Imaginary Lines (32 page)

I patted what I could reach of his cheek through my glove and his scarf. Really, it was more like fabric bouncing off each other. “Welcome to how the other half lives.”

It took an hour to get onto the rink, and I’d never had so much fun waiting in line. We drank hot chocolate and made up stories about all the other skaters and people around us.

To my surprise, Abe
could
skate, and while I wouldn’t be going for the gold anytime soon, I managed not to fall down and to almost keep up. In time, we worked up such a sweat that we were able to discard our scarves, hats and jackets, leaving us both in bulky sweatshirts piled over other layers. We spun around and around, until I felt almost stable on my skates. I glanced over at Abe with a broad grin.

Which, of course, was when I managed to tangle my legs and jar my entire body to a stop. I started to trip forward, but Abe managed to swing back and catch me, spinning me safely into his arms. We clung to each other and laughed dizzily, our breath puffing white in the air. “Maybe enough for now.”

We’d returned the skates and started working on all our extra layers when I felt twitchy. Was it just me, or were an inordinate amount of people looking our way?

Of course they were. We’d taken off the scarves and hats that hid our features, and also landed ourselves in tourist central. Abraham might not usually be tabloid bait, but he certainly had been for the last few weeks.

The mutterings began to pick up, and a few people held up cell phones. Good God, seriously?

“Hey!” one woman called. “Aren’t you that football player?”

“Not today,” Abe said, and we grabbed the rest of our things and sprinted out to the street, where Abe hailed a cab by practically jumping into the street. We tumbled inside the taxi, gasping and staring at each other. My heart beat wildly.

“Where to?” the cabbie said, bored and monotone for only a heartbeat before he turned around and gaped at us. “Krasner, no shit? What the fuck, man?”

My mouth fell open, and Abe’s started shaking, and then we started laughing and didn’t stop until we made it home.

* * *

“All right,” Abe said later, as we lay in bed. “Guess that was a bad idea.”

“I’ll say.”

He dropped down on the bed. “This is amazing. I thought for sure we were safe.”

I mournfully plucked at one of my braids. “Now even my lovely red locks aren’t safe.”

He laughed. “I hope your mom sees those pictures and believes it’s real.”

“Oh, God.” I flopped back on the bed. “So much for going out on dates.”

He rolled over to face me. “Let’s get away.”

I propped myself up on my elbow. “What d’you mean?”

He gestured impatiently. “Leave. Take a vacation from all of this.”

“How? We both have jobs.”

He shot me an arch look. “Well, I don’t think anyone’s going to be in your office tomorrow, given that it’s Christmas.”

I shrugged. Good point. “Actually, no one’s really going to be in the office until after New Year’s. Though we’re all supposed to be working from home.”

He bounced upright. “And I don’t have to be anywhere until the second.”

“And where will we go?”

“Somewhere we can be anyone.”

I laughed.

He propped his head up. “I mean it. Let’s get out of here.”

“I don’t exactly have the cash.”

He shrugged. “I do.”

We hopped a metro-north train and took it until we hit Lake George. We tossed out the idea of Lake Placid, where our grandparents used to vacation, but it seemed filled with enough athletes to be risky. Besides, George (did they just do the name here, a la Tahoe?) was slightly closer.

We checked into our bed-and-breakfast at two o’clock. The yellow-with-red-shutters Victorian perched on top of a gently sloping hill, surrounded by evergreens and sky. Snow blanketed and softened everything, a pillowy white cushion atop the peaked roof, and weighing down green branches. Our breath puffed white in the cold air, and we had to stomp the snow off our feet before going inside.

Everything looked just like I’d hoped: wooden paneling and brocaded upright chairs, lines of bookshelves and a crackling fireplace.

The receptionist smiled at us widely. “Merry Christmas.”

Sure, why not. At least he was honest; if he said “Happy Holidays,” he’d be way late for anything except Christmas and New Year’s. “Merry Christmas.”

