New Year's Resolutions

by Briggs, Laura

  She wondered why she hadn’t topped off her list of essential qualities with these aspects of her dream guy. It’s not as if she had a reason to change her type at this point.

  “Speaking of resolutions,” said Abby. “I made a decision this afternoon. I want my class to have a real concert this year. I want to pack the school auditorium with a real audience to celebrate all they’ve learned.”

  “Your students?” said Maureen. “Are you sure about this, Abigail? Behavioral problems, anxiety disorders–these kids have a tough time just attending classes, much less standing up before an audience.”

  “I know,” Abigail shrugged. “But I want them to have this. They all need a moment to shine; I want them to feel as special as students going on to music workshops or scholarship programs.”

  Maureen blew softly against her orange pekoe’s heat, her face resting on one hand. “What about Principal Gyvers?” she asked.

  Abby’s jaw tightened. “I’ll persuade him somehow,” she answered. “He can’t deny the kids deserve a chance. And if I find enough money to cover the expenses–maybe a grant or an endowment or something.”

  She sipped her Chi, picturing the challenge of persuading the school principal to agree. He was tough on the subject of money–and student activities. More than once he denied activities and clubs on the grounds that students would be wasting the school’s time or resources on non-academic plans. Perhaps hosting a concert for the school’s less-talented music students would be on his list of pointless activities.

  “What are you thinking about?” asked Maureen, sounding curious as she watched Abby’s gaze grow inwards, her fingers tapping against the side of her teacup.

  “How tough New Year’s resolutions are to keep,” Abby answered, with a sigh. At that moment, she realized she meant more than just asserting herself at work.

  Chapter Six

  The pile of manuscript treatments on Henry’s desk made him feel queasy after a long holiday break. Jacket blurbs in need of polishing, potential cover ideas that meant soliciting new artists, probably–it seemed to Henry that he spent half his time reviewing canvases as opposed to cover art.

  A psychological thriller in need of a modern art print. With a sigh, he flipped through potential designs, a request for something with a strong suggestion of yellow.

  The same shade as his highlighter, he imagined. Something glowing and transparent, slicing through the reader’s brain the way his pen sliced through errors and typos in manuscripts.

  “Somebody’s been working too hard.” His assistant Dolores placed a cup of coffee in front of him, along with a folded copy of Publisher’s Weekly. “Have a nice vacation– or did you spend it all flipping pages?”

  He released a slight laugh. “Do I look like I apply myself to my work?” he asked. “You want someone who spent their vacation reading, better ask one of the acquisition editors that question.” He felt a twinge of self-reproach at the thought of his New Year’s resolution to read something besides the Times crossword puzzle.

  He pushed the coffee away with a twinge of regret, recalling his other resolution. Well ... maybe one cup wouldn’t hurt. His fingers twitching towards the tempting beverage, the two packets of sugar beside it.

  “What’s the deal with the yellow?” asked Dolores, glancing at the memo in his hand. “It’s scary–I don’t know if I should read it or run from it.” Her usual blunt reaction to anything handed down from acquisitions or the editor-in-chief that she disliked.

  “I think we need some new talent,” said Henry. He tossed the suggestions back into the pile, narrowly avoiding a slide in the direction of the forbidden coffee.

  “Well, I think we know where some might be hiding,” Dolores replied, with a knowing look in Henry‘s direction as she exited the office. Henry’s smile in response was faint.

  Once upon a time, he might have agreed with that statement. He dabbled with sketching and art classes in high school and college, filling notebooks with seagulls on the ocean horizon, still life images of fruit in a bowl or a pre-dawn city street.

  Even now in his office, there were framed sketches from local talent whose work Henry had admired at art shows and on weekends he spent watching others paint in the park. A poster of quotations from Wordsworth and Longfellow, predating the period when Henry stopped reading for anything but necessity.

  That was before more practical needs came to the surface than a love of creativity, such as a steady job that paid the rent. In the end, he traded drawing classes for business and literature, swapped creative writing for an internship with a publishing house senior year.

