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Her gentle words, her sweet honesty…they began to soothe me like balm on a burn. I felt the tension in my gut uncoil slightly until something struck a chain-link fence right behind us. I didn’t know what hit it, maybe the Frisbee or a ball. But I hadn’t even known there was a fence in the first place. It made sense to keep the dogs corralled, but it surprised me in some awful way too.
I got to my feet and carefully made my way around the bench, my hands outstretched until I found the galvanized steel.
“I didn’t know this was here.” I curled my fingers between the links, staring at whatever lay beyond. A river, maybe. A skyline. Nothing. There was nothing.
“Noah?”
My grip tightened until it hurt. I forced myself to let go and said to Charlotte as calmly as I could, “I’d like to go home now.”
We walked back to the townhouse in utter silence.
In the foyer, Charlotte said, “I’m going out with friends for drinks, but that’s later. After dinner. I was wondering if you wanted your Friday night takeout or if I could make something for us? I was thinking baked chicken, wild rice…?”
“I’m not really hungry,” I said, trying my best to not sound like an ungrateful asshole. Pretty sure I failed miserably.
“Oh. Okay.”
“I’ll figure something out,” I said. “Go ahead, Charlotte. Go out with your friends.”
“Would you…uh, like to come with me?”
I knew what it cost her to ask me that; I’d felt the urge to ask her out and couldn’t muster the guts. I guess the cliff dive stole my backbone too. But then again, the relentless itch toescapewas consuming me and the sooner I was away from Charlotte, the better. For her.
“No. Thank you, Charlotte. I’m under the weather today. I think I’ll just rest. But thanks for asking.”
I turned and made my way up the stairs before she could say another word.
Alone in my room, I threw myself on the bed and did nothing but listen for the sound of the front door closing, which would mean Charlotte had gone out with her friends. My watch told me it wasn’t even four o’clock. I had hours to wait.
My thoughts went back to the dog park. I’d asked Charlotte where she’d go if she could get out of this city, as if I could live vicariously through her. As if I could escape the blackness through her vision. All I could think about was getting out, going anywhere but where I was, which was a chamber of inky nothing. A room in a townhouse. Strawberry Fields. A dog park with wide spaces that weren’t wide at all but fenced off. All different words that boiled down to the same thing.
No matter the name or dimensions; if a breeze blew or if it didn’t; if it were populated with dogs or people or just a chair and a voice reading in my ear, it was all the same black prison to me.
And I had to get out.
chapter nineteen
I watched Noah walk upstairs. Inexplicably, my heart clenched and tears sprung to my eyes. He was having a “bad day,” that was clear. I thought about staying in, but his expression, his voice…I recognized the grief in them. I’d looked and sounded like that many times in the early months after Chris died, and I’d just wanted to be alone. Noah’s “death” was fresher than mine and he was still making his way through it.
I got ready to go out, dressed in a knee-length blue shift with an artsy diamond pattern sewn in thick maroon thread along the hem. I brushed my hair until it shone, and it settled prettily around my shoulders. I wished that it were Noah I was going out with, that we’d slow dance under the lights of the Brooklyn Bridge, and I’d describe to him the sunrise so that he could see it. Like he had in Machu Picchu.
Because I’m his endless possibility.
The girl reflected in my bathroom mirror blushed.
“You’re setting yourself up for disaster,” I told her. “Again.”
But she wasn’t listening.
I met the gang at the Gin Palace in the East Village. The swanky bar’s façade was a jut of gold-trimmed onyx in the falling night. Regina, Mike, Felicia, Melanie, and Sasha were all there, sitting in a row on the top level of the long dais-raised seat that ran along one side. I climbed up the two steps, and Regina and Melanie scooted so I was wedged between them.
“So?” Regina crowed as Mike pressed a gin and tonic—the bar’s on-tap specialty—into my hand. “How was it? The audition for the Phil?”
“Oh, I uh…I didn’t get it,” I said, grateful that we were all sitting side-by-side. Regina didn’t know I was lying but it would take one peek from Melanie and the jig would be up. “It’s okay, though,” I added quickly. “I wasn’t one hundred percent prepared.”
Understatement of the century.
Regina lifted her glass in a solemn toast. “An A for effort, Conroy. We’re all happy to see you’re getting out there. And those knuckleheads at the Phil don’t know what they turned down.”
