Fare Forward (14 page)

I push away, out of the club through the twisting, rhythmic bodies toward the door, leaving my bewildered classmates behind.

"Gabriella, stop! Where are you going?"

Philip runs after me, out onto Broadway, and reaches for me. "I'm so sorry, I didn't mean to upset you, I don't know what came over me."

I stop and turn to look at him. I realize that he thinks my overpowering need to leave is his fault.

"No, Philip, it's not that. Not
you,
I mean." I take his hands and hold them in reassurance. "It's my head. I, I'm just exhausted and need to go home. Get some rest before the review tomorrow."

He pauses for a moment as he tries to evaluate, to interpret this sudden excuse for departure. He doesn't believe me.

"Come on, Gabriella, it's two in the morning, no one is going to sleep before the review." His hand tightens around mine; his voice is soft. "Please stay with me."

He stands before me, so incredibly vulnerable, offering himself in a way that I have not seen before. I want to tell him the real reason I have to get out, but I can't. I don't even understand it myself. It's something about that girl. The overwhelming sensation announces itself again as I desperately attempt to end the conversation.

"I'm going. I've got to get away from here. Now. Clear my head and shower." I try to convince myself, pull anything normal toward me.

I see the concern in his eyes as he takes another step closer. His fingers brush the side of my cheek, my mouth, and across my lips, outlining their shape with the slightest touch. His hand slowly travels down my arm and comes to rest on my waist. The index fingers of both hands circle through the belt loops on my jeans and before I can back away, he pulls me toward him and the fronts of our bodies touch.

"Philip, stop this, please."

"You're really just going to leave me here. With them?" He smiles.

I see something in his face: a truth, an affection I want—the history we've shared. We both know that the intensity of our connection is undeniable.

"Thanks, Philip, I'm flattered. Please don't think it's you, I'm just not—"

"I want to kiss you, Gabriella,
really
kiss you. Just let me. Even if you don't kiss me back. I don't care."

I step away. I can't look at him like this; I don't want to hurt him. A taxi is coming down the street, and as I raise my arm to hail it, the wind whips itself into a frenzy and pushes me over. I shudder from its impact and fall back as I lose my balance.

"Gabriella!"

I know that once again, I am trying to run away: from the girl who brought on the overwhelming premonition, from my peers, and from any chance at a normal life that I might have. Philip reaches out and catches me. As my face presses into him, I feel my tears on his skin.

"You are
not
going to be alone tonight," he says.

And then I feel myself letting go. Giving in. Losing myself and my resolve in the comfort of his words. I will take what he offers because I know that it's time. There is no choice. Things need to change.

I
T IS LATE—OR EARLY—the middle of the night, but I can clearly see the outline of his face inches away from mine.

What am I doing here?
I think.

I feel the unfamiliar pressure of the strange bed under me. This had been a bad idea. Wrong.

I should have been preparing my body and mind for the architecture review that was only a few hours away. I look at Philip as he sleeps and turn away from him knowing that my instincts had been right. I wished this had not happened and wonder once again what the hell is the matter with me. The New York night sky glows outside the windows as my mind races through the strange events of the day. The studio, the powerful premonition that I could not explain, casting its spell over everything, and, now, here with him.

I force my eyes shut. I need to think about the first project that I am presenting in the studio. A "spiritual retreat," they had called it, a "space for scientists pushing the boundaries in their fields."

The leaders and visionaries.

"We are challenging you to create with architecture an environment that will encourage that experience."

I review the purposely vague information we had been given.

Site: unspecified.

Goal: a building that could have significant impact in its physical and aesthetic presence, facilitating the need to withdraw. To search one's interior world, balancing out the opposing forces of the physical, thereby increasing the understanding of both.

I could relate. It was a challenge that reflected perfectly my own questioning.

The task the architecture critics had challenged us with seemed ironic. The subject of this first project mirrored the relationship with my grandfather and his work. Maybe it was no coincidence. My life was characterized by these strange intersections of fate, often blurring the distinction between what was real and what was not.

I thought back to the visit I had made to the Monastery of St. Catherine's in the desert when I was a little girl with my mother. Built at the base of Mount Sinai, this was believed to be the place where Moses saw the burning bush. Even though I was very young, the remarkable space and cell-like chambers had sparked my interest in architecture. I remember clearly the incredible silence of the desert, a place of contemplation and quiet. My goal was to translate these timeless concepts into a modernist design that embodied the power and efficiency of technology, clean and pure. Creating space for the mind to expand.

"Gabriella." I hear Philip's voice, soft with sleep.

He sighs and moves toward me. I feel his lips as they find the place at the top of my neck that he's uncovered and the slow concentrated movement down the chain of my vertebrae. He kisses them one at a time as his mouth claims my body. I want it to feel right. I want it to work—but it doesn't.

"Philip, stop."

I catch his hands as they wrap around me and try to pull me into him.

"Come
on,
Gabriella."

"We need to get ready, get up. The review is only—" I try to stand and feel the fragments of pain in my head return. I reach up and force my hands on either side of my temples. It's the girl from the bar. I have a clear image of her face in a pool of blood.

"Oh my God."

"What is it?" He reaches out and pulls me toward him.

"I keep seeing this image in my mind. It's so clear. Of a girl, that girl last night at the bar. That something terrible happened to her."

He knows I have more to say.

"And, what else? What is it?"

"Philip, it's you. I need you." I search for the right words, not sure what I want to say. "To understand."

"Gabriella, you could pull my heart right out of me." He looks away.

I'm stunned, he has never been so brutally honest.

"I'm sorry."

"No, Gabriella, I'm sorry. To do this to you."

"Philip, this." I point to the bed. "This just doesn't feel right. I don't want to lose you. I can't lose you too."

