by Devan Sipher
“Another option is membership,” Tucker droned. “We see great potential in the idea of having customers purchase memberships to the newspaper.”
“They’re known as subscriptions,” someone in the back called out to scattered laughter.
“This is different,” Tucker said with a thin-lipped smile. “We want to create a sense of community. One with bonuses for belonging. Something along the lines of PBS, where you pay a membership fee and receive umbrellas or baseball caps. People love baseball caps.”
I was working at a company with some of the smartest, savviest people on the planet, and they were delusional.
So who was I to be otherwise?
I decided to do the story. I couldn’t claim it was admirable or even rational, but I needed to see Melinda again. I needed to know if she was thinking about me. It had nearly killed me running out of Balthazar after barely saying hello. I had sputtered something about not expecting her to be there. The understatement of my life. But there was little else I could say in front of Alexander. She had played it cooler, not giving any hint that we knew each other or that she even recognized me. Unless she didn’t.
“Are there any more questions?”
What if she didn’t recognize me?
“Are there going to be layoffs?” someone demanded.
Was it possible Melinda didn’t remember me?
“Never ask a question if you don’t want to hear the answer.”
Chapter Twenty
Up, Up and Away
Traffic uptown wasn’t moving. Eighth Avenue was a parking lot, thanks to the St. Patrick’s Day Parade three avenues over. Temporary insanity was my only excuse for being in a taxi.
I was meeting Melinda at a Starbucks near Lincoln Center, and I was counting the minutes. Still, I should have been grateful to be out of the office, where it was wall-to-wall anxiety as fear of layoffs took the form of conspiracy theories and desecrated vending machines.
With only a week until the buyout deadline, there wasn’t a conversation that took place that didn’t end with “So, are you thinking of taking the ‘you know’?” Decisions needed to be made or bets placed. Our workplace had been transformed into a casino, with management posing the question, Do you feel lucky?
Yet, at that moment, I could think of little else but my pending rendezvous. I had wanted to arrive early so I wouldn’t be nervous. Or so I’d be less nervous. I hadn’t slept much the previous night, as I contemplated disaster. And by “disaster,” I really meant any scenario that didn’t include her swooning into my arms.
I was fully aware that I was setting myself up for disappointment. When my phone rang, I jumped. Or I would have if I hadn’t been seated. It was more of a head-to-toe muscle spasm.
“Can we reschedule?” Melinda asked.
“No,” I said, before remembering that inflexibility wasn’t an appealing trait. “I mean, when did you have in mind?”
“Maybe tomorrow. Or the day after?”
These were not the words of a woman eager to see the man she’s been secretly pining for. Or were they? Maybe she was afraid to be alone with me for fear of revealing her feelings. I needed to hold my ground, which was hard to do when I was barely holding down my lunch. I focused on keeping my voice in a low register.
“I’m already in transit,” I said.
“I’m sorry. I don’t want to flake out on you.” She sounded distressed. “This shouldn’t be your problem.”
“I have some experience with bridal problems,” I said. “Is it something I can help with?” This was good. I was being empathetic and flexible while still sounding like a baritone.
“No. Well, maybe. This is embarrassing.” She seemed about to confide in me—a huge step forward in our nonexistent relationship. “You have to promise you won’t tell Alexander.” Even better. “I locked myself out of my apartment, and it’s the second time this month. Which is bizarre, because I haven’t done that in years.”
“Lots of people lock themselves out,” I assured her.
“They don’t have a very sweet but anal-retentive fiancé who taped a sign to the front door saying, ‘Do you know where your keys are?’ Which is why I didn’t call him, but now I’m stuck waiting for the locksmith on my front stoop. It’s been over an hour.”
“I can do an interview on a stoop,” I said. If I didn’t know myself better, I’d think I was a pretty smooth guy.
“I can’t ask you to do that,” she said.
“You didn’t.”
Melinda was sitting on the stone steps six inches from me. Her hair was longer than when we first met, but otherwise she looked exactly how I remembered. Her perfume hinted at gingery spices. I wanted to kiss her. Instead I clenched my notepad.
