that, you know you should be glad,” Heath whisper-sang, but not meanly. “That’s a tricky deal, then.”
“She’s tortured by visions of him, and not taking her medicine, and having some of those lovely symptoms. But she has the bottle of Nardil right in her pocket, so maybe she’ll start taking it again? Maybe she’ll feel better?”
“My doctor said the moment you decide you have no need for your medication—your brain rocketing off with whatever handy rationalization it cooks up—is dangerous, because that’s when you need it most, that’s when your free-floating despair is about to double down.”
The thought of Heath waking up—she imagined him lonely, in rumpled flannel pajamas—and shaking a pill out of a bottle made Flannery a bit teary. My God, it was easier to obsess over the blatant nastiness of the dreadful than to consider the hidden tenderness—Heath and Miss Sweeney with their prescriptions and stomachaches—of the good.
“So again, I’m turning into a regular American with my fancy coffees and my antidepressants. But we all need our serotonin lifted a bit.” He nodded at the street sign. “One hundred and first and Broadway! Greetings, Broadway Hotel and Hostel, ready or not, Caitlin Sweeney, here we come!”
Flannery felt light-headed as they turned onto what looked to be a residential street, except for the hotel and an animal hospital, where a couple stood embracing as the golden retriever tethered to the woman’s wrist looked politely away. When the couple pulled apart and turned to go in different directions, the hems of their long, dark coats swung out and kissed: O, Love was all around.
And then Heath was pulling open the first doors of the Broadway Hotel and Hostel—the caught air of the vestibule—and then the second set of doors, and they were in the lobby.
“The aggressive smell of rose-scented cleanser mixed with a bouquet of eau de cat shit,” Heath said. “A fetching combo.”
“Agreed,” Flannery said, ruing that pat response as she looked over at the reception desk, which was decked out in glittering bronze and surrounded by tourists. She wished—always this impossible wish!—that she could live her life via the written word, an e-mail edited down to reflect her best self: a girl of inherent kindness given to witticisms and highly original commentary. If only! She steeled herself for the awkwardness of seeing Miss Sweeney among the Swedish tourists walking in the door—their platforms and Hello Kitty sweatpants a look that shouldn’t work, but did. Flannery imagined herself conjuring surprise to lessen the social awkwardness of seeing Miss Sweeney in the lobby: “Why, here you are at the Broadway Hotel and Hostel too? Wow! It’s a small world—but I wouldn’t want to paint it! Heh heh. This is a friend of mine … Heath.” She was confident Miss Sweeney would affect neutral politeness but not lose an opportunity to pull Flannery aside and whisper, “Is that his real name? Nicely played, Miss Brontë.”
Flannery looked around, and Heath did too: the piled suitcases in front of the elevator, the long bench that ran parallel to the reception desk and held two groups of friends—Japanese girls who were laughing and taking selfies with their arms around one another, and lipsticked American boys wearing heels with rolled-up skinny jeans and debating their evening wardrobe choices: “The yellow cowboy shirt with the pearl buttons? Yes, yes! A hundred times yes! God, where was Ryan? Is his phone off? He must be coming on the next bus. Text Ryan!”
Flannery had the buoyant feeling that happiness was atmospheric at the Broadway Hotel and Hostel. She felt light but full, as if she’d been stuffed with clouds. She imagined herself on the bench with her own cozy group of friends, the people Miss Sweeney assured Flannery she would meet at Columbia.
“Do we see your Miss Sweeney anywhere? Since I don’t know who I’m looking for, it’s putting me at a bit of a disadvantage.”
/> “She could be anywhere in here, I guess. I’m sorry. I don’t see her yet.”
“No, it’s completely alright, I assure you. Well, now we’re at the hotel. So. Perhaps we should do what one does at a hotel?”
She laughed—all hearty hilarity!—but her laughter trailed off quickly, morphing into the giggle of a pensive wee mousie: “HA! HA! HA! Heh heh … heh.”
“Heavens, Flannery, I meant we should check and see if they offer free Wi-Fi. Do get your mind out of the gutter.”
The clerk was busy and aggrieved. Guests clustered around the front desk in various states of pique, waiting to check in to the Broadway Hotel and Hostel, or waiting for some tardy amenity: The woman with a clenched jaw, pajama pants, and a lavender IT’S ALL GOOD! sweatshirt helpfully reminded the clerk that she had been assured of a set of bath towels over an hour and fifteen minutes ago. And so Flannery and Heath were able to walk around, unencumbered, though they were not, as yet, official guests of the hotel.
Heath took her gently by her elbow, and though it felt like a nurse’s affection, practical and desultory, well, it was still pretty much magic. Next to the lobby there was a community area where people sat working at computers, and a fireplace and a nubby beige couch where a couple kissed with Friday night enthusiasm, their mouths cupped on one another’s like CPR. Flannery thought of the couple on the street, their embrace, and their coat hems touching as they turned away from one another. Love was best seen from a filtered distance, not in oily close-up.
Heath noticed Flannery looking at the smoochers, and he waggled his eyebrows at her, a gesture that would be creepy if he were creepy.
“Has your Miss Sweeney found a beau?”
Flannery laughed. “That’s not her.”
“Ah, well. Do you have a current beau?”
“What?” Flannery said, though of course she had heard him, and whether she was buying herself time to think of a witty retort or just prolonging personal humiliation, she couldn’t quite say.
Heath put his hand on her back—it made her feel like weeping with nervous joy. “Flannery, I have simply asked if you have a current beau. A yes or no will suffice.”
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