“Then go to her,” Angus said.—
Chapter Eighteen, in which I tell Veronica everything I hadn’t already
All of which made me gasp there, in the kitchen, my gorge rising, and I went to the sink and retched up nothing at all. That empty, swimmy feeling in my gut did a somersault and sloshed my equilibrium into a twist that weakened my knees, and I dry-heaved again. I put on the spigot, ran the water until it went cold and then palmed it against my face, sipping the splash and spitting it back against the steel. Veronica, for her part, stayed where she was, giving me a wide berth, for which I was grateful. I held a wet hand against the back of my neck, hesitating there, staring at the water rushing down the drain.
I’m not sure that skipping that chapter to come around was the best way to tell this story, but I think it was if only because I didn’t remember any of it until I stood there staring over the sink, waiting for my stomach to solidify again. Pretty much everything below my chest felt like fluid, which may have been why my heart had sunk like lead.
“You okay?” Veronica asked.
And still I hesitated. What could I say to that?
I knew I had to tell her. It’s as likely that the knowledge I had to tell her made me as sick as the memory itself had. It wasn’t sick disgusted or sick repulsed; it was more the sick like “Holy shit, what have I done?” crossed with the “Holy shit, this is bad.”
“I’ll be . . .” I trailed off. I picked up my wine glass, which I’d abandoned on the counter as I’d spun to the sink, and I drained it in a go. “I think maybe you should sit down,” I told her, pouring myself another glass of wine as I said it.
“What?”
“I need to—there’s something I have to tell you, and I think you’re going to want to be sitting down when you hear it. I know I’d like you to be sitting down.”
“What? Why? Nothing good—.”
“I know. But look. Please. Just sit, okay?”
She just looked at me a moment, and then, without ever once looking away, slowly pulled a chair from the small wooden table in my kitchen, and sat.
I took the seat opposite her.
“I hope you’re not going to tell me you’ve met someone else,” she said. Her tone indicated she didn’t believe it but was way too chilly to be joking.
“There’s no one else,” I told her, because there’s not. There hasn’t ever been, really, and I think some days I doubt there ever will be. This thought may be getting ahead of myself, though. “It’s just—remember New Year’s? And your brother’s launch party?”
“Yeah. But what—oh, I hope you’re not going to tell me you slept with one of the strippers.”
“What? No.”
“Because, I mean, we weren’t seeing each other then, but ew.”
“What ‘ew’? Stripping’s not so bad. It’s not like they’re prostitutes,” I said, then realized what I was saying. “This isn’t about strippers. It’s—okay, so, maybe a minute or two after you left, this guy approached me and sat down and started talking to me. Angus. Looked like Anthony Hopkins. And we got to talking about writing and work and dating and then you—.”
“You talked to Anthony Hopkins about me?”
“He wasn’t actually Anthony Hopkins. He just looked like him. And just listen, okay?”
And with that, I began to tell her the whole story, everything. Beginning to end, or at least from the moment Angus had started talking to me until I had asked her to sit down so I could talk to her, there in my kitchen. I told her about Brigid, about finding the offices and how surreal they were, about the beer and the books and the bargains.
Most of all, I told her about the offer Angus had presented to me, that it might have been partly what had prompted me to talk to her, that day in her car after I’d sent off those chapters to that agent. I told her what I had just remembered, that parts of it had seemed a dream but considering everything else about Angus, who could really know, and Hell, maybe that was just how he worked, maybe that had been merely business as usual. And I told her I hadn’t remembered that night until right then, in that kitchen, when she had mentioned Shakespeare and Beethoven.
“So what, you blacked out?”
“I don’t know. All I know is the following morning you showed up and told me you loved me, and the following evening . . . that was the day we went to Candela, and oh! That was the morning,” and when I said I got the call about the Weinstein Company, we said it together.
“So you think he was behind it all?” Veronica asked.
“I don’t know. It’s hard to believe. But the letter, and the job. And let’s be honest, you—.”
“You think I’m here because he made me be here?”
“Of course not,” I told her. “But the fact is I haven’t written a word since that day, and to be honest, I haven’t minded it a bit. I’ve barely even thought about it, I’ve been so busy with other things. Not to mention so happy about other things.”
“So maybe he did have something to do with it.”
I shrugged. “Maybe?”
We both stopped. Truthfully, I didn’t know what to say, much less do. I stood and went to the stove, moved the chicken again, stirred the pasta. Busy work.
“I think we should call him.”
My hand hesitated in stirring the chicken. After a moment, I said: “I told you. I tried. The number didn’t work.”
“But you only tried it once? Maybe you misdialed.”
“It was already in my phone.”
“What is it?”
“What?”
“Give me his number.”
I stopped pretending to stir the chicken, turned. “Why?”
“So I can call.”
“You think I got it wrong?”
“I didn’t say that. I just wanted to try.” Her voice low and even.
“But why do you want to try?”
“Because I—because I can’t handle the idea that you gave up writing to be with me, okay?”
“I didn’t give it up—.”
