Strangers in the Night

by Ines Saint

  The next morning, however, none of what had kept Keila up most of the night seem to matter anymore.

  An early morning phone call informed her that the world was forever changed for both Cate and Jake, and all she could think of was the fact that she loved them both, no matter what type or sum of love it was, and how much she would give to ease their pain.

  Filip died in his sleep.

  The wake would be held for just one day. Keila arrived on her own, unsure of her ability to speak comfort. As soon as she saw Cate, though, she knew words weren’t necessary. A simple, heartfelt embrace and her hand were what her friend needed. They sat down, Cate spoke softly, tears falling, and Keila listened.

  Keila learned Cate had been the one to find Filip early in the morning, that it had been extremely upsetting and unsettling, but that she was concentrating on the time they’d spent together as a family the night before. She also learned that a shocked, grief-stricken Jake had been the very first visitor, but he’d soon left, afraid the media would turn up and make the day into a circus for the Nowak family.

  Keila looked toward the casket. A picture of Filip and his wife, Alana, on their wedding day, sat on one side. On the other, a picture of the last family portrait before Alana died, with children and grandchildren all surrounding the still happy couple, a reminder that so much of Filip and Alana lived on.

  It was hard to keep her thoughts from wondering to her own father’s wake and funeral. Her father had simply been alive, then gone. Ripped away and taken too soon. There had been misery and despair and anger because it wasn’t his time. But inside all of that pain, there had been love, too. Love for a great man who would never be forgotten.

  • • •

  The day of Filip’s funeral was especially cold. Keila, along with Robbie and her family, arrived at Mt. Olive Cemetery behind the procession. Jake, who had been a pallbearer, was now standing apart from the crowd and her heart ached at how palpable his grief was. Though he was standing straight, while his mother, who, just as dignified, held on to his arm, his bearing was heavy and strained. He was wearing sunglasses, though the sky was grey and full of dark clouds, and he was too pale.

  The kids from the youth centers turned up in force, and they stood around Jake, as if forming a protective barrier.

  Filip’s family gathered around the open grave as the casket was lowered, and a few cries and muddled sobs filled the air. As anguished family members huddled around each other, Keila looked away, not wanting to bear witness to such grief or intrude on that final moment.

  Afterwards, people began to press forward, to offer their final condolences to the family, but Keila couldn’t find Cate.

  Instead, she saw Jake, standing alone, his hands in his pocket, his head down, and she felt her very soul reaching out to him.

  Anxious but compelled, Keila walked over to him and stood in front of him for a moment, unsure. When he looked up, she hesitantly got up on her tiptoes and hugged him, whispering how sorry she was in his ear. Just as she was about to let him go, Jake pulled her tightly to him and hugged her back with a fierceness that made the tears she’d been holding back begin to flow. She’d been feeling as if she had no right to cry. However much she loved Filip, she felt it was the people he was closest to who had the right to suffer. But her tears now were for Jake’s loss and his pain.

  His deep voice broken and filled with concern, Jake unexpectedly remarked, “You’ve lost weight, Keila. Are you doing okay?” Jake was, at that moment, raw, and his emotions unbidden. That at such a moment he would worry about her …

  “I’m, um … No, I don’t think so,” she cleared her throat, pulling away. “Please take care of yourself, Jake,” she squeezed his hands hard, wanting to convey how worried she was about him, too.

  “You, too,” he said, softly this time, letting her go.

  Feeling heavy, Keila left to find Cate.

  • • •

  Jake hadn’t been able to watch as the casket was lowered, hadn’t wanted that to be his final memory. Instead, he’d always hold on to that last hug on Christmas Eve and his friend’s parting words. They made Jake understand that Filip was where he wanted to be, with his wife again.

  Now, as he’d looked out at everyone, he remembered how different his own father’s funeral had been. There had been two awkward sides. His mother, who had been his wife for twenty-eight years, Jake, and close friends and family on one side, sober and distant; and his new wife, sobbing uncontrollably and, well, unbelievably, obviously trying to keep attention on herself at all times, on the other side. It had been uncomfortable, to say the least.

