Heat flared in her cheeks. “Of course not.”
“Don’t worry,” he said with a chuckle. “I believe you.”
“So…um…how’s the tour?”
“Okay, I guess. It could be better, but playing in a half-empty venue is still better than snoring through a political science class, right?” he said. “Say ‘yes’ and pretend to agree with me.”
Andrea laughed. “Okay, but only if you get me another snow globe. And don’t forget, the cheesier…”
“The better. Naturally. Although I have to say that it might be difficult to top that last glow-in-the-dark one I got you from New York.”
“I have faith in you.” Andrea had amassed a tiny collection of globes from the stops on Nate’s tour. She liked holding each one up to the light knowing that none of them were going to disintegrate between her fingers. “When are you coming home?”
The line went silent.
“Nate? Are you still there?”
“I miss you, Dre.”
“I…miss you, too.” Nate’s absence had proven Wolfgang Pauli wrong. Andrea had discovered that two desires could exist in the same place at the same time. She missed Nate just as much as she longed to see Isaac.
“Good morning, Ms. Louviere. Is this seat taken?”
Andrea jumped in her chair. Mr. Westin smiled at her from across the table.
“I…uh…have to go, Nate,” she stammered over the phone. “I really need to finish this paper.”
“Okay,” Nate said. “I’ll see you soon.”
Andrea stuffed her phone in her bag and steadied herself with a breath. She looked up at Mr. Westin. “You just pop up everywhere, don’t you?”
“I try my best.” He settled into his chair. A smile lit his eyes. “Your packages can’t deliver themselves.”
“About that…” Andrea wrung her fingers. She rehearsed the speech that she had prepared in her head. She was going to tell Mr. Westin that she did not want to receive any more wax-sealed letters. Trying not to think of what Isaac was doing behind her wall was hard enough without reading his words. The speech had seemed simple enough when she’d recited it in front of her bathroom mirror. With Mr. Westin and Isaac’s letter two feet away from her, it crumbled like Isaac’s apple. She wrung her fingers.
Mr. Westin frowned at her hands. “You’ve stopped playing?”
“Yes.” Andrea directed her gaze to her fingertips. The year without her cello had smoothened away their calluses. Isaac’s face was harder to erase. She saw it whenever she closed her eyes. “For good this time.”
“I suppose that means that our music lessons are out of the question?”
She nodded.
“That is unfortunate. I had come up with the perfect way to compensate you for your time.”
She narrowed her eyes. “How?”
“Answers.”
“But I thought you said—”
“You were right, Ms. Louviere. These letters are yours and you have every right to know about them. I have decided to help you.”
Andrea folded her arms over her chest. “For a price.”
“Yes, but a small one, I assure you. A cello lesson each time I deliver your letters isn’t too much trouble, is it?”
“And in return you’ll answer my questions about the letters?”
“One lesson. One question. One answer.”
“But why not just get a teacher who could give you lessons on a more regular basis?”
“Is that your question for this year?”
“What? No. Of course not.”
“So you have another question, then?”
“Yes. I mean no. If this is a trick—”
“It is not. You have my word. Do you agree to our arrangement?”
Andrea picked at her fingernails. She had scraped the remains of her mini recorder from under them a long time ago, but an invisible layer of dust still seemed to choke every inch of her skin.
“I understand if you need some time to think about it.” He drew out a wax-sealed envelope from his suit pocket.
Andrea stared hard at the letter, trying to summon the courage to refuse it. Three words in Isaac’s elegant handwriting leapt at her from the back of the envelope. “Read this now.” Andrea’s voice faltered as she read them out loud. She gaped at Mr. Westin. “What does this mean?”
“I have been instructed to wait while you read it,” Mr. Westin said, laying the letter on the table.
“What? Why?”
“I can only give you the rest of the delivery once you’ve read the letter.”
Andrea’s nape turned to ice. “The rest of the delivery? I have another letter?”
“No. A package.”
“Give it to me.”
“I will. After you read the letter.”
“No way. I can’t read that letter. Not here. Not in front of you.”