  Which was how he ended up at Harkin Publishing, putting future books together like a toy in an assembly line. Making other practical decisions that were supposed to make his life ideal, right down to the romance department.

  A sense of gloominess settled on him with these thoughts. His mind switched to the previous topic, which artist to request for the thriller. Didn’t he read somewhere that artist Song Li was working on a modern canvas in yellow?

  *****

  “You still need to talk to someone,” Seth argued. “How about one of those relationship gurus? My brother visited one of them after his divorce–bang, he landed his first date a week later.”

  Henry winced inwardly. “I don’t think that’s the problem,” he answered. “I’ve moved on, I just ... just don’t have anything else yet.” He lifted his sandwich bun, examining the pastrami beneath, the pale hothouse tomato perched atop the peppers.

  The downtown diner scene was the place where Henry typically preferred his coffee, not his lunch. But Seth preferred places with jukeboxes and records on the wall, so an invite to lunch by him meant foregoing any place with a seating hostess or foreign menu. Since Henry was still coffee-free, he consciously avoided glancing towards the happy patrons with steaming mugs beside their plates.

  Be strong, pal. Don’t give into to the caffeine this early in the game.

  “Is this seriously what I’m hearing from the guy who still leaves his ex’s things exactly where she left them?” asked Seth. “Come on, dude–her lotion is still on your bathroom sink.”

  There was no good reply for this, as Henry was uncomfortably aware. “Look,” he answered, “It’s just stuff. That doesn’t mean anything.”

  Seth had been patting the bottom of his ketchup bottle, covering the top of a burger in short squirts, but he looked up from his effort at these words. “So throw them out,” he said.

  Henry snorted. “Throw them out?” he repeated. “Why? It’s a bottle of lotion, not a love letter. It’s harmless.”

  “What about the rest of her things?” Seth licked his finger. “See, that’s your trouble. You even deny you’re keeping them around to remind you of her.”

  “Lotion’s useful,” Henry countered. “So is shampoo. As for the other things...”

  “Like photos, correspondence, that parka hanging in your hall closet...” Seth ticked the items off, dipping a French fry for each one. As Henry rolled his eyes in the direction of the busy counter of patrons.

  “Maybe I should have made it my New Year’s resolution,” he said. “Instead of finding true love, just sacking up the previous one for the donations bin.”

  “Excellent-o,” said Seth. “Didn’t I tell you that’s exactly what you should do?”

  “I was being sarcastic,” Henry replied. “In case you couldn’t tell. Wouldn’t you rather me chase down “the one” than worry about cleaning up after the one that got away?”

  The waitress placed a second order of fries in front of Seth, prompting Henry to recall his friend’s resolution to cut back on fatty foods–a stretch, considering Seth practically lived off chicken nuggets and mozarella sticks.

  “Let’s talk about your resolutions for a moment,” said Henry, poking the plate of fries with his index finger. Seth chewed noisely before swallowing his generous first portion.

  “Hey, at least I’m in a relationship,” he countered. Tru
e enough, since Seth was now seeing an astrologist–or an astronomer, Henry couldn’t recall which one. His friend’s penchant for quick relationship turnarounds failed to take him by surprise anymore, much less the cheery, practical way Seth approached his new love. As if the weeks prior hadn’t been spent in a gloomy state of mind.

  Gloom. That was the pervading sense of Henry’s dating life. That was the impression he formed as he entered his apartment, dimly lit by an incandescent glow. His reflection in the hall mirror seemed haunting, swallowed in the darkness of the walnut paneling and windowless passage.

  Dropping his briefcase by the hall tree, he turned his eyes away from the reflection. He shouldn’t feel like a ghost in his own home. Seth’s suggestions were purely the opinion of one man in a vast city of souls that might sympathize with the frugality argument behind a bottle of lotion–or the sentimental reasons for keeping certain letters and photos.

