Her voice always reminded me of a mouse trying to talk like a human. “Karen, sorry to bother you, but that guy Richard came in again and returned his books and took out two others. He didn’t use the speedy checkout, but brought them to me. Do you think that means something?”
“Possibly,” I replied, not wanting to get her hopes up.
“I know you’re leaving on your trip, but I didn’t know who else to talk to.”
“I am getting ready to leave.” I hated to say my news out loud. Saying it to someone would make it all the more real. But I couldn’t keep it from Rosie. “But not with Dave.”
Stunned silence, then her thin voice yelped, “Oh, no. What happened? Is he okay? Did he have a heart attack?”
“No such luck.” My voice cracked and I swallowed down tears. “He just broke up with me.”
“What about the trip?”
“I’m going anyway.”
“Wow, Karen, that’s brave.”
“I know.” I tightened my top lip. I didn’t feel brave. I felt a deep loneliness and wretched anger that the man who had been in my life for several years didn’t have the guts to sit down face-to-face and tell me what was going on.
Even though I was the last person in the world who should have been giving advice to the lovelorn, I wanted to help Rosie with Richard. I told her, “Maybe ask your guy a question.”
“About what?”
“One of the books he’s taking out.”
“Yeah, I like that. I’ll ask him if it’s any good.”
“But he won’t have read it yet.”
“That’s right. I’ll ask him why he’s taking it out.”
“Good plan.”
“Dave wasn’t good enough for you, Karen. I never liked his nose. Made him look like a toad.”
“Thanks, Rosie.” I had always liked his squat, turned-up nose. Not handsome, but neither was Dave. Because of that nose, I’d thought I could trust him.
I had to leave one thing behind. I opened my suitcase, unrolled my flannel nightie, and removed the black negligee. I wouldn’t be wanting it now. I found a pair of scissors and was on the verge of slashing it to bits, when I thought again. Why rule it out? I do like to be ready for anything, and who knew what my future might bring? I folded it and put it back in the suitcase.
* * *
Cabdriver Mohammed Ali picked me up shortly before noon. He helped me put my one suitcase in the trunk. When I got into the backseat, I stared at his photograph and name, memorizing them just in case.
“Where are you going?” he asked.
“I’m going to England. My first time. I’ve never been before.” I was babbling. Not a good sign. But if I talked I couldn’t think about Dave, which would keep me from crying in the taxi.
“That’s good, but I mean, what airline?”
“Oh.” I told him.
“What time is your flight?”
I told him.
“You’re plenty early,” he said.
“I know. I don’t like to rush.”
“I lived in England,” he said after we had pulled onto the freeway. “Before I come to America.”
“Oh.” I didn’t feel much like hearing his life story.
“America’s better. More room. Bigger cars.”
“Yes, I suppose.”
Halfway to the airport, Mohammed said, “Would you mind if I pull over for a few minutes?”
I wasn’t really in a hurry. I assumed he needed to get gas. “No. That’s fine.”
He pulled off the freeway, turned onto a service road, and stopped on the shoulder. When he reached down under the seat, I started to worry. What was he doing? Was I getting kidnapped by a taxi driver? I touched my cell phone in my purse, in case I might want to use it.
As he surfaced from under the seat, I saw in his hands a rolled-up rug. He got out of the cab and put the rug down on the ground, facing east. Then he kneeled down on the rug and started praying. At least, I assumed he was praying.
When he got back in the cab, I asked him what he had prayed for.
“Always the same,” he said. “To praise Allah and to ask him to take care of me and my family.”
“Are you married?” I asked.
“Yes, I have four children.”
“What would you think of a man who dated a woman for four years, made a huge pile of money, and then dumped her?”
“He will be punished.”
His prophetic words calmed me. Dave would be punished.
* * *
With an hour to spare, I headed down to my gate, which was as far away as it could be from the entrance and still be in the airport. That was fine with me—I could use the walk.
I vacillated between being so angry with Dave that I wanted to tear his few remaining hairs out to feeling as if my heart had gone through a shredder and would never be mended again.
At the gate, I sat in the row of seats closest to the windows and watched the airplanes take off. With every successful liftoff, I was relieved. I never quite understood how those big, heavy machines lumbered up into the air and managed to soar around the world.
I tried not to pay any attention to the couples around me, happy or otherwise—I couldn’t bear it. If Dave were sitting next to me, he would be reading USA Today and complaining about something, but that was what I had loved about him. He didn’t move easily through the world. Like a stolid tugboat, he created a wake.
I always use the bathroom right when they call the first-class passengers. Gives me a head start on the trip. Fifteen minutes before our flight was scheduled to board, I went into the bathroom.
After visiting the stall, I leaned in toward the mirror to see how red my eyes were. Not too bad.
I turned to exit the restroom, when a scrawny young woman with puffed-up lips and thin blond hair came whipping in. She was wearing one of the tightest T-shirts I had ever seen—the bones of her spine jutted through it—and jeans that hugged her knees and the bottom of her butt.
She almost ran right into me. “Sorry, I’ve got a plane to catch. Had to check on my makeup. Want to look good for my guy.”