“Look, if it’s the wrong number, and it stays the wrong number, fine, okay? But if there’s any chance at all, no matter how small, that there’s any reason we are together right now besides that we both want to be—can you really live like that? Because I can’t. And you know what’s more? You loved writing. You always have. You’ve always wanted to tell stories, and I’ve loved the ones you’ve shared with me. That novel you gave me—I loved it—.”
“You did? You didn’t tell my you had finished it.”
“I know. I wanted to read it again. That first time, I just wanted to enjoy it. But I wanted to tell you why. I could tell how much you had put into it, and I wasn’t just going to tell you I had liked it.”
“But you did.”
“I loved it. Which is all the more reason we have to try to make that call. I just can’t take the risk you gave up something so important to you—.”
“It couldn’t have been so important if I was so willing to give it up. And I might be.”
“And maybe you will. But not for me. I’m sorry, but not for me. I just think of Shakespeare and Beethoven, and can you imagine being the reason the world never got to see Hamlet, or hear the Moonlight sonata—?”
“I’m not that good a writer.”
“Maybe not yet, but you never will be if you give it up. And maybe you really do want to give it up, and that would be fine, but you can’t give it up for me. I need to know we’re together just because we want to be, that you’ve stopped writing because you’re happy. You can’t ask me to be the girl you gave up something so important for.”
“But I’m not—.”
“Then give me the number, and we’ll call him, and we’ll find out once and for all.”
I started to respond but stopped myself. Instead, I took out my phone, flipped it open, and searched my calls log. Which only went as far back as 30 days. When I pulled out my cardcase wallet, I realized I couldn’t find Angus’ card. Had I thrown it away
at some point?
“Problem?”
“It’s just—my phone doesn’t save numbers that long, and I don’t seem to have the card. But I think we can look up my phone bill online. It’s probably on there.”
***
Five minutes later, I read from my computer monitor the digits Veronica punched into her own phone, which she brought to her ear. She waited a moment, then, “Hi. This is Veronica Sawyer, and you did some business with a friend of mine about a month ago. I was hoping—yes, exactly. I’d love to come in to see Mr. Silver. The sooner the better. Tonight? Really? Absolutely I can make it,” she said, and then she pushed the button to end the call. “All right. Let’s go.”
“Now?”
“They had an opening for tonight. So let’s make use of what’s available.”
I nodded. I pulled the food from the stove, shut it off, and put the meal in the fridge, uncovered, hoping we would come back to it but not certain. I wasn’t certain of anything by then besides the fact that Veronica was right, that we really did need to know what had happened, if only because otherwise it would become something too large and too overwhelming hanging over both our heads. Knowing might change our relationship, I knew, but I also knew that, if we didn’t find out, not knowing would destroy it.
And so we pulled on our coats and headed out into an early evening in February. That afternoon had been balmy and mild enough I could have believed in spring, but the evening had taken a different tone, every inhalation tinged with a taste of metal and stormclouds, and the wind blew devils of dead leaves and dirty grass into spontaneous dervishes on the sidewalk. We walked together to the PATH station as darkness gathered and clouds accumulated, on our way to Angus and his offices, but to relay the events that occurred there, I think we’re going to need
A Bigger Act
Because here comes the homestretch. This marks act the third, which is the one in which all the events that have so far occurred must come together in the sort of perfect storm that was gathering even as Veronica and I descended the steps of the Hoboken PATH stop. The act in which the gun you saw above the mantle in the first must now be loaded, its sights calibrated, the target spotted. This is the act in which the shot must be taken, though not, it must be pointed out, the act in which that shot is guaranteed to find its mark.
It never is, after all.
Are you excited? I am. This is where it comes together, and I think I’ve known since before I began that pulling it together was going to be a challenge.
So I’ve poured myself a drink, and I’ve turned my hat backward, and I’m ready for this. I’m staring at my screen and thinking less “Bring it,” than “All right, let’s tell this story.” I’ve got Keane and Snow Patrol and Steve Acho performing piano covers of awesome songs, including Coldplay, and I can’t be sure I’ll ever write a song for a girl, but I think maybe I’m ready to finish a novel, and even were I not, I think it’s a bit out of my hands now. Here I am on the verge of an ending, a third act I’ve already written first and second and seventh drafts of but know in my heart I can’t use. They just haven’t felt right, haven’t felt true, and worst of all haven’t felt like what happened, but I know I can do this. I feel like I’ve got something special in this story, with this novel, and I feel like somewhere along the way it became more than I realized, and my only hope, here and now, is that I can make good on the challenge of pulling it off.
Because there are three options here. The first is to stop now and never show this story to anyone, and while there would be nothing wrong with that, the simple fact that you have read this far demonstrates that’s obviously not the way I went.
The other two are to finish it successfully or fail spectacularly in trying. Either way, how can you not read on?
Let’s do this, shall we?
Yes, I think we shall.
