Love In the Air

by James Collins

  With his hands in front of him, palms downward, Arthur made a patting motion. “Take it easy, Peter,” he said. “Please try to take it easy. I can understand how you might have misinterpreted this. I can understand your reaction. I would feel the same way. But you must believe me when I say that this note was intended for someone else.”

  Peter sneered. “Oh, come on, Arthur,” he said. “You’ve got to be able to do better than that.” He folded his arms. “All right. Why don’t you just tell who that someone else is?”

  “It would be a violation of that person’s privacy if I did so.”

  “‘It would be a violation of that person’s privacy if I did so.’” Peter spat out the words with mockery. “Let’s see: someone named Artie who works on the seventy-seventh floor and has access to your correspondence. Who else could that be besides you? Your evil twin?”

  There was a very long, very awkward silence. Finally, Miss Harrison spoke. “Perhaps I can help clarify matters,” she said in her low, even voice. “Mr. Russell, do you know what my first name is?”

  Peter turned to her and thought for a moment.

  “Uh … Miss?”

  “No.”

  “Well, no, I don’t know.”

  Miss Harrison spoke to Peter in the same polite, professional tone that she always used. “My first name, Mr. Russell,” she said, “is Artemis.”

  Peter pondered this. “Artemis … the hunt … Hippolytos …”

  “That’s correct,” said Miss Harrison.

  “Artemis,” Peter repeated. Then his head jerked back. “Oh! So … I … er … oh!”

  He looked back and forth between Arthur and Miss Harrison.

  Miss Harrison rose from the desk, stepped over to Arthur, and held out her hand. “I will take that from you now, please, Mr. Beeche,” she said. Arthur handed the note to her and she looked at it before folding it up. “I can’t imagine how I could have put this in the envelope with those other items. I am very sorry, sir. And please, sir, I hope you will forgive any unprofessional behavior on my part as may have been implied. I find that, late at night, it is sometimes more efficient to attend to personal matters in the office.”

  “Oh, please, Miss Harrison,” said Arthur, “no apologies are necessary. I am just so grateful to you for speaking up. Thank you very much. That was above and beyond the call of duty.”

  “Yes, Miss Harrison,” said Peter. “Thank you. I’m sorry for having caused this trouble. I misunderstood.” He was in a daze. Miss Harrison’s revelation astonished him and it was a shock to learn that his rage was completely unfounded. Moreover, the news about Isabella just made her even more incredibly sexy, not to mention Miss Harrison herself.

  “I was only too happy to help,” said Miss Harrison.

  “Well! My goodness!” Arthur said. “That was a bit of drama, wasn’t it!” He put one hand on Peter’s shoulder and proffered the other one. “No hard feelings, I hope, dear boy? No hard feelings. I would have done the same thing myself.” He moved his jaw to and fro. “Not to boast, but I always could take a punch pretty well, so we will just put that behind us, shall we?”

  Peter shook Arthur’s hand mechanically.

  “Well, well,” Arthur said, “now that we have cleared up that little problem, how about a drink?”

  “All right,” Peter said. “Thank you.”

  “Scotch is your usual tope, isn’t it?”

  Peter nodded and Arthur stepped over to a table where a few bottles of spirits stood. He opened an ice bucket, and, with a pair of tongs, dropped two cubes one by one into a short glass. The cubes were thick and landed in the glass with a chunk. It seemed very loud. Arthur unscrewed a bottle of scotch, making a swishy sound that also seemed unnaturally loud, and poured some. The ice cubes caused the scotch to climb up the sides in an irregular amber pattern.

  “Now, just a drop of water,” Arthur said to himself. He raised a glass pitcher, with a large belly and fluted mouth, and dipped it for just a second. This operation seemed unnaturally silent. He handed the glass to Peter. “Please, Peter, have a seat.”

  Peter sat and took a gulp of his drink. Arthur sat, sipped his own drink, and then just looked at Peter, smiling.

  “Please accept my apology, Arthur,” Peter said. “I assumed—”

  “As I said, no hard feelings! Don’t give it another thought.”