“As you wish.” He slipped the note back into his pocket and stood up. “Enjoy the rest of your day, Ms. Louviere.”
She watched Mr. Westin walk to the door. Andrea’s heart screamed with every step he took. Andrea squeezed her eyes shut and clamped her hands over her ears. The screams grew louder, drowning out every thought in her head except for one. It burst out of her. “Stop!”
Heads twisted in her direction. Mr. Westin turned.
“I’ll do it.” Andrea gritted her teeth. “Give me the damn letter.”
Mr. Westin nodded, returned to his seat, and handed her the letter. Andrea cracked its seal as quickly as she could without ripping the letter in two. She did not want to give herself time to change her mind. “My dearest Andrea…” Her voice trembled.
“You misunderstand, Ms. Louviere,” Mr. Westin cut her off. “You need not read the letter out loud. The instructions require only that you read the letter at this precise moment and in my presence.”
Andrea exhaled. Her eyes raced back to the yellowed page.
My dearest Andrea,
I thank you for indulging my request. It is not my intention to diminish the intimacy of our conversation. My sole purpose is to ease the fear that has grown in your heart. While it was necessary that you be made aware of the deathly consequence of crossing the crack between our walls, it is as necessary for you to believe me when I tell you that dust need not be the fate of all that dare to traverse it. I know that this decaying letter is far too fragile a thing to hold on to, thus shall I attempt to give my words more weight. I offer you a story, Andrea, but one that is different from those that I have already shared with you. This is not a tale of things that have passed, but of things to come.
In a moment, a woman in a blue frock shall walk through the doors of the establishment you are presently seated in. She will request a beverage—mint tea in a small cup. While retrieving payment from her scarlet purse, a coin bearing the image of a king by the name of Kennedy shall fall to the floor. It shall roll in your direction and come to a stop at your heel. My statements are not prophecy or conjecture. They are merely a narration of fated steps. To the woman they belong to, they are nothing more than meaningless fragments of her day. To you, my beloved, they are my hands, extended from the time and place I write this note, offered so that you may have something to grasp when faith threatens to fail. Lift your eyes from the page, Andrea. Witness how the truth of my words defies the centuries between us and take as much courage as you can from what is about to take place.
Andrea looked up. A slim brunette in a navy shift dress entered the coffee shop. She walked up to the counter and ordered a cup of peppermint tea in the shop’s smallest size. As she fished for her wallet, a coin tumbled out of her red shoulder bag and rolled to Andrea’s table. It hit the heel of Andrea’s sneaker and toppled head side up on the floor. President John F. Kennedy stared up at Andrea from the half dollar, waiting to be rescued. Andrea’s hand shook as she picked it up. The coin fell from her fingers. Mr. Westin caught it and returned it to the woman in blue. Andrea watched her thank him.
“You look pale,” Mr. W
estin said, settling back into his chair. “Can I get you anything? Water perhaps?”
“No…I’m fine.” Andrea could hardly hear her own voice over the blood rushing in her ears. “You said you had another package for me. Give it to me.” She gripped the edges of the table to keep herself from jumping on Mr. Westin and tearing whatever Isaac had sent from his suit. “Now.”
He handed her a small leather box. “Do take care opening it. I believe that it is rather fragile.”
She pulled the top off the leather case and shook the box over her palm. A triangular piece of faceted glass and a small piece of paper fell into her hand. Andrea read Isaac’s note.
A prism to bridge the present and the past, a handful of hope when I am far away.
Andrea held Isaac’s present up and caught a sunbeam streaming through the café’s door. The light shot through the glass and painted a rainbow over Mr. Westin’s suit jacket. The memory of another gift, a fiery one with a red-green peel, trembled through Andrea’s fingers. The prism slipped and shattered next to Mr. Westin’s polished shoes. Andrea’s hand flew over her mouth. She swore into her palm.
Mr. Westin clucked his tongue. “What a pity. It was a rather lovely prism.”
Andrea stared at the jagged glass on the floor.