I heard a man’s voice call after her, “Hurry, honey. I just heard them call our row.”
I recognized the voice.
It was Dave’s. He must have kept his ticket and bought a new one for this blond woman.
FOUR
Magic Pill
Crazy ideas of revenge raged through my mind—sticking her head down the toilet and depressing the handle a few times. My next thought was how I was going to get on the plane without Dave seeing and recognizing me.
I went back to the mirror and pulled out my sunglasses. That helped. Dave had never seen the outfit I was wearing. I had bought it special for the trip. I pulled the hood up. Now not even my mother would have recognized me.
“Honey” came flying out of the stall and stood at the sink next to me. “Oh, I can’t believe I’m going to England,” she said.
“Neither can I,” I said. At least we agreed on something.
“I’m not so sure about this guy I’m going with, but I figure what the heck, he can’t be all bad.”
“Want to bet?” I muttered.
She leaned in closer to the mirror and started to put on some lipstick. At least that shut her up for a second.
I turned on the water in my sink full blast, held my hands in the stream, and aimed. Water hit her full in the face and she gasped from the shock of it. Her straggly thin hair looked even thinner and darker wet.
I mumbled something that I hoped sounded like, “I’m sorry,” then fled the bathroom, not quite believing what I’d done. After all, she had done nothing to me, except exist, and steal my man.
Dave was tapping his foot and pressing his lips together as I walked by him. He didn’t like to be kept waiting. He didn’t even give me a second glance.
I ran to get in line. My row had already been called.
When I got up to the stewardess, she asked me if I would mind being s
eated in first class, as a family had requested the seat I was sitting in. “We have a very full plane.” She smiled.
First class. That suited me fine.
* * *
I was holding a glass of champagne in my hand and a copy of the New York Times in front of my face as Dave pulled a very bedraggled Honey behind him onto the plane. The cabin doors closed right behind them. Peeking out from behind the paper, I watched them as they lurched down to the coach section of the plane. I toasted the start of a very fine trip.
I took a huge gulp of my champagne as I faced another awful truth—and probably the main reason why I’d never been to Europe before—I was petrified of flying. Even though I knew it was a bad idea, I hadn’t been able to stop myself from checking the airline statistics for the past year and found there had been a total of twenty-seven airplane crashes, in which eighty-seven people had died. Statistically I knew it didn’t matter what had happened previously. When a plane takes to the sky, it’s a brand-new roll of the dice.
I know my fear is unfounded. I know it’s stupid. I know it makes no sense. It’s ten times more dangerous to drive on the freeway than fly in an airplane. And nothing was going to keep me from flying to England.
In order to be prepared, I had memorized the Federal Aviation Administration’s five-step survival plan:
1. Count the rows between your seat and the exit.
2. Read the safety card.
3. Properly brace for landing.
4. “Stop, go, and stay low.”
5. Get away from the crash site.
I was only four rows from the front exit. I’m not sure what proper bracing is and the “stop, go” part of number four gives me trouble too. But getting away from the crash site would be no trouble for me.
I also have a magic pill I take. Unfortunately, this pill puts me to sleep, but since it would be a good seven hours before we landed in Heathrow, on this trip this side effect was a distinct advantage.
I took my pill with my second glass of bubbly and paged through my Vogue magazine. Many of the young models looked like Honey: no boobs, no butt, and probably no brain. Dave had turned fifty this last year. She had to be a good twenty years younger than he was. What was he thinking?
Before I drifted off to sleep, my eyes wandered out the window. Darkness was climbing up over the rim of the eastern horizon. I put my head close to the window and looked down. The earth, seen through billowing mattresses of clouds, appeared green and inviting.
Really I don’t know what I was afraid of. Falling to death in an airplane would be quite a fantastic way to leave this world.
As I faded off to sleep, I thought maybe it wouldn’t be so bad if the plane crashed.
At least then Dave would be dead.
FIVE
Mr. Toad
The stewardess gently shook my shoulder and said, “We’re only an hour out. Can I get you something before we land?”
“Coffee,” I managed to croak out. “Everything in it.” I pulled myself up to a sitting position and first checked my watch—still early, only eight o’clock in the morning. Grey clouds swirled below me (note: grey, not gray). A gentle rain would be falling on the city streets, I was sure. Just the way I had always imagined London.
When I thought about Dave being on the plane, anger threatened to swamp me. When I remembered he was with Honey, hate filled my mouth like bile. I wished he would fall off the face of the earth and drag his Honey with him.
* * *
Maybe it all would have turned out differently if Dave and Honey hadn’t gotten their bags moments before me. We all got in line for the cabs at the same time. They were too busy smoochie-facing with each other to notice me standing a few people behind them. Who was this man? Dave had never liked to be intimate in public. With me.
I climbed into the cab right behind theirs and, without thinking, told the driver to “follow that cab.” There I was in London—home of Sherlock Holmes, Jack the Ripper, the Woman in White—and I was following my ex-lover through the rainy streets of the capital city.
“What’s up?” the cabbie asked.
“They forgot something on the plane,” I replied, pleased with how quickly I had thought up a suitable lie. “This is my first time in England,” I told the back of the cabbie’s head.
