“I feel like I’m just waiting. Waiting to live, waiting to die, waiting for the other shoe to drop, trying to figure out what to do while I wait, and wondering if whatever I’m waiting for will even be worth it.” I ran my hand through my hair and leaned back in the cushy club chair at the Algonquin, famous for its literary history and the lights in the Blue Bar, where after two martinis, you couldn’t tell your agent from an alien.
I crossed my leg, revealing an Italian-weave loafer, and slid my fingers nervously down the pleat of my Armani slacks. The matching tan vest seemed tight, so I opened the bottom button, then loosened my tie, and finally stopped fidgeting. I’d made a fashion effort only because Ramona, one of New York’s more fabled publicists, liked her lunch guests to be “well put together.”
“When I write…” I said.
“Used to write.” Ramona corrected me and nonchalantly scanned the room for people she might know.
“Unkind,” I said evenly.
“You have mid-life angst.” She delivered her Holiday Inn diagnosis with only minor compassion, while making a failed attempt at surreptitiously checking her watch. “You’re just in one of your dark periods.”
Ramona was a true New Yorker—perfectly coiffed silver hair, seventy but sexy, black suit, gym-trim body, big diamonds, and short attention span.
“Stop being depressed,” she said.
“How can I not be depressed? Everyone in New York wears black. I feel like I’m in Game of Thrones.”
Ramona texted while absently addressing me and never making eye contact. “Taylor, I want you to take the rest of the summer and go up North to the lake.”
“The mosquitos are large enough to be wall art,” I said, as Ramona dipped into her tiny purse with two fingers. “Why do you bother with a four-inch purse? Don’t you have a pocket?”
“This purse cost a thousand dollars per square inch, and every woman in here appreciates that fact but you.” She extracted an old, rust-colored skeleton key and slid it across the cocktail table’s high-gloss surface.
I pushed it back and flung the back of my hand to my forehead, imitating someone about to be exiled. “Nooo. Anything but the key!”
Ramona pushed the key forward again. “Your aunt Alice knew what she was doing when she built that cabin, and even more when she sold it to me. Take the key and think about it. Better yet, just go to the cabin, breathe, and finish the damned book!”
I hugged her, thanked her for the lunch, tucked the key into my vest pocket, and left the Algonquin, melding into the flood of people hurrying along West Forty-fourth. I could send the key back to her with a nice note. I didn’t have to travel to hell and gone to write.
Two blocks farther, I stopped at Kaddish’s Deli to pick something up for dinner, where I stood in line waiting to order alongside a throng of irritable people crowding the meat case. The muscular man behind the counter in a sweat-stained T-shirt shouted in a Bronx accent, “In line over there!” He caught sight of me. “Hey, honey, what?”
“I’ll have the chicken salad sandwich.” As he scooped it up, two flies landed on the open tray of chicken salad. “Never mind. Keep the insect sandwich. I’ll have the mac and cheese.”
“Listen at you! Keep the insect sandwich! That’s free protein!” He was still joking with me as I grabbed the mac and cheese, plus a green salad, in a plastic box and paid the cashier. “Her Royal Highness don’t want flies on her chicken salad. She’s got no idea what’s in the mac and cheese!” He was right about that.
A block away, I tried to hail a cab as three of them zipped past me, their lights off, indicating they had a passenger or perhaps were just ignoring me. Looking back toward Forty-second, I saw two other people trying to flag a cab head of me. All of us, two feet off the sidewalk waving our arms frantically like human windmills.
If I weren’t insane, I would go crazy, I thought, and ducked into the subway, no longer trusting Uber drivers not to kill me. And to think some people were willing to text Turo and hook up with a total stranger and rent their personal car. And what if when they picked up the car, the guy killed them, or had a stash of drugs hidden inside the door, and the cops pulled them over, or the guy was a gang leader and a rival gang had been waiting for his car—the one they just rented—to drive by, and boom, they were dead! I’m good at thinking things through to their morbid conclusion, which is probably why I write…used to write…mysteries.
The hot, sweaty, body-odor-cum-food stench of summer underground told me I’d made a bad decision. Turo no longer sounded terrible.