  Peter knit his brow. “Where is Holly, anyway?” he asked. “I thought you had plans for tonight?”

  “She’s at home, nursing a cold.”

  “Oh, I see.”

  They sat in silence for a moment. Arthur sipped his drink.

  “Yes, indeed,” he said finally, “I certainly am glad we cleared up that misunderstanding. I can well imagine your consternation, Peter.” His expression became more serious. “In fact, well, this is rather personal, but I may tell you, Peter, I am a bit old-fashioned about some things, and I still don’t believe that before marriage, a man and a woman—well, you see what I mean? Now when a man has a relationship with a woman where marriage is out of the question, it’s a different situation. But it would be unthinkable to put Holly in that category.”

  “Yes, I see,” said Peter.

  “Yes, well,” Arthur said, “apparently Holly has been laid quite low. When I spoke to her a short while ago, she sounded awful.”

  “Yes.” Peter was only half listening.

  “We had planned to go skiing this weekend. But I wonder if it might not be a better thing if we headed south—”

  Peter stood up. “Excuse me, Arthur,” he said. “I’m afraid I must be going.”

  “You—?”

  “Yes. I have to leave right away.”

  Looking baffled, Arthur stood. “Well,” he said, “of course, if you must.”

  Peter shook his hand. “Thank you, Arthur. Sorry about earlier. Good night, Miss Harrison. Thank you.”

  “Good night, Mr. Russell.”

  Arthur opened his mouth to say something, but Peter had already reached the door. He ran down the corridor and the steps that led to the entryway.

  “Good night, Manuel! Thank you!”

  “Oh, jes, buena sera, señor.”

  Patrick opened the door for him.

  “Thank you, Patrick! Good night!”

  “Yes, sir, good night, sir.”

  Peter had called Holly from the taxi. He had told her that there was something he needed to talk to her about right away, and she had said, by all means, come right over. Now they were sitting at either end of the sofa in the library of her aunt’s apartment. Holly was wearing pajamas, a robe, and thick red socks; her legs were tucked up under her; her hair was limp, and the rims of her eyes were red, as was the area around her nose, which she had been blowing steadily; used tissues filled the pockets of the robe, and she clutched more in her hand. Peter had never seen her look more beautiful.

  Only one lamp was lit, so Peter and Holly were surrounded by shadow. They sank down into the sofa’s soft crimson pillows. Holly drank tea with honey, Peter had a glass of seltzer water. They chatted for a while. “How did you get your cold?” “I can’t understand it. I woke up this morning feeling as if my head weighed a ton.” “What’s up with work?” “Nothing much, how about you?” “Vacation.” “Oh, right.” “I hope it snows again.” “Yes, doesn’t it look ugly when it’s gotten so dirty?”

  Holly’s voice was hoarse. It had never sounded more beautiful.

  “Wouldn’t it be fun to go look at the store windows? I haven’t done that for years.” “I haven’t either, and the Rockettes …”

  They fell silent.

  Holly looked at Peter’s profile. “So, you said that there was something you wanted to talk to me about?”

  Peter turned toward her; their eyes met.

  “Yes,” he said. “There is something that I wanted to talk to you about.”

  Peter took her hand. During the ride over, he had rehearsed his speech, the speech he had prepared a million million times. Holly, I’ve wanted t
o tell you something for a long time … Now, as he was just about to say those words for real, his heart pounded deafeningly. He felt as if a receding surf were drawing him down, down into the pit of a huge wave that would soon regurgitate him onto the rocky shore. After taking a moment to compose himself, he looked into Holly’s eyes.

  “Holly, I—”

  “What happened to your hand?!” Holly asked, examining it. “It’s all swollen!”

  “Oh, that,” Peter said. “It’s nothing. Had to take a guy down. I’ll tell you about it sometime. But it’s nothing.”

  “Oh.”

  Peter cleared his throat. He allowed a pause before starting again.