  But were those the real reasons? Usually, he didn’t question it. In fact, he didn’t think about it, as if the problem had become so ingrained in his life that it wasn’t worth noticing.

  “Are you hiding, Ron?” he called, as he hung his coat in the closet. From the corner of his eye, he could see a small figure move from the sofa to the kitchen bar, as if in anticipation of an open can of pate.

  Instead of moving towards the kitchen, Henry crossed the wood plank floor towards a bureau shoved against the wall. A framed photo nudged beside a row of family images revealed a smiling woman with dark hair, her arms locked around Henry’s neck.

  Moving the photo into the open, he gazed at it, remembering a time when he did so out of love and not merely fondness for the past. He felt a small ache at the core of his heart, recalling the moment when the photo was snapped on an afternoon ski trip.

  Pressing the button on his home phone, he dialed the code for his saved messages. A female voice emerged on the recording.

  “Hey, Henry, it’s me. Sorry I missed dinner tonight–I’ll make it up to you on Tuesday, okay?” Lois’s voice was husky, its lighthearted tones barely softening the firm, rolling quality beneath.

  All these months, and he still hadn’t deleted it. He knew once he did, he would probably never hear her voice on there again.

  His fingers raked through his hair in frustration, pushing away the memories of that connection as if flicking aside a moth fluttering around his head. The sense of a physical touch, even his own, seemed to break his mind free from the past again.

  Behind him, he heard Ron meow from his perch on the bar, craning hopefully towards Henry. At this point, Henry was usually in the kitchen slicing mushrooms and dicing vegetables, the smell of food browning in garlic and olive oil.

  Lois’s smile from the picture frame seemed to be focused upon the real Henry, not the one in her arms. Like a spell cast from a distance–although the magic behind it had turned to indifference on her part long ago.

  With a sigh, he played the current messages on the machine, a workplace question from Dolores, a reminder from this weekend’s opera box office for his tickets on reserve.

  Straightening his shoulders, he shoved the photo out of sight again. Seth was right– it was time to move on.

  Chapter Seven

  The overture rose from the orchestra pit, the low hum of violins like a cloud of bees traveling beneath the score. Overhead, the theater lights flickered the five-minute warning for elegantly-dressed attendees who were making polite conversation with each other as they waited for the curtain to rise on the scene of a carefree party somewhere in Italian society. The opening scenes of La Traviata on its opening night.

  Henry’s box for Friday’s performance included himself, Dolores, and Seth in a tuxedo in accordance with the concert deal made before New Year’s. Seth’s latest girlfriend was beside him, a thin blond in a maroon gown that revealed the sun and moon tattoos crawling across her shoulder like a sailor’s banner.

  Astrologer, not astronomer, Henry had thought, when they were introduced.

  “Charmed,” she said, smacking her gum until a glance from Seth reminded her to remove it. “Sorry,” she said, wrinkling her nose in a smile. “I don’t go to the opera much.”

  “I’m surprised Seth talked you into this,” said Henry. “Usually, his dates miss the opportunity to see him in something besides denim and sweats.”

  “Hey, man, no criticisms,” Seth had retorted, settling himself more comfortably for the long evening ahead.

  On Henry’s other side, Dolores and her husband were trained forward intently, waiting for the curtain to rise. His assistant was an enthusiastic opera fan whose side of the box consisted of serious music lovers, as opposed to Henry’s friends, who were usually pressed into going by bribes or lack of other plans.

  When Lois was in the picture, it had been different. She was a passionate supporter of the arts, her circle of friends belonging to music societies and cultural clubs.

  The lights were dimmed, almost magnifying the sounds from the floor below like restless birds stirring, sequined gowns against seats, programs fluttering in hands. Beside him, Henry detected a slight sigh from Seth, more akin to a groan.

  Henry’s gaze wandered from the chorus of performers to the darkness swallowing the audience below. After a moment, his eyes adjusted, allowing him to see the outlines of his fellow attendees.