Twenty feet to my right, a man oddly dressed for the intense heat of summer, in sweats and a hoodie, stood beside a woman wearing a fast-food uniform and a scarf tied under her chin. Suddenly he shouted something and pushed her in front of the oncoming train.
My heart slapped against my chest, and my knees momentarily collapsed. Two burly, middle-aged men shouted at him and instantly set chase, as the crowd screamed.
A skinny black man, in dirty jeans and torn tennis shoes, leapt over the side of the cement platform, his dreadlocks swinging around his head like ropes at a rodeo, and yanked the woman off the rails literally seconds before the train blew by. The crowd-squeals increased two octaves.
Several people helped pull her back up to safety. She was battered from the fall, with a gash on her forehead where blood streamed down onto her face and dripped onto her burger uniform. A man ripped off his shirt and tied it like a tourniquet around her head, and the bleeding slowed, and we could see she hadn’t lost her arms or legs or her life. Then other men in the crowd hoisted her rescuer back up, as everyone cheered and clapped for the man who looked like he had nothing to lose if the train had killed him too.
“You’re a hero!” someone shouted, and several people reached out to touch him, the way gamblers do when someone wins and they want the good fortune to rub off on them.
“Thanks, man,” he said with a half-smile and wandered off.
Transit security raced down the platform, and a medic came forward out of the crowd and knelt beside the injured woman. The two burly men had the pusher pinned to the ground when police arrived and cuffed him. The rest of us squawked our disbelief at one another like terrified geese.
“I can’t fucking believe that!” I shouted into the air, and people echoed me.
“Fucking crazy bastard!”
“Holy shit!”
There was nothing more for any of us to do but continue to quiver and move on. I tried to climb back up the subway stairs to get some air, my legs as useless as broken bow strings. I could hear the authorities in the background questioning the poor woman, and her weak, trembling reply. “I don’t know. I was just waiting for the train.”
* * *
I forced my shaky legs to propel me down the sidewalk to a brick high-rise on Sixty-eighth Street. I took the elevator, still clutching my deli dinner, and got off on the eleventh floor, then realized the door to my apartment was unlocked. The super was inside trying to get my air-conditioning to work.
“I was just in the subway, and a guy pushed a woman in front of the train!” I squeaked, grateful to have someone to tell.
“No kidding?” He grabbed the back of his pants and gave them a hoist, relocating the tool belt on his tall, lanky frame. Then he glanced over his shoulder at me for a second before tinkering with the AC again. “People are nuts!” He ran his large hand through his dark, curly hair.
That was the extent of it—so much drama in the city that nothing, not even my first-hand account of a woman being pushed in front of a subway train, could rise above the level of “people are nuts.”
I stashed my salad in the fridge, alongside the mac and cheese, and waited for the super to generate cool air.
“Can’t fix it,” he finally announced. “You’ll have to wait till Thursday, when the AC people can get to it.”
“It’s almost August. I’ve suffered long enough! I could die of heat stroke by Thursday. You’ve got to fix it.”
“Would if I could.” I glowered at him, and he shrugged. “Hey, what do you want from me?”
“Who are you, Adam Lambert?” I asked as the door clicked shut behind him.
I looked around the apartment at the tall bookshelves that required a ladder for dusting, the tiny kitchen with its old-fashioned fridge, the windows in need of washing that ran the length of the living room, where the old radiator provided heat in winter. Ironically the only thing missing was cool air in summer, and it was fucking summer!
I’d chosen not to sink my divorce funds into a more expensive apartment, so I’d settled for kitschy. And as I thought about that, I was suddenly angry and not even sure what I was angry about. I paused to look up at the ceiling at whatever guides or gods were assigned to me and said irritably, “Something has to change!”
I yanked a green canvas duffel bag from under my wrought-iron bed. A wrought-iron bed just screamed that I was having sex with no one, because a metal headboard was simply asking for a concussion. I started packing—designer jeans, boots, tennis shoes, political-statement sweatshirts, low-rise underwear, socks, shorts, T-shirt, sweats, and a nightshirt.
Finished, I rang Ramona. “I’m going. You’ll see me back here in the fall when my ass is so frozen, they’ll have to ship me home in an ice chest.”