  “Holly, I—”

  “Oh God,” Holly said, “just a second.” She sneezed loudly and then took a clump of tissues out of her pocket and blew her nose a couple of times, wiggling it back and forth with her fingers. She needed more tissues to wipe her nose and hands; after putting these aside, she coughed and sniffled, and turned back to Peter. “Sorry,” she said.

  Peter shifted on the cushion. Once again, he took Holly’s hand. Before speaking, he drew in and let out a deep breath. Now—the moment of truth.

  “Holly, I—”

  “Are you okay with your drink? Because I’ve got lots of seltzer, or if you wanted a beer or anything?”

  While Holly asked these questions, Peter’s mouth hung open, arrested in midspeech.

  “I’m fine. Really.”

  “Okay, good.”

  Holly nodded, settled back, and looked at Peter with a sweet, earnest expression, but a whiff of playfulness around the eyes made him suspect that she was teasing him, and he actually began to laugh.

  “Something’s funny?” Holly asked.

  “No. Yes. Never mind,” said Peter. “Can I please just tell you what I came here to say?”

  “Of course.”

  “Okay.”

  Peter looked into Holly’s eyes. He waited and waited, and then finally the words seemed to flow out of him.

  “Holly, I’ve wanted to tell you something for a long time. For a very long time. What I’ve wanted to say is that I’m in love with you. I am completely in love with you. I am passionately, hopelessly, totally in love with you. I always have been, since the very first moment we met, from the first moment you sat next to me on the plane, before we even spoke. When you turned and smiled at me, all the light in the universe and all the matter in the universe turned into light—it would all seem dark compared with the way your face looked to me at that moment, and looks to me right now. We started to talk, and the next few hours were the happiest of my life. I don’t know why. I have no idea. But the feeling of closeness to you was like a drug, the drug made from the one thing that we are all born into the world wanting more than any other. Happiness doesn’t begin to describe it. It was so much fun—to be having so much fun with and to feel so close to someone who also happened to be the most beautiful woman in the entire world, because you are the most beautiful woman in the entire world—I can’t imagine anything more blissful.

  “Well, you know what happened. For years I thought about you every hour, every minute. Every second! Seriously! The pain I felt every time I thought I saw you on the street or in a restaurant—or on a plane!—and whoever it was turned around and wasn’t you. It was agony.

  “And then you reappeared again, and lots of other stuff happened. But I never stopped loving you, or being in love with you. Never. Ever.

  “I kept thinking that our meeting on the plane like that must have been the work of Fate. It had all been arranged an infinity of time before, and I thought that the purpose of infinite time—or, okay, at least one purpose—had been to bring you and me to those exact seats on that exact flight. But then, as the years passed, I thought, ‘This isn’t working out,’ and I couldn’t say that Fate had brought us together and then not say that Fate had kept us apart.

  “But I love you. I love you. I love being with you. I love your brain. You make me laugh. I can’t imagine ever running out of things I’d want to talk to you about. I love your heart. No one—no one—is as trustworthy or as kind. And, yes, I love the thing that your brain and heart get carried around in, because you are so beautiful—and desirable—all of you from head to toe, literally.”

  Peter paused, gathering himself for the big finish.

  “I know we’ve been friends, Holly, very good friends. I know that you love me as a friend. And I’m fully prepared for you to tell me that that’s just how you want things to stay. But can you give me any hope, any hope at all, that someday you might love me in the same way that I love you?”

  It seemed to Peter that Holly had regarded him with great tenderness during his speech, but he wasn’t sure if he had her. For a moment or two, as his question hung in the air, she simply stared at him, her lips apart. Then she lowered her eyes. After a moment, she raised them, and looked into Peter’s. Looking into them ever more deeply, she leaned toward him and rested her wrist on his shoulder.

  “No, Peter,” she said, “there is no hope that someday I might love you in the same way that you love me.” She slid her fingers around the back of Peter’s head and began slowly to pull it toward her. As she did this, she spoke in a hoarse whisper, saying, “Because I will always love you so much more.”