“Do you two have a reservation?”

Abe glanced at me and smiled. “We do. Mr. and Mrs.—Rosenfeld.”

My eyebrows shot up and I smiled at him. The idea of play-acting a married couple was silly but fun, and my name definitely provided more anonymity than Abe’s.

The receptionist typed away and then handed us two keys. “Second floor and down the hall. Breakfast starts at eight and goes until ten.”

Our room was tucked under the eaves. Out the windows, tall, snow-draped trees spread out in every direction. I felt a rush of tension drain out of me and my shoulders relaxed. Abe came over behind me and began kneading the knots in my neck. I groaned in appreciation and leaned my head forward. “This is perfect.”

“The inn or the massage?”

“I meant the trees,” I murmured. “But the other two are pretty wonderful, too. I’d turn and kiss you, but I don’t want the massage to stop.”

He laughed and kissed the top of my head. “Greedy little thing.”

“Mm.” My bones slowly turned to water. “I’ll give you a massage later.”

“I’ll hold you to that,” he murmured into my ear.

Later that afternoon, we went for a walk on the trails behind the bed-and-breakfast. The woods were wrapped in fog, wisps of white that curled and twined through the red-brown trunks of century-old pines. Compared to the terrible temperatures of the past few weeks, the forty-degree weather felt pleasant and fresh, like spring in December. I’d pulled on a knit hat and hung a scarf around my neck, but loosely, and I didn’t have to hide my face from the wind.

Instead, I looked around with pleasure. Despite the faded quality that the mist wrought, of ghosted-out trees and short tunnels of vision, the nature close to us looked bright in comparison. Green moss on trees shone like summer ponds, and the few dead leaves that clung to spindly branches looked more red than brown.

And the white of the day-old snow was so bright and endless, like a paper without depth or end, interrupted only by the sharp green of evergreen shrubs.

My hand was warm in Abraham’s, and I kept sneaking looks at him.

He smiled at me. “What?”

“Thank you for bringing me here.”

We slowed to a stop behind a majestic weeping willow, whose branches swept the snow gracefully. Abe slid his hand around my cheek, his palm heated against my chilled flesh.

He kissed me.

And with the mist billowing around us, I started to believe in magic again.

* * *

In the morning, we rolled out of bed past ten and joined the other desultory guests in the breakfast area, a large room with larger windows. We ate fresh waffles and strawberry compote and maple syrup and mimosas. The fire crackled before us, all charred logs that somehow resisted crumbling to pieces. Orange-white flames licked the air, while between the logs, coals glowed deep umber. Christmas carols played softly, and poinsettias sat on either side of the mantel.

I snuggled into Abe’s side, and the woman sitting at the nearest table smiled at us. “Newlyweds?”

Abe grinned back at her. “Yes, ma’am.”

I kissed his cheek and felt undeservedly proud.

Later, I told Abe that the woman had
had
to guess that we were newlyweds. The question could conveniently be asked with one word, as opposed to “Are you dating?” which also hardly had any oomph. Besides, asking if people were newlyweds implied love and sweetness and so was almost universally flattering, whether to a new couple on vacation or a married one.

But it still made me happy.

“What do you want to do this afternoon?” I asked as we lay in bed, naked and sated. “I think there’s a little theater nearby that might be fun.”

“Sounds fun,” Abe agreed. “But I actually had something else planned. A surprise.”

I rolled over to see him better. “A good surprise?”

He regarded me for so long, and with such an odd spark, that I started to feel uneasy. Then he leaned forward to kiss me. “An interesting surprise.”

I smoothed my hand over the hard contours of his back. “Do we have a few minutes before this surprise?”

His eyes glinted wickedly. “Oh, more than a few, I’m sure.”

* * *

When we stepped out of the car two hours later, we were greeted by a field of bright panels of color.

When I saw them rising high before me, my stomach took off in the same direction, but with greater velocity and rougher turbulence. “That’s a balloon.”