She talked about Alexander and Spain. She talked about the master’s degree she had put on hold while planning the wedding and the writing class she was teaching at a homeless shelter. But she had yet to acknowledge our previous meeting. I purposely dressed in the same jacket and jeans I had worn on New Year’s Day, hoping it would trigger a reaction. I could have just asked her if she remembered me, but if I had to ask, the answer seemed a foregone conclusion.
I looked for signs of familiarity and seemed to be finding them. She was smiling. She was bantering. She was also shivering.
“Are you cold?” I asked. After several days of springlike temperatures, the weather had abruptly boomeranged to a bitter winter chill.
“Guess I didn’t dress well for an outdoor play date.” She had a diaphanous scarf around her neck and a flattering but thin suede blazer. “But I can’t leave until the locksmith comes.”
I took off my plaid wool scarf and handed it to her. “Now you’re going to be the one who’s cold,” she said.
“I’m impervious to cold,” I said. She laughed with such warmth, I half expected the sun to emerge on command. Her arms were still clasped around her chest, and her teeth were chattering. Again, I had to resist the urge to embrace her.
“Which apartment is yours?” I asked, standing up.
She pointed to a third-floor windowsill next to the fire escape. “The one with the pot of overgrown basil.”
“With the open window?”
“I think it helps the basil.”
I climbed onto an industrial-sized garbage can next to her stoop.
“What are you doing?” she gasped.
I jumped up and reached for the fire-escape ladder. It looked easier when Matt Damon did this kind of thing. I briefly imagined how embarrassing it would be if I fell. I grabbed hold of the bottom rung and pulled myself up (all those chin-ups at the gym finally paid off), and I was soon scrambling up to the second-floor platform.
“Gavin, I’m fine. Come down!”
I was going up, not down. I was on a mission. I made it to the third-floor platform, and her window was less than two feet away.
“You’re going to get yourself killed,” Melinda shouted. A discouragingly possible outcome.
I had never envisioned myself risking life and limb for someone, let alone another man’s fiancée. But something about Melinda made me want to be better than I was. Braver. And a little stupider.
I leaned over the railing and reached for the window.
“Gavin!”
My hands were inside her apartment. My feet were still on the fire escape. It was neither a flattering nor comfortable pose.
“Are you stuck?”
I wasn’t stuck. I was just awkwardly suspended, gripping her window ledge for dear life. I looked more Michael Cera than Matt Damon. The latter would have crouched on top of the railing and flung himself through the window, but that kind of move works better with a stunt double and a safety net.
I heard something rip as I shimmied slowly forward. I pictured my butt hanging out of the window with the seam of my jeans split open. I wanted to reach back and check, but I also wanted to live.
I pulled myself through the window, careful not to topple the basil. What I didn’t notice was the cat�
��s water dish beside it. The plastic saucer tumbled to the floor, as did I.
I lay there for a moment, letting my heart rate decelerate and hoping the spreading wetness I felt on my leg was from the spilled water. I did a quick inventory of body parts and was relieved that other than a banged knee, my only wound was not to flesh but fashion. What was left of the front right pocket of my jacket was dangling at an acute angle. (The seat of my pants was, mercifully, intact.) I suspected the average twelve-year-old could have done the same maneuver with sartorial integrity. So much for my Bourne-like bravado.
I retrieved the dish from under my thigh. I had already soaked up most of its contents, but I wiped the floor with my knee to be sure. I looked around the room. Not in an invasive kind of way. Just taking it in. There were fresh tulips in a Turkish vase on an antique desk, and large, framed photographs covering the peach-colored walls. The pictures were mostly outdoor shots of exotic locations, but there were also detailed close-ups of unusual objects such as a broken umbrella upended on a cobblestone street and a handwoven basket filled with balls of colored yarn.
Her dining table was piled high with bridal magazines and boxes of wedding invitations, as were two worn leather club chairs. It was weird being alone in her apartment. It was like I had broken in. I realized I sort of had.