Chapter Nineteen, in which we do this
Veronica and I didn’t talk much as our train rushed to 9th Street, where we got off and ascended the steps into a storm that had, in what seemed like a handful of minutes but which was probably closer to half an hour, gathered up its courage to put on the kind of show that could make even jaded New Yorkers seek shelter. We looked at each other when we reached the entrance, where water slipped over the lip of the doorway and fell in streams like a bead curtain, and then she took my hand, and we took a deep breath of clean, gritty-tasting, rain-drenched Manhattan, and ducked out into the storm.
Most of the time, stories above the street, there are outcroppings and decorations that catch the rain first, so even a solid rainfall barely makes it down to the streets. But that night? The wind whipped it sideways and upward and counter-clockwise, and the City rejoiced in it. The City gleamed like sex-sweat, a hard sheen it wore like it was proud of it, like it had enjoyed working so hard for the flush. Tail-lights trailed red-streak reflections like “Just Married” limousines, and the neon shone like glamorama Heaven.
And rain like that? Hard rain in the City falls loud, echoing as it does off every available surfaces and finding so many available, and it came thick and fast, micro-waterfalling from awnings and gathering in ankle deep puddles at every handicap-accessible curb. The City is normally so full of sounds, car horns and engines, constant chatter, the micro-tremors of the footsteps of so many millions of people, but a rain like that reduces the entire City to one vibrant whisper.
All of which is to say Veronica and I were drenched before we’d gone a block. We hurried our strides as if we hoped to run between the drops, but before long we seemed to be wearing most of them, our coats and boots heavier than moments before. I could feel the cool stream down my whole body, and I shivered.
***
The rain slacked off a little as we went, and then Veronica stopped at one particular stoop.
“Is this it? I think this is it. This is the address they gave me,” she said, consulting a slip of paper she had pulled from her pocket. I couldn’t help noticing that the ink had run together, and I wasn’t sure how she could be certain. “At least, I think it is. I’m pretty sure. Is this the place you came?”
I considered the building. It seemed familiar, somehow, but I couldn’t be sure it actually was. It felt, in ways, like the familiarity that comes with dreams when you realize your house is actually your old grade school is actually your current office, the sort of vague familiarity—
You’ve been here before.—
you tend to go with rather than question. Looking at it, I didn’t exactly recognize the building, but I didn’t figure that was uncommon, not when so many Manhattan buildings look alike, not when construction changed so quickly the facades of buildings so many people paid so little attention to, anyway.
“I think so? It might be.”
“Haven’t you been here before?”
“Only once.”
“Twice.”
“Right. Twice. But I told you, that second time . . .” I trailed off, unsure how to describe it. Dreamlike? Surreal?
“Only one way to find out, then,” Veronica said, and with that she started up the stoop to the door at their top. I followed just a step behind, then through the door . . .
***
into a lobby completely different from the marbles and the waterfall I had seen. Gone were the chrome accents, the leather furniture, the glass surfaces; in their place were hardwood floors and fine Persian rugs and beautiful mahogany fixtures with baroque accents, tiny wooden claws for feet, intricately hewn patterns in the wood. The basic layout may have been the same, but it looked more like the lobby of a country club than anything as hip and modern as I had seen. The details were so decisive, so well-executed; one of the walls was not only full of leather-bound books with gold-leaf titles that sparkled in the sunlight but also included a slide-ladder as if people climbed it and retrieved volumes on a consistent basis.
And yes, you read that right: sunlight. Behind us, rather than a waterfall, were windows looking out on expansive grounds more botanical garden than count
ry club. No golf course for this place; these were well maintained lawns with finely manicured areas with themes like Shakespeare and Japanese and deciduous. It had to have been a display, right?
The desk in front of us had a surface so highly polished it reflected everything above it, including the slightly quizzical expression with which Brigid greeted us: a sincere smile still slightly abashed, still a little confused. “You must be Veronica,” she said, her voice straining for professionalism and cheerful greeting. “And you’ve brought a guest. We didn’t expect to see you again,” she told me. Her smile didn’t waver, but her voice did.
“Believe me, neither did I,” I said. “Just here with her.”
“Why don’t you both have a seat, and I’ll get Mr. Silver straightaway,” Brigid stood and went straight for the doors behind her. The décor of the rest of the office might have changed from whatever I had seen to the country club chic it had become for Veronica, but those doors were the same: enormous, intricate, life-changing. She opened one enough to allow her to slip through, and I wouldn’t have guessed a door like that could close softly until it did, behind her.
Veronica looked around, seemed to take in the books and the windows and the furniture, her expression inscrutable. “Impressive,” she said, finally, but coolly, analytically, the kind of “impressive” more acknowledging impression than actually impressed. “Didn’t you say something about a waterfall? And a fountain?”
“The waterfall was there,” I pointed toward the windows. “And the fountain was over there,” I gestured toward a spot where there was nothing but rug and wood.
“I wonder what they’re trying to hide,” Veronica said, as if to herself. “They sure pulled out all the stops to convince me of something.”
I wasn’t surprised the effort had so little effect on her, nor that she could see it for what it was even if she might not have actually been able to see through it. Not that I knew she couldn’t, but I didn’t think so. If she could have, she would have known what they were trying to convince her of.
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