"That will never happen." Then he seems to understand what I am referring to. "Gabriella, you don't think that, last night we—" He looks at me in disbelief.

"Well?"

"I told you, you could trust me." He rubs his hands all over the top of my head, turning my hair into a crazy mess.

"What?" I look at him, slightly indignant. "I'm practically naked!"

"You passed out, Gabriella, in the cab. It was a good thing we were together. I almost let you leave alone." He shakes off the memory.

"I just don't remember last night very well—" I look up at the ceiling, my knees up, hands under my chin.

"I carried you upstairs and into bed; you needed sleep."

I put my head down in submission, hiding my face and everything I am feeling.

"I did undress you, however." He winks at me.

"Oh, Philip, it's too much."

"Gabriella, what's going on? It's not like you to doubt yourself."

"It's not that, not just the studio, Philip, or even last night. It's everything else. My grandfather's work, the award, and all the press. The security threats. He's been acting different, unnerved."

"You need to talk to him, tell him how you feel. I'm sure you can talk to him about anything."

I remember the day in my grandfather's library, before I left Gloucester for New York, when he gave me the diaries and the special coin. The amulet, he had called it. I thought about the powerful energy I felt when I held it, the things I could see, the tears in his eyes and the pain on his face when I wanted to ask about my grandmother's death. There was so much I didn't know and now there was something else. The mystery of Benjamin Landsman. What he was doing with my grandfather and the bizarre coincidences of our meetings. I knew there was a significant connection between the two of them but I did not know what. My grandfather thanked him. He
knew
him.

Very well.

I lift my head up and look at Philip and see his eyes soft with concern.

"Thank you, Philip, for everything. For understanding and for always being there for me. Just don't leave me okay? Don't
ever
leave me."

He nods and pulls me toward him in a hug."It's okay, Gabriella, I'm not going anywhere."

W
E SIT TOGETHER IN his living room, and I watch the way his hand moves over his guitar, up and down. He closes his eyes as he sings to me. I laugh at his attempts at composition, playing the music that reminds me of our adventures through England together, distracting me from the pain in my head. Coffee is helping, and I'm starting to feel more like myself.

"It's so good to see you laughing, sometimes you worry me," he says.

The first pink light of morning makes its way into the room. "Philip, the review."

"Your project is good, Gabriella. No, better than good. Actually, I would say you're almost cheating." He is teasing me again, and I relax into the familiar banter of our relationship.

"Is that so? How could I possibly be cheating?"

"Our project is about science and art. The questions your grandfather has spent his life pursuing. Things he told me himself. It's like you have an inside track."

I think about the many conversations we have shared, questioning what is worthy of a life's work. The journey to understand, illuminate, and find proof of the nature of the universe, its mysteries and man's place in it. The fundamental questions that are at the foundation of every great religion and scientific search.

Valuable and necessary.

"The desire to explain the world is at the core of human creativity and curiosity, Gabriella."

"I don't know, honestly. I'm just creating more questions—not finding any answers."

"Painting and architecture. The connection between the different sides of our brain, Gabriella. You'll see."

"I should have been a scientist, like him. Maybe a surgeon, cutting people up. That might have helped." I feel frustrated, anxious, exhausted.

"Come on, Gabriella, you have always pursued your own path. Not science and not the spiritual realm your parents occupied. We've talked about this many times. You're different. Not everyone has this deep desire to understand things."

"I don't want to be different, Philip." I wanted the clarity that always seemed to be outside of my grasp.

"Gabriella, just like in art, ambiguity is a good thing. It's filled with contradictions that are able to coexist. That's you, Gabriella, that's what I love about you. One of the things."

"Stop. Now." I try not to laugh.

"You're complicated, interesting, and very, uh, what's the word?" He drums his fingers on the table as he looks up at the ceiling. "Oh yeah. Delicious."

"Philip!" His attempt to cheer me up is succeeding.

"You defy description."

I can see him trying to conceal a laugh.

"Yes, well, I'm not sure you mean that as a compliment."

"Why don't you just try to live in the real world?"

I look at him and listen and wonder what it is that he sees in me.

"Why are you willing to accept me on any terms?"

"Perhaps there's a scientific explanation. Or maybe there isn't a theory for everything?"

"Very funny."

I wish I could tell him more about what was really on my mind: that the visions and premonitions were back, more clear and more powerful than ever. My secret, the one held in for so many years, the unexplainable connections that I had to certain people, was becoming more obvious. Even the sense that my parents and grandmother were often with me and watching me. I was certain now that my life was progressing along a preordained path—destination determined.

"My grandfather said he was going to find it. The answer, the Theory of Everything."

Philip knew the stories of his years with Einstein, how he had devoted his life to studying his theories on time.

"It's a certain arrogance in a way, Gabriella. The scientific community believes that everything will ultimately be explained. Imagine that! The human mind has simply not gotten there yet, they say, so that's what he is trying to find."

"Maybe he's already found the proof."

"Most people think that if we can't see it or feel it—then it cannot exist. This is what has always dominated man's limited thinking." He stands up abruptly in frustration and walks away. The sight of the practically naked, guitar slinging philosopher makes me laugh. He turns around to look at me."What?"

"You!
You're ridiculous that's what. Look at you!"

He holds his guitar in front of himself, mirroring Adam in the Garden of Eden when he discovers his nakedness.

"Gabriella, we are talking about physics here." He crosses his arms in mock authority as he lowers his voice to a deep baritone. "This is serious."

His attempt to distract me seems to be working, but I am worried. Furthered in great part by my grandfather's research and work, I knew that commonly held beliefs were shifting. I had been having strange unclear premonitions about my grandfather, his safety, and his future. I wondered how much more I could tell Philip.