He grunted, then said, “That’s all right then.”
Their cab dropped them off at a small, quaint hotel: the Queen’s Arms Hotel. I pulled my hood up as my cabdriver slid in behind them.
“You going to get out?” the cabbie asked as I sat mesmerized, watching Dave and Honey. Holding hands.
That really galled me. Dave had never held hands with me. I had tried once or twice, but he shook me off quickly. I had always assumed it was not his style. But obviously, I was not the right woman. Probably not the right age.
“No, I just wanted to know where I could get hold of them,” I said quickly.
Honey was in the lead, nearly dragging the now-named Mr. Toad down the sidewalk. Poor squat-nosed dear. It was about time for his morning nap, plus he was probably exhausted after the long plane flight. I was sure he hadn’t gotten any rest on the flight with Honey talking his ear off, and those airplane seats could not have done his sciatica any good.
I gave the cabbie the address of the original B and B that I’d booked and tucked my head down farther into my hoodie, unable to watch anymore.
When my cab dropped me off in Hammersmith on Putney Street, I was disappointed with my first view of the neighborhood. After spending a few hours on Google Earth perusing this area, I had somehow seen it as quainter and more charming. Instead, I found myself in front of a whole row of identical gloomy, dark brick tenements that were all connected: The whole block was one long row house.
I found the address of my bed-and-breakfast, lifted up the large brass knocker in the shape of a hand, and let it clang down a few times. After a minute or so, the door pushed open.
A slight man only slightly taller than me with a ring of curly light brown hair around his head and sad but very deep brown eyes answered the door. His eyes lit up at the sight of me.
“Yes, may I help you?”
“Are you the bed-and-breakfast?” I asked.
The man looked me up and down, then answered, “I myself am not the bed-and-breakfast. However, I do own the bed-and-breakfast. I am Caldwell Perkins. Might I presume that you are Mrs. Nash?”
“Yes, I’m sorry. I am just Karen Nash.”
“Why ever are you sorry about being Karen Nash?”
He stepped to one side and, as I walked by him, gently took my rolling suitcase from my hand.
“No, you know what I mean.”
“I thought you were traveling with a partner, I assumed your husband?” he asked while he waved his hand down the hallway.
“You mean Dave?”
“I wasn’t sure of the gentleman’s name.”
“Dave. Well, something came up. He couldn’t make it.” An image of Honey hauling him down the street, yakking, popped into my mind.
“That is disappointing.”
Caldwell ushered me into the back room, the windows of which opened out onto an absolutely fabulous garden with—if I could believe my eyes—a fig tree. The outdoor space could not have been more than that of an average-size room, maybe twelve feet by twenty feet, but it looked like a perfect landscape, a pond right in the center of it, with roses and other blooming flowers, including penstemon, hollyhocks, and foxglove.
“Would you like to be shown to your room and then perhaps join me back here for a cup of tea?” Caldwell asked.
“That would be heavenly.”
“We’re having a touch of weather,” he murmured as he walked me up the stairs, still carting my rolling bag.
“Yes, but rain is what I expected.”
“Then you will not be disappointed.”
“I’ve never been to England before, except in books. I’ve read so many English novels I feel like I know it already.”
&n
bsp; “My, your first time. We shall do all we can to make this a very pleasant visit for you.”
I wondered if he was using the royal “we” or if he was married or perhaps had a male partner. Since my unfortunate marriage, I suspected most men of harboring secret desires for their own sex. Plus, it had to be said, he was a small, almost delicate, man who ran a B and B.
The landing at the top of the stairs was at the end of a hallway that had six doors off of it. We walked down to the far end, the farthest away from the street and overlooking, as I had hoped, the garden.
Caldwell opened the door to my room and I was pleasantly surprised. The room was simpler than I had thought it might be. Not floofy at all, but rather spare and elegant. The bed was high, with crisp white sheets; the curtains were white linen; and a dark maroon reading chair was tucked in a corner with a floor-to-ceiling bookshelf behind it, filled with books. A wondrous wall of books.
I couldn’t help it. I let out a small peep.
“Is something wrong?” Caldwell asked.
“No, I’m just happy to see all the books,” I explained. “It makes me feel at home.” I resisted telling him I was a librarian. After all, I was on vacation and I could be anyone I wanted to be. Someone more adventurous.
“The tea is ready when you are.”
“I’ll be right there. Just give me a moment to freshen up.” After Caldwell left, I ran some water in the bathroom sink and washed my face. Forty-six years old and I didn’t look a day over forty-three. My short dark hair was curling a bit more than usual in this rainy weather, but I rather liked that look. A little softer.
I was as presentable as I could be at that moment, plus why did I care what I looked like? There was no one who knew me here. Except Caldwell.
“This is a beautiful room,” I said as I walked into the sitting room. “You’ve got a lovely backyard.”
“That is not a backyard. It is my back garden.”
“Of course it’s a garden. I remember that now. At home we call them backyards.” I looked around the room and spotted an old glass-doored bookshelf filled with books all in cellophane covers.
Caldwell noticed my gaze. “Those are my first editions. Mainly British children’s books, one of my specialties.” Then he asked me, “Would you like some coffee?”
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