Ramona seemed genuinely happy. “Good! Are you flying?”
“I hate to fly! Watch Nightly News. Everyone dies. The ventilation has Legionnaires’ disease, the kid next to you gives you measles, and then you crash on the Max 8.”
“So you’re flying.” Ramona spoke in a flat, disinterested tone that ignored my commentary and indicated she had something more critical going on.
“I’m wearing red so they’ll spot me in the wreckage and rescue me first.”
Ramona focused in. “Taylor, from angst comes great writing. But when you reach black-hole depression, no one wants to read what you have to say. You need a little joy in your life. Fly out to Minnesota tomorrow. I’ll call Marney and tell her you’re coming, and to get things ready for you.”
“How do you have an intimate relationship with a neighbor a thousand miles away when I don’t even know who lives next door to me?” I asked her, while holding my phone to my ear with my shoulder and evaluating whether I should pack one nice sweater and a pair of slacks.
“I’m a publicist. We’re intimate with everyone,” Ramona said. “Get a hot-stone massage and a facial before you go. You’re a great-looking woman, but who would know.”
“Thanks. I’m sure the bears will appreciate me arriving all tenderized.”
“With your height, those shoulders, and that short platinum hair, it takes a very confident man to approach you, Cersei,” she teased, picking up on my Game of Thrones reference and labeling me the difficult queen. “Fluff it up a little! And for God’s sake, lose the tie. You might meet someone. Imagine that! It’s been years since Ben, and you were at least writing during all that drama.”
“Maybe I’ll meet a homicidal lumberjack who tries to chop me up for cord wood, and you can be happy again. Can I get internet up there?”
“It’s not the moon, Taylor. Yes, DSL. But if phone lines are down, then internet is down.”
“I love it when you talk tech.” I teased her. “I’ll call when I get there.”
Ramona was right. After Ben, I couldn’t write. I was pissed at myself for ever having been with him in the first place and putting up with his needling comments about me. Though I’d told myself I could ignore what he said, it had gotten into my psyche and made me numb. I couldn’t write numb.
Income from the divorce was the one benefit of my having been married. We split everything down the middle because he didn’t want an argument—that was after we’d argued for three months. He didn’t want anyone to know why I was divorcing him—abusive wasn’t the descriptor he wanted to be tagged with. He had that perfect, beneficent, kind-hearted image to preserve for his coworkers and friends. God only knew what he said about me after I left, but it couldn’t have been much worse than what he said to me while we were together.
I looked in the full-length mirror. I was five foot eight, and my blond hair was intentionally Emma Thompson—short on the sides, with the high swoosh falling over my right eye.
I’m tall and big boned. How would that particular combination age? Not well. Ask a dinosaur.
My green eyes were fired up and jumped out at me, probably because my skin was pale and in need of something…ah, yes, facial cream. I opened a jar at random and applied the thick, white formula. My cheekbones were prominent and my jawline strong, but my smile was my most winning attribute. Men always came across the room to chat—if I smiled at them—which of late I tried not to do.
I examined the other jars stacked on my cramped bathroom counter, each touting a different benefit—lifts and holds, moisturizes and rejuvenates, erases lines and dark spots. Then why did women over sixty look like exhausted leopards? Relax. You’re not there yet. You’re a youthful forty-seven.
“I think I need rejuvenating,” I said out loud, and tossed that particular jar into my cosmetic kit. Maybe I’ll lie on the dock and get a tan. Or maybe not. I checked my figure in the full-length mirror. It actually wasn’t bad. However, I did long for bathing suits that covered me from wrist to ankle; they were charming. I didn’t even own a bathing suit. I was firm but not buffed. Everyone in the damned city was toned, or muscled, and working out in the rooftop spa at four thirty a.m. What’s the point of exercising if, when you quit for a week, you go back to what you were? I’m strong but soft. I was trying to make myself feel better. Based on the men I’d known, the confident ones, as Ramona would say, soft did seem to draw a crowd. Screw it. I’ll buy a bathing suit up there if I decide to go in the lake.
