Page 63 of That's Not a Thing

“Nicola,” she says, confused.

Of course she wouldn’t get it.

“Never mind. I’m sure you’ll enjoy having your own office once I’m gone.”

“I would have, but they’re putting a first-year in here after you go,” she whines at me as she slumps into her chair, as though she expects me to comfort her.

“Well, look,” I start, my instinct to console kicking in in spite of myself, “it can’t be any worse than being with me, right?”

“Ha.” She looks at my almost fondly, her round cheeks turning slightly pink. “So true. Always carrying on about your pro bono case like that’s the only one you ever cared about.” She switches into a high-pitched voice that I presume is meant as an imitation of me, “Asylum, asylum, asylum. All I want to work on is asylum.”

I have a split second of anger, offense at her taunting, before I have an epiphany. Oh my God. She’s a genius! All I want to work onisasylum. I want to work on asylum cases all the time.

I tune Nicola out as I turn back to my computer and start searching anew. She makes a few more comments, but when I don’t respond, she leaves the office again. I imagine she is returning to a meeting somewhere else in the building, but who knows. I find website after website dedicated to organizations that help refugees seek asylum in the United States. I don’t think I should be emailing these places from my computer at Harrison, Whittaker, so I just start printing out information on the different opportunities while my heart races with excitement about the possibilities. More than an hour passes, and I amass a pile of twelve different agencies and organizations that I’m going to pursue.

Liam pops in, his eyeglasses perched crookedly on top of his head, and asks if I want to grab lunch.

“Nah,” I tell him. “I’m working on a new project. Check it out,” I say, holding up the top sheet from my pile of printouts.

He reads the page for a moment before regarding me with a proud grimace. While I wait for him to respond, I notice that he’s looking a little thinner, that the Atkins seems to be making a difference after all.

“Now, this,” he says, looking up with avuncular pride on his alabaster face, “thismakes sense for you. I could see you being really happy at a place like this. Not that we won’t miss you here—the sane ones of us, at least.”

I smile at him as he leaves and then glance at my desk clock. It’s 12:30 p.m. By now, Aaron has probably been to the apartment, gathered what he needed, and left. I want to call him and tell him about my new career goals, the refugee centers I’ve found—the Refugee and Immigrant Fund’s Asylum Support Group, the International Rescue Committee, the Center for Human Rights at Weill Cornell—names that I had seen and glossed over when I was working on Moe’s case because they weren’t completely germane to what I needed at that moment, but now they seem to be everything.

I may be the ultimate failure in the romance department, but at least I am beginning to feel like there’s hope for getting one aspect of my life back in order.

I hear my phone vibrating and take it out from my leather tote. My mom. Again. I press IGNORE and toss the phone back into my bag. I know that once we speak, we’ll have to start calling all the wedding vendors to cancel everything. At least this time around I insisted on paying all the deposits with my own money, so I haven’t screwed my parents in that regard. Even so, I’m just not ready yet to begin the excruciating process of dismantling my second romantic future.

Chapter Twenty-Four

June 2017

The room where Gladys is receiving her chemo-therapy treatment is at the end of a long hallway swathed in fluorescent light. It’s midday, and I know she’s been here with Mitch since early this morning, completing paperwork and some additional testing.

I knock lightly and then push the door open cautiously.

“Hey, sweetie.” Gladys’s face lights up. She’s not lying in a hospital bed, as I expected, but is sitting in a large recliner chair, an IV attached to her arm. Her suede purse is still in her lap, like she might get up and leave at any minute. Mitch is on the patient exam table beside her, resting his back against the wall and balancing an iPad on his lap. Gladys’s red hair is in a cute little pony-tail at the top of her head that makes her look younger than she is, and her makeup is as meticulously applied as ever. I wonder whether this is all a facade, meant to hide the effects of her symptoms, or if she actually feels as good as she looks.

“Come, sit.” She motions at one of the two chairs against the wall opposite her seat as Mitch hoists himself off the exam table. He gives me a quick kiss on the cheek, and I catch the scent of Liquitex paste, the glue he uses for his architectural models. I imagine him at home, worrying about Gladys and tinkering with his mini-replicas of the Freedom Tower or the Ryugyong Hotel into the wee hours of the morning.

“I’m going to grab bagels,” he says, looking at me. “An everything with lox and low-fat veggie cream cheese, right?”

His questions hits me like a full-fingered slap. To think we would have been family, that this tall, soft-spoken man who remembers how I take my bagel would have been a second father to me.

“Yup. Thanks.” I look away quickly, glancing down at my silver sandals as I force myself to think of Gladys today, not myself. I don’t think I’ll be able to eat while watching poison pump into her veins, but I obviously can’t say as much.

When Mitch leaves, I lower myself into the black plastic chair across from Gladys. “So, how’s it been going so far?”

“Fine, now.” She scratches a little at her chest, her manicured nails creating red lines across her freckles and age spots.

“Why? What happened?”

“Oh, it was nothing.” She blinks twice in rapid succession, and I can tell there is something she’s not saying.

“More bad news?” I hold my breath, wondering how her news could get any worse, what that would look like.

“No, really, it was just an allergic reaction to the first bag of medicine. They switched it out, though, and I’m fine now. Mitch noticed I was getting red welts on my face. All I felt was some heat, itching on the chest. It’s fine,” she repeats.