A buzzer blared.
Melinda must have been wondering what was taking me so long. I placed the dish back on the ledge before rushing over to the front door of the apartment and hitting the intercom button.
“Are you okay?” she asked.
“Piece of cake,” I said, pressing the button that unlocked the entrance to the building. I felt awkward about welcoming her into her own home, yet standing in the open doorway, I felt something surprisingly natural about waiting for her return.
She was laughing as she got off the elevator. “Who knew that Clark Kent covered weddings?”
I basked in the compliment as she dashed by me into the apartment. I was in the process of following her when we collided. She had a coat in one hand and her keys jingling from the other.
“We’ve got to buy you a new jacket,” she said, pointing at my pocket.
I was pretty sure that Clark Kent never shopped with Lois Lane, but the thought of Melinda picking out clothing for me had a certain intimate appeal.
“I owe you,” she said. “I’m getting off cheap compared to what the locksmith was going to charge me. Plus it will be fun.”
The way she squealed the word “fun” convinced me I was perilously close to gal-pal territory, and I didn’t just scale a building so we could get facials together. “Thanks, but I’m fine,” I said. “Really.”
“Okay.” She seemed miffed.
“So, shall we continue the interview?” I asked a little overenthusiastically.
“Absolutely,” she said, closing the door in my face and swiftly double locking it. “But not here.” She tossed me my scarf before darting toward the elevator, and I had no choice but to follow.
“This is a highly unusual location for an interview,” I said while taking off my shoes.
“Do you only climb fire escapes?” Melinda asked, a daring twinkle in her eye.
We were in a warehouse-sized gymnasium beside a three-story ladder leading to a circus trapeze. When she told me in the taxi she needed an energy boost, I assumed she was talking about an espresso.
“I thought you were afraid of heights,” I said, then bit my tongue. That was information I obtained on New Year’s, but it was too late to take it back. This was the moment of truth.
There was no flash of recognition. No incredulous smile. It was all too clear she didn’t know we had met before. A tiny voice in my head said, Tell her. Tell her now. Tell her everything. But what was there to say if she didn’t remember meeting me? And why should she? I had blown it out of proportion. We had spent less than a half hour together. She traveled around the world, and I was just some random guy who helped her down a staircase. Now she was probably trying to figure out how I knew about her phobia. “Alexander mentioned something about it,” I mumbled.
“Oh,” she said, completely unaware of my inner turmoil. “Well, I’m not afraid when I’m wearing a harness and attached to rigging. I wish I could go through my entire life that way. We have safety belts in cars, but what’s supposed to protect us the rest of the time?”
I couldn’t really think about that, because I was still registering the concept of Melinda in a harness and trying not to picture her in bondage lingerie.
“I took a trapeze lesson in Switzerland a few years ago, and I’ve been hooked ever since,” she said. “I was thrilled when I found this place in New York. I come here when I’m stressed.”
“Are you stressed now?” Was I stressing her?
“You try planning a wedding in less than four months. It was only two days after New Year’s when I met Alexander.”
She couldn’t have known how excruciating it was for me to hear that. “Why were you in Spain?” I asked, my warbling voice betraying me.
“I was going to my college roommate’s wedding in a small town near Barcelona, and the last thing on my mind was meeting a guy.”
Right. Last thing on the mind of a woman attending a wedding alone. “I’m not sure my readers are going to believe that,” I said, jealous of Alexander’s perfect timing.
“Well, it’s the truth,” she flared.
“A single woman on a transatlantic flight wasn’t interested in checking out who was sitting nearby?”
“I was still sleep deprived from the holiday and checking out empty seats. Not physiques. At first, I was annoyed when Alexander started talking to me, but he won me over.” I couldn’t imagine how. Or maybe I just couldn’t bear to.
“It never crossed my mind that it was anything more than a pleasant conversation,” she insisted. “When we parted at the airport, I thought that was it. ‘Nice meeting you. Have a nice life.’ I’ve never been more surprised than when I opened the door of my hotel room and saw him standing in the hallway with two dozen red roses.”