  She drew him to her and their lips met, and they kissed. It was a long kiss.

  It might have gone on still longer if Holly had not begun to sob. She threw both her arms around Peter’s neck and hugged him tightly. “Oh, Peter!” she said. Peter returned the embrace, wrapping his arms around her back. Holly felt as light and delicate as a Chinese lantern. His eyes began to water, too. He had told her; they had kissed; they were embracing. Could all this be true? Now he seemed to be flying, flying and soaring the way you did in a dream.

  Holly sneezed and sniffled.

  “Sorry. Wait.” She searched for some fresh tissue but found none. Peter picked up a box near him and offered it to her.

  “Thanks,” Holly said. She blew her nose, looked at Peter and began to laugh, blew her nose some more and dried her eyes, then looked at Peter and began to laugh all over again.

  “Oh, Peter!” she said. “I’m so happy!” She hugged him and kissed him. “Let me just look at you.” She leaned back and studied Peter while running her fingertips down the side of his face and along his jaw.

  “Holly,” Peter said in a voice that sounded strange and otherworldly. “Have I got this right? Do you mean … do you really mean that you are in love with me?”

  “Yes! Yes! Yes!” Holly burst out laughing. “Yes, I am in love with you!”

  For a moment they just looked at each other, stroking each other’s hair.

  “I … oh … I,” Peter said, “I’m glad.” He burst out laughing himself. That was the only thing he could think to say.

  “Me too!” said Holly. They kissed, another long kiss, and then Holly started to tell her version.

  “Everything you described is exactly what it was like for me,” she said. “Of course I fell in love with you the moment I saw you. Of course I loved our flight together. I never wanted the plane to land; we were together, together—like the dancer and the dance.” She laughed. “It was the happiest I’ve ever been, until this moment. It was so frustrating, though! Because the whole time, I kept thinking: I wonder what it would be like to kiss him, I wonder what it would be like to kiss him. The whole time, even when we were having such interesting discussions about the disappearance of vaudeville or whatever—and they were interesting—that’s all I could think about. It was one of my immediate impressions, in fact—how kissable your lips looked.” She touched them with her fingers.

  “Then”—she sighed—“the heartbreak. The agony. Yes—me too—‘Oh my God, it’s him!’ And then it turned out to be someone who didn’t look anything like you. For years and years, I thought about you every second, too.

  “Then when we met again, I just didn’t know about you. I dreamt and fantasize
d, and I thought maybe, maybe, I could say something and you’d say you felt the way I did. But I thought I was just kidding myself. And I was chicken. And there were other people involved.

  “So I had my dreams and fantasies. And now they’ve come true.”

  This was followed by some more spooning and sweet murmurings. After a few minutes of that, Holly said she had to ask Peter something. She said that she wished to reiterate her previous statements to the effect that she was so happy, that she had never been happier, and that she hoped Peter would forgive her if, when she asked her question, she sounded just a little cross.

  What was this?

  “Of course!” Peter said. “Please go ahead. Ask me. Ask me anything!”

  Holly leaned back and folded her arms. Her expression conveyed that she was decidedly peeved.

  “Okay” she said, “here’s what I don’t get: if it was love at first sight, if you were happier during the plane trip than you had ever been, if neither this nor all possible universes (I flatter myself to assume that you meant to include them, too) could produce the light that shone from my face, then why, why, why, for God’s sake, didn’t you call me?!”

  Peter stared at her blankly. “What do you mean? I told you why, ages ago. I lost the number.”

  “But Jonathan said you made that up to be nice.”

  “What?”

  “Yes. He said that you told him you had gotten a little crush on me on the plane, but by the next day you were over it and then got busy and just never called.”

  Peter stared at Holly, stunned. He could barely speak. “Jonathan told you that? I can’t believe it. Or maybe I can.”

  Peter took Holly’s hands and looked at her intently. He explained that he really had lost the number, that their first meeting really had been exactly what she had always wished it was. Then he told her what Jonathan had claimed she had said about their first meeting.