  Filip’s family was united in both their pain and their celebration of his life. Filip and Alana, just two people, bound forever by a devoted and affectionate extended family whose existence made the world a better place.

  The sound of a few cries reached him, and Jake tried to withdraw deeper into his thoughts, to think about what his own legacy would be. He’d started down that road while speaking to Filip on Christmas Eve and hadn’t gotten far. But before he could go there, Keila was standing before him. Her touch, her words, her feelings soothed him as nothing else had and he held her as close as he possibly could, wishing she wouldn’t leave him.

  She felt thinner than the last time he’d held her, and he didn’t like thinking of her as frail. Protective instincts took over and he expressed his concern. But she withdrew from him then, and it pained him that, despite her concern, they weren’t on good terms.

  On a deeper level he couldn’t control, he knew there was nothing he wanted more at that moment than to go away with Keila again and just be. Lately, it was all he could think about. It was why he’d ultimately turned Melissa down on Christmas Eve and it was why an undercurrent of fear had been running through him as of late.

  “It’s so hard to let go,” Jake heard Shane, a boy who often played chess with Filip at the Pilsen center, say behind him.

  Jake was sure of just one thing; in order to move forward he had to let go of something. He just wasn’t sure what, but he knew he’d better figure it out. He wanted to see Filip on the other side when his own days came to an end and that meant he needed to become a better man.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  “Okay, I’ll do it,” Jake said.

  “You’ll do it,” Tyrone repeated, his voice full of doubt.

  “You’ll do it?” Cate’s hand went to her heart, and for the first time in days, excitement crept into her voice.

  “He’ll do it!” A teenage girl yelled out.

  “No way, Jake!” A few of the boys shot back, disgusted.

  “It was Filip’s last piece of advice,” Jake explained.

  A long silence filled the air. It was New Year’s Eve and Tyrone, Cate, and Jake were over at the Youth Center for their annual New Year’s Eve brunch.

  They’d agreed to talk about anything but politics, but that became impossible because that morning the interior decorator had finally surfaced.

  Except instead of issuing an honest, outright denial, she was playing coy, no doubt pumping her fifteen minutes of fame for all they were worth. Jake guessed her business probably wasn’t doing very well. “Let’s just say I got to know every room in his house very well,” was among the ridiculous statements the woman had made, when in reality she’d never gotten past the living room because he hadn’t liked her ideas for that room at all. But no matter, Jake’s opponents were lapping her whole act up, practically commending the woman for trying to protect him.

  Cate pounded her fist and grabbed Jake’s attention. “You know? I’ve been thinking a little too much lately, and I’ve realized there are very few things I know for sure. One of them is that Grandpa Filip would not want us to endlessly mope around, trying to get things done. Look at our plates, we haven’t even eaten!”

  Jake shuffled his feet under the table and managed a smile. “He’d be pretty exasperated with us.”

  “Yeah. Jake finally decides to go on She Said, She Said,
and we can’t get our butts off our chairs to make the call,” Tyrone agreed.

  Tyrone and Cate looked at each other, one moment nodding their heads in agreement, the next moment scraping their chairs as they scrambled to get up and get a move on.

  “Go across the street and find that contract they emailed you a while back, I’ll make the call,” Cate instructed.

  A second later, Cate was in the hallway, Tyrone was gone, and Jake sat in the noisy room.

  He picked up the Tribune and flipped to the page with their latest poll numbers and was first surprised, and then disgusted to see his numbers had inched up. Political analysts were quoted as saying it was the “mourning factor.” The public knew Filip had been like a father to Jake, and he had now garnered their sympathy. Score a few votes for him because he’d lost somebody he loved. It just didn’t make sense to him.

  Yesterday, he was six points behind, which was still a great disadvantage in political terms, and still a difficult setback to recover from. And these numbers were before the decorator’s comments had hit the stands.