“It’s fortunate that you have a spare.” He pulled out a leather case that was nearly identical to the empty one on the table. “I was told to give this to you in case something happened to the first one.”
Small golden words were embossed on the new box’s lid. FATED STEPS. Andrea ran her thumb over the words, feeling their meaning melt into her skin and slither through her veins. She lifted the box’s lid slowly. Sunlight twinkled over beveled glass. She lifted her eyes from the second prism. “Mr. Westin?”
“Yes?”
“Can you start your lessons now?”
—
They sat on opposite sides of a park bench beneath the shade of one of the park’s cypress trees. The chirping of birds stood in for conversation. Andrea took her brand-new bow out of its box and adjusted its strings. She did not want to play Mr. Westin’s game, but she wanted answers more. “What do you know about the cello?”
“I like the way it sounds.”
“I see.” She hauled her cello out of its dusty case and yanked out its end pin. She set the instrument on the ground. “Pay attention. I don’t want to repeat myself.”
He nodded. “I shall do my best.”
“Body. Front. Back. Ribs. F holes. Neck. Fingerboard. Scroll. End pin. A string. D string. G string. C string. Pegs,” she said, pointing out the cello’s parts. “Got it?”
“Body. Front. Back. Ribs. F holes. Neck. Fingerboard. Scroll. End pin. A string. D string. G string. C string. Pegs,” Mr. Westin said. “Did I miss anything?”
“Er…no. That was perfect.” She tugged an eyebrow down and pointed to the parts of the bow. “Stick. Hair. Pad. Frog. Screw. Clear?”
He smiled. “Stick. Hair. Pad. Frog. Screw. Clear.”
“We’ll start with getting the bow grip right.”
“Whatever you think is best.”
Andrea positioned the bow at a ninety-degree angle to the cello’s strings the way her dad had taught her when she was three. The only difference was that Andrew Louviere had demonstrated the straight bow principle without scowling. Andrea looked up at Mr. Westin. “You have to keep the bow straight at all times. Since the bridge of the cello is curved, this position will vary from string to string. See?” she said, demonstrating how to shift the angle of the bow. “Here. You try it.”
—
The lesson went more quickly than Andrea expected. Mr. Westin was a fast learner, but she was not about to tell him that.
“Thank you, Ms. Louviere. I learned a lot today.” He handed the cello back to Andrea. “Now what would you like to know about your deliveries?”
Questions raced to the tip of her tongue. One squeezed past the rest before she could decide which one to ask first. “Where do you get these letters and packages?” If she could find out where Isaac’s letters came from, she would not have to wait for Mr. Westin to show up to get her hands on them.
“From a rather filthy box. All your deliveries were packed inside it with great care. Their sender must have really thought that it was important that you receive each and every one of them.”
“Where did the box come from? Where is it now?”
“One lesson. One question.” He buttoned his jacket and smiled. “Thank you for the lesson, Ms. Louviere. I’m looking forward to the next one.”
—
Andrea built a little fort of textbooks around her desk to keep her thoughts from drifting from her general psychology homework. They clambered over an Erik Erikson book and escaped. She slammed her book shut, wedging her yellow highlighter between its pages. Isaac’s glass gift sat on top of her stack of textbooks and twinkled in the light of her reading lamp. She had learned that Isaac had used two prisms to study the composition of light. Before Isaac, two thousand years of optical doctrine proclaimed that impurities in prisms tinted light and produced color. Isaac debunked this. He funneled sunlight through a slit in a boarded-up window into one prism to make a rainbow over his bedroom’s wall. He used a second prism to catch the rainbow’s ray of red light. Had the popular doctrine been true, the second prism would have tinted the red light and produced another rainbow. The ray, however, passed through the second glass and remained red, proving Isaac’s theory that light was made up of a spectrum of colors.