  He had seen La Traviata twice before; it was his habit that whenever something in the performance failed to hold his full attention, he watched the faces of others still engrossed. A bad habit that Lois tried to break more than once, reminding him this performer mentioned in the program was legendary, that particular act was the most critically controversial in its history.

  Still, he couldn’t help it. The people below were another story in themselves, the man secretly texting beneath his program, the wife daubing her eyes with her handkerchief in anticipation of forthcoming tragedy. A teenage girl in a too-large party dress craned her neck anxiously towards the aisle–was it her first opera? Or was she simply bored and looking for something to save her?

  Henry glanced at the seats closest to the stage lights, usually clients offered tickets as a business incentive and individuals who spent half a day online waiting to reserve the split-second seats went on sale. Two tuxedo-clad men with two women bundled in satin wraps, a third woman surveying her program with a pinched expression. On the other side of her, a woman in a blue dress, eyes fixed on the stage with intense concentration.

  Her hair was light, almost aglow in the theatrical haze from above; he could see the profile of her face, the upturned nose and lips in dark plum. After a moment, he realized he had been staring at her for several minutes. She glanced from the stage towards the balcony seats, her head angled towards the box above. Henry felt as if she might look into his eyes at any moment and reproach him for his rudeness. Hastily, he withdrew, sitting upright with a sudden motion that jarred Seth.

  “What, man?” His friend kept his voice low, still prompting a shushing sound from someone in the seat behind him.

  Henry flushed, despite the cover of darkness. “I think this girl below thought I was staring at her,” he whispered.

  “Were you?” Seth asked. There was no surprise in his voice, although there was a hint of curiosity.

  Henry hesitated. “Maybe,” he answered. “I mean, yes–I guess I was.”

  He leaned forward again, aware that Seth was leaning with him, as if the two of them were studying the stage more closely. Seth’s eyes peered into the darkness below with interest.

  “To the left,” Henry whispered. “Next to the woman in the sequined jacket.”

  “Which one?” Seth asked. By now, more than one person was making shushing noises, including Dolores. Henry could see Seth’s focus trained on a narrow-faced woman in a white jacket studded with clear beads before his eyes shifted to the girl in blue.

  “There,” whispered Henry. Below them, the woman in the blue dress was whispering to the couple next to her, no longer paying attent
ion to the opera onstage.

  “Not bad,” said Seth. Henry snorted.

  “It’s dark–you can’t even see her face,” he answered. A sharp tug on his jacket sleeve pulled him back, Dolores giving him an exasperated glance.

  “Sorry,” he whispered to her. Onstage, the soprano’s plaintive voice rose to a crescendo in return for an enthusiastic round of applause. Henry rose dutifully, although he had hardly noticed the quality of the performance. A glance to the side showed him that Seth’s date was now asleep, her program slipping from her fingers to the pool of maroon fabric at her feet.

  “Hey, isn’t it almost break time–” Seth began, raising his voice louder to be audible over the applause.

  “Intermission,” Henry corrected.

  “Whatever,” said Seth. “Anyway, you should look for her. Out in the lobby. Maybe she’ll talk to you.” A hint audible in his voice, although Henry avoided his friend’s eyes as he kept his own trained on the stage.

  As the song warbled its way to the end, the curtain lowered. The lights brightened to reveal a restless audience rising from their seats, including Dolores with her handbag.

  “Pardon me,” she said, squeezing past Henry and casting a frowning eye at Seth’s dozing companion. Seth reached over and plucked Henry’s sleeve.

  “Come on,” he said, tugging him towards the box’s doorway. “Let’s go find her before they turn off the lights again.”

  “This is crazy,” said Henry, “I can’t wade through a crowd looking for a stranger–”

  “Hey, she’s pretty, your single, maybe it’s meant to be,” shrugged Seth. “Come on, let’s go meet her.” By now, Henry was letting himself be towed towards the stairs, the crowd of patrons filtering to the main floor.

  To his surprise, he felt a strange tingle of excitement. Almost as if Seth’s crazy plan might be the spark his love life really needed.