  Jake threw the paper down, and made a real effort to try and understand the voting public. They just wanted to get to know him, both his mother and Filip had said. He breathed hard, trying to get it.

  Jake got up, walked to the window, and gazed outside. The steps in front of Chicago Youth Project were empty; it was too cold for any of the kids to be outside.

  People just wanted to get to know him, he again thought. When they’d seen him jumping from one vapid socialite to the next, they’d thought him out of touch.

  When they’d thought he was with smart, spirited Keila, they’d felt there was more substance to him, and they’d felt a connection.

  When they’d learned he’d lost someone he’d loved, they were reminded of his deep friendship with someone they could look up to as well, and they’d felt for him.

  It dawned on him that, though he still stubbornly thought the public should pay more attention to his plans than to his personal life, on a certain level they had always been right.

  Hadn’t Cate told him time and time again that most people couldn’t relate to him as a distant, aloof, socialite-toting playboy?

  They did, however, relate to the type of man who could fall for a hard-working, talented, and opinionated woman, and they could relate to a man who could forge a deep, meaningful friendship with a wise, generous elderly man.

  And wasn’t that who he really was? The guy who had fallen hard for Keila and the guy who’d loved Filip like a father?

  “Hey Jake, this says — ” Tyrone pointed at the contract and began to speak, but Jake put his hand up and interrupted him.

  “Wait a second, I think I’m having one of those epiphanies all those profound people talk about,” he said. Tyrone put his hands up and laughed.

  Jake sat down on the window sill. So all along, the people of Chicago had been trying to tell him to open up, and they’d responded each time he inadvertently had. It was all too confusing. People really did just want to know him. Leading, apparently, was about more than having a great plan.

  Cate walked in then, her eyes bright and Jake finally smiled because Cate was back, just as Filip would want her to be. “They’re beyond excited to have you on, Jake, and they’re even moving things around because they want you on today! It’s their highest rated show every year because they give a bunch of stuff away to viewers. They think having you on as a guest on the last day of the year will be icing on the cake because, you know, they’ve been teasing you about coming on all year long. But they have to know now; they need to add you to the promos now. What’s it going to be?”

  “Today? On New Year’s Eve? I don’t know,” Jake panicked, raked a hand through his hair, and turned to Tyrone. “What does their contract say? I mean, if I agree to go on, can they literally skewer me on live television?”

  Cate rolled her eyes at him. “Look, I wouldn’t put it past them to host a Jake on a stick for an end-of-the-year barbeque, where everyone takes turns asking way too personal questions and then burn me if I just can’t let go and answer.” Jake was serious. His fear of those women was real. Especially the hippie. He thought he’d have more time to prepare for battle. The elections weren’t until the last Tuesday in February; he could go on in a few weeks.

  “The contract won’t change whether you put this off or not,” Tyrone shook his head, as if he could read Jake’s thoughts. “It says you can choose just one topic to be off-limits, but everything other than that will be fair game. Don’t ruin this by over-thinking it, Jake; just tell us what you don’t want to talk about, show up, and let go.”

  “Do it, do it, do it, do it!” The kids in the room began chanting, louder and louder.

  When Jake didn’t answer, Tyrone turned to Cate. “Tell them he’ll be there.” Everyone cheered.

  “Tell them not to ask me about Filip,” Jake finally spoke, quietly. “Filip is off-limits.”

  • • •

  Keila got off early the afternoon of New Year’s Eve. She went straight home and began taking things out of her bag until she came upon the newspaper she’d bought on impulse. She stared at it. Everyone had been talking about it and she’d truly wanted to ignore it … but she bought it when she passed a newsstand on her lunch break. She then proceeded to regret it, but instead of tossing it she stuffed it as far down as possible into her bag. Much like the pit of her belly, it was now a rumpled mess.