* * *
I was up at dawn, put on a pair of trim gray slacks, a tailored white shirt tucked in with a gray designer belt, and gray mesh loafers, then grabbed a cab and headed for LaGuardia. In line at the airport, the older, well-coiffed man ahead of me was giving his wife the third degree about what she’d packed for him. He was dressed in logo-festooned golf attire, minus the cleats. His head was on a swivel, scouting the terminal and pausing when he saw a pretty girl while continuing the conversation with his wife. “I told you not to forget that. How hard is that to remember?” He reminded me of Ben—nice looking, but not nice. She should tell him to stick his putter up his ass.
Ben could be funny, I mused, which is what attracted me to him, but I didn’t love him. And once we stopped partying and sobered up, it became apparent he was very bad in bed. We stopped having sex almost immediately. I wanted something more but made no attempt to get it, a fact I’d re-examined incessantly over the last four years. Was I in a trance, under his spell, lazy and not giving a damn, or what? I just hung in and put up with it.
What irony! The times when things were “okay” in our relationship seemed to be a reason to put up with the times that were horrible. Okay wasn’t supposed to be the condition of marriage. Okay was your condition in the ER: “He’s lost his left leg, but he’s going to be okay.”
I had two lives—the self-assured author doing interviews and book signings; and the wife, in name only, who’d stopped focusing on what she wanted and just learned to want less. My decade with Ben had been a total waste of time…pointless! Wind yourself up, tear yourself down. Let up!
I didn’t realize I was glowering at the man in front of me, who shot me a “what’s up with you, lady?” look. I quickly changed my expression, almost smiling at him, then caught myself in time to keep from acquiescing. I should be able to glower if I want to.
After an hour of waiting, we trekked down the jetway and boarded. I pushed my duffel into the overhead bin above my seat and buckled myself in, my heart rate increasing dramatically, my fear level rising. It didn’t matter if the weather was perfection, or if the pilot was Sully Sullenberger, or if John the Baptist materialized to assure me I’d have an equal number of takeoffs and landings. I didn’t want to be trapped in a silver tube 30,000 feet above the ground with no control over what might happen. Flying meant I trusted that the guy who tightened the screws on the engine wasn’t on meth, and the guy who loaded the cargo wasn’t an Al Qaeda sympathizer. I didn’t trust. I didn’t want to feel that way, but I did.
A dark-haired woman in her early fifties sat down next to me in the aisle seat. She was wearing jodhpurs and shiny paddock boots, looking like something out of a European riding journal. Strange attire for a plane flight. Where was she going that required she arrive ready to ride?
“Angelique,” she introduced herself, and I thought I knew her from somewhere—maybe a literary conference.
“Taylor James,” I said.
“You look rather dashing.” Her eyes danced over me.
“I was going to say the same of you.” I smiled.
“But you didn’t.”
“Synaptic delay,” I said, amused that she seemed to speak unedited.
“Going to the Northwoods?” Her voice was silky.
“I guess so.”
“You don’t sound very excited about it.”
“I don’t seem to get excited much lately. Actually, I do get excited, just not happily excited.” I smiled at her again. She was lovely.
“You have important work to do there.”
“That’s what my publicist says,” and I laughed. “But I’ve lost the passion.”
“You can’t lose what you never had,” she said.
How presumptuous! Why the hell do people think they have the right to analyze me? I was about to cut the conversation short when she gave a cosmic shrug. “Well, the Northwoods will change all that.”
“All what?”
“Your passion. You’ll find passion you never knew existed.”
“How do you know that?”
“I’ve been there.” She patted me on the knee in a familiar fashion and gave me a wicked grin. “Allow me to be excited on your behalf.”
The stewardess interrupted to ask me what I’d like to drink as the woman slid out of her seat and headed for the bathroom. She was tall and glamorous and a bit 1970s. “This is going to be a very nice flight,” she said absently over her shoulder.
She didn’t return, and another passenger took her seat. I told the stewardess that I thought a woman, the one in jodhpurs, was sitting there. The stewardess seemed perplexed, saying she hadn’t seen anyone. I walked the aisle front to back before we were told to take our seats and fasten our seatbelts. I didn’t see anyone either.
Well, that’s the damndest thing, I said to myself, then fell into a deep sleep.
I was surprised when the sound of the wheels touching down woke me up. I never slept on a plane. Never.