I wanted it to be me. Me on the plane. Me with the roses.
A whistle blew, and she bent over and touched her toes. “They recommend stretching before using the trapeze.”
“Do they also recommend taking out life insurance?” I said while reaching for my ankles.
She laughed, and I could have spent all afternoon folded half upside down, watching her do so. However, I needed to appear fully engaged in the task of interviewing her, which was also my opportunity to probe the depth of her feelings for Alexander. “If you just met in January, what’s the rush to get married?”
“There isn’t one,” she said. “If I stopped and thought about it, I’d say we’re being ridiculous. We barely know each other.” So I had reason for hope. “But I guess this is what happens when your first date is at a wedding.”
“You were able to bring him to your friend’s wedding at the last minute?” Some guys have all the luck. Others forget to even ask for a phone number.
“It was one of those events where the whole town is invited,” she explained. “The bridegroom’s family had lived there for centuries, and everyone escorted him uphill through the winding streets to the town square, where the bride was waiting by a five-hundred-year-old stone fountain. Alexander proposed along the way, and I thought he was joking. The next day he got me a ring. Are you taping this?”
“Huh?”
“I noticed you’re not writing anything down.”
Oops. I tapped my head. “It’s all in here.”
“You can really remember everything I say?”
She had no idea.
“I’m impressed,” she said, clasping her hands together behind her back and stretching her arms.
“I still don’t understand why you had such a short engagement,” I said, suspecting there was something she wasn’t telling me.
She rolled her shoulders evasively, but she was just loosening up. “Alexander felt if we
were going to get married, why not just do it rather than spending a year of our life planning it? And I agreed, since I’m a big believer in not putting things off to the future. I don’t like to tempt fate.”
So it was Alexander’s idea. Or maybe it was Genevieve’s. “Alexander and his mother seem very …” I searched for the right word. “Close.”
“Isn’t it wonderful?” Melinda enthused. Not the reaction I was looking for. “I wish I was as lucky.” Something flickered across her face, and she turned away. Maybe she wasn’t as hunky-dory with Alexander and Genevieve’s relationship as she claimed. Another whistle blew. “Let’s go flying,” she said.
After a quick lesson on essentials (e.g., remember to hold on to the trapeze bar), we were strapped into our harnesses, which were more like weight-lifting belts clipped to multiple rappelling ropes. We were soon ascending the aluminum ladder like adventure-seeking marionettes.
Compared to my earlier escapade, this was going to be a walk in the park, but when I looked down, I got vertigo. It reminded me of climbing a high-diving board—without the board. I felt an undeniable thrill at the prospect of “flying,” but I was also getting increasingly queasy, pretty much identical to my response to high-diving boards, which is why I hadn’t been on one in decades. From the age of eight, I was willing to forgo pleasure if it came with pain. Something for me to think about.
Melinda must have sensed my apprehension. “You don’t have to do this if you don’t want to,” she said, glancing down over her shoulder. “I was terrified my first time.”
The only thing I was terrified of was looking wimpy in her eyes.
“I’ve missed out on too many things because of being afraid,” I heard myself say out loud. “I’m beginning to think ‘fear’ is just another word for ‘desire.’”
Why had I said that? It wasn’t even a ready-for-primetime thought, let alone something to share. Melinda looked at me like she had just caught me peeing with the bathroom door open. Then she continued to climb.
What was I doing here? Did I really believe I was going to bond with her by quizzing her about her fiancée? It was absurd. And masochistic. I had made no impression whatsoever on New Year’s. I needed to get off of this apparatus. Take a cold shower. And focus on finding a way to save my job, because a buyout wasn’t an option. I’d been offered little more than unused vacation time, which wasn’t half as insulting as the growing rumor about management axing the entire wedding section. Renée was hoping our popularity with readers would protect us. But that hadn’t saved the engagement section, which was eliminated in 2000 after the dot-com crash.