  Now, she turned to page fifty-two. “Let’s just say I got to know every room in his house very well,” she read just below the caption. Her throat constricted and something lumped in her stomach at those words. Thoughts of those very rooms flitted in her mind, along with images of how intense and earnest his gaze had been as he’d looked at her while kissing her senseless.

  At that moment, senseless seemed like the perfect word for what she’d turned into. This time, she tossed out the paper. Though her mother and sister were at her Aunt Gina’s house preparing for her annual New Year’s Eve bash and were expecting her later on, Keila decided to go upstairs to crawl into bed, be miserable, and sleep until the next day. She’d claim exhaustion when party-time came around; even the overly shrewd women in her life would buy that one.

  • • •

  Late that afternoon, Jake looked around the tiny room that was supposed to be the green room except it was all … pink. What the … ?

  Fluffy, fuzzy, bedazzled deep pink pillows scattered on top of two plush, light pink leather love seats that faced one another and candy striped pink and white wallpaper all leapt out at him. Both Jake and Tyrone hesitated before sitting down, and then fidgeted when they finally did. Cate laughed.

  There had to be some sort of errant psychology behind the room. Its exaggerated décor probably meant to remind men they were in pure, unadulterated, and unapologetic female territory, while women guests probably found it amusing, a reminder that they were just there for some girl-time.

  Jake caught sight of a long, fuchsia spear in one corner of the room, the silver blade at the end shaped like a star.

  “The skewer,” Jake whispered to Tyrone, nodding toward the spear.

  “Ouch,” Tyrone whispered back.

  “Would you guys please relax? I mean look at you two! You’d think this was death row.”

  “Death by a pink skewer.” Jake fidgeted some more.

  “It’s a spear. I’m sure it purely decorative,” Cate smiled uncertainly, eyeing the long spear. “Come on guys, don’t you think this a fun room?”

  “You’re a woman, that’s how they want you to feel. But that’s not how they want us to feel. I’m on to them. They’re trying to mess with my head.”

  “Do you think they’re watching us?” Tyrone looked around the room one more time, his eyes darting from one corner to the next.

  “Nonsense. It’s six o’clock. They’re out there greeting the audience and you’re on in about five minutes,” Cate said, looking at her watch.

  “Why do
n’t they have a TV in here, then? Why can’t he listen to what they’re saying?” Tyrone asked, his paranoia mounting along with Jake’s.

  Before Cate could give another one of her calm, rational answers, the door opened and a man with a clipboard motioned to Jake. “Mr. Kelly, you’re on in five. We need you at the right side of the stage, right through here. When you hear Samantha welcome you, you just walk on, smile and wave to the audience. You’ll be sitting next to Tess.”

  The Hippie. Jake tried not to gulp. Gulping was a sign of weakness. He looked over at Tyrone, who visibly gulped.

  “I’d like to stay out there on the wings,” Tyrone informed the assistant, and despite his inner worries over Jake, he actually managed to sound like he wouldn’t take no for an answer.

  “Sure, one person is allowed just offstage.” He then turned to Cate. “You can watch here, the remote control is in the right drawer,” he said, pointing toward an ivory coffee table engraved with flowers. “And the TV is behind those doors,” he nodded to a large, matching chest that took up most of a side wall.

  The assistant then motioned for Jake and Tyrone to follow him and was about to shut the door but Cate held onto it, prying it open. “Just don’t hold back so much, Jake, okay? You’re a likeable guy when you let go. So let go. You owe it to everyone who’s worked their butts off for you to be yourself out there and show Chicago why we support you.”

  Jake looked at Cate for a long moment before finally shaking his head in agreement, though in reality he just didn’t know if he had it in him to just let go. The assistant more forcefully shut the door then, and he and Tyrone hustled as much as two people feeling like they were walking the dead man’s walk could.

  Jake stood just off stage and watched as the women of She Said, She Said discussed horoscopes, of all things. Samantha lived her life by them, Gretel would sue every astrologist for fraud if she could, and Tess thought there may just be something to be learned from the stars above.