Andrea had found illustrations of Isaac’s experiment, but the man in these drawings looked nothing like him. Ink and an artist’s limited imagination made him appear as lifeless as the tools on his worktable. She ached for the Isaac she knew. She took Isaac’s prism from its red leather case and angled it beneath her reading lamp. She traced the rainbow it splashed over the desk with her hand. Notches rubbed against her forefinger. A thin coat of white paint covered the indentions, but it could not keep the frustration etched into the desk from prickling her skin. It stung as much as it did when she had carved it with a ballpoint pen when she was fourteen. She slid her fingers over the desk and found a quarter note. Next to it was a musical sharp. The marks screamed into her skin, begging to find their place in an old song. She turned to her wall. For too long, an apple that had vanished in an explosion of white light had scared her away from attempting to open it. Today, Isaac had sent her a rainbow and a story. Both gave her courage. She reached for her cello and switched off her reading lamp. Music had always been easier to find in the dark. She cradled her cello and played Isaac’s song.
A flash of white light streaked over her wall in the middle of the melody. She drew more notes from the cello’s strings and urged the crack to open wider. Inky black spread out behind it. She squinted at the crack, trying to find Isaac in the dark. A lance of red light shot past her, pierced the prism on her desk, and splashed onto the opposite wall. Andrea’s bow hand fumbled and nearly missed a note. Isaac’s theory of light had just been proven over her bed. Science and history would never know of her accidental role in Isaac’s milestone experiment. Andrea didn’t care. What she discovered was more important than the composition of light. The crack’s rules were not absolute. She now knew of at least two things that the crack could not turn to dust: light and hope. Sunlight poured through the crack and washed the red beam away. Andrea forced herself to look into the glare.
Isaac stood next to his bedroom window, holding a wooden screen. He dropped the screen and sprinted toward the crack, bumping into a low table. A prism and a set of circular lenses wobbled on top of it. Isaac leaned close to the crack and peered into Andrea’s dark bedroom. Andrea stopped playing the cello and flicked the switch of her reading lamp. The lamp’s light shone on Isaac’s elegant face. He smiled and raised his arm to the crack.
“Stop!” she screamed, picturing his fingers crumbling.
His hand stopped a breath from the wall. He rolled up his sleeve and pointed to
a round piece of metal strapped to his wrist. Andrea raised her chin to get a better look as the crack shrank. A 1950s Omega Seamaster’s glass face shone in the crack’s light. Andrea gasped.
Isaac slipped the watch off his wrist and displayed its back. Two entwined rings, the symbol for infinity, were etched on the stainless steel. Isaac thrust the watch closer to the crack. Andrea leaned forward and learned the engraving’s secret. The infinity symbol was not made up of circles, but two loops of tiny, delicate words.
For Isaac. Love, Andrea
If I have ever made any valuable discoveries, it has been owing more to patient attention, than to any other talent.
—ISAAC NEWTON
Seattle
Present Day
Andrea is twenty-one.
Andrea pulled out a bass guitar from the back of a dented blue van and handed it to Nate’s bandmate Ross.
“Thanks, Andrea,” he said, pushing back greasy black hair from his eyes. “See you inside.”
Andrea nodded.
Nate shut the back of the van. “Tell me again why you decided to ditch graduation to watch us play? Don’t get me wrong. I really like having you around, but the places we play at…” He glanced at the small bar and the nearly empty parking lot around it. “Well, they aren’t exactly Carnegie—” Nate snapped his mouth shut. “Sorry. I didn’t mean…”
“It’s okay, Nate. It’s been seven years. I’m a big girl.” Andrea hid the lie behind her best impression of a smile. Unlike clowns with purple hair, Carnegie Hall’s stage still gave her nightmares. Sometimes she was naked. Sometimes all her hair fell out when she took a bow. She had skipped out on her graduation ceremony because she couldn’t stand the thought of walking onto a stage, with or without her cello. Irrational fears were the hardest to talk herself out of. They talked back. “Why can’t you just accept that I’m here because I want to hear you play?”
“You spent half of your spring break with us and sat through two gigs this week. You must be sick of our sets by now.”
“And I spent the other half of the break and my entire summer in Cambodia with Matt. That didn’t make me sick of building wells or houses.” Andrea shrugged. “I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t want to be.”
Love and Gravity Page 10