Abe cut the engine and smiled at me with a quiet watchfulness. “Yes.”

“A giant balloon.”

“Yes.”

I looked back through the windshield at the globes of color against the endless rolling white. Today, bright blue domed the world, streaked with faraway clouds empty of color. “I hope you brought me here to watch the incredibly dramatic liftoff from our safe location here on the ground.”

He reached out to caress my cheek, but in a fit of pique, I turned my head away. Still, there was no avoiding the warmth and conviction in his voice. “You are the most courageous person I know. What can possibly scare you?”

I frowned. “I don’t think I’m brave.”

“You published an article that exposed the truth even though you knew what it would put you through.”

“That wasn’t courage through bravery, but through necessity.”

“They’re the same thing.”

“Well, there’s nothing necessary about this. What’s the point?”

“To prove you can.”

“And if I don’t feel the need to prove anything?”

His gaze softened, and his fingers laced through mine. My heart thumped loudly. “Do you remember our vacation to Seattle when we were fifteen?”

Of course. Camping, with one day in the city. “Yeah.”

“Do you remember how all of us went up the Space Needle, and you waited at the bottom?”

Just the memory made me feel like a pathetic failure. “Yes.”

His eyes seared mine. “
I
remember your face when we came back down. You were so wistful. You
wanted
to come up there with us. Why didn’t you?”

“I just don’t, okay? And it’s not something that can be magically fixed. I don’t even see what the big deal is. It doesn’t constrain my life.”

He leaned closer to me. “Who
cares
about organizations and battles and money and pride? That is all so little. It’s not the world.”

“And you think I can only know that by flying up away from all safety?”

He smiled his slow smile, the one that seduced me to his will. “Don’t you trust me?”

“Ha!” I pointed a finger at him rudely. “I’m on to you. You can’t turn this into a living metaphor about trust. I do trust you. However, you’re not the engineer. Or nature. So my trust will not keep that machine of death aloft.”

“Tell me you’re not interested. Tell me you don’t want to soar through the skies. Tell me you’re not tired of being afraid, and we’ll go to Christopher’s, ten minutes away. I got us reservations.”

It was the reservations that got to me. “You didn’t think I’d be able to do it?”

He met my gaze. “I don’t ever want you to do anything you’re not comfortable doing.”

“That doesn’t make sense. You
know
I’m not comfortable doing this.”

He shrugged. “I also know that when we had to do reports on quotes by famous people, you did the Eleanor Roosevelt one.”

And of course I instantly knew exactly which one he meant.
Do one thing every day that scares you.
It was right up there with my favorite quotes, along with
If you’re not part of the solution
,
you’re part of the problem.
That used to hang in my history teacher’s classroom in eleventh grade, and I hated it because it made me feel guilty.

Which was why I remembered both those quotes, I supposed. They made me uncomfortable. They motivated. They made me want to be a better person—both for other people, and for myself.

“Okay. Let’s do it.”

* * *

Lake George was actually known as a ballooning destination, so I shouldn’t have been surprised. Clearly plenty of people came here to ride through the sky; even today, in the midst of winter, crowds crossed over the fields, conversing and laughing in puffy coats. But Abe had hired us our own private balloon.

It was enormous, and just viewing the size made my feet flood with fear like the land had already fallen away. But the colors made me laugh, the vivid crimson that darkened Abe’s helmet, the lines of black and streaks of gold. “I hope you didn’t commission an entire balloon on the off chance I would say yes.”

“I didn’t think it was an off chance.”

The balloonist’s name was Henry, and he was a solid-looking man in his forties, with deep brown eyes like the earth and a smile like the sun.

I stepped into the small basket and my pulse immediately ratcheted up.

The land dropped away below us, and it became more difficult to breathe.

I wrapped my arms around Abe, clinging to him. We were going to die; I was sure of it. If people were supposed to leave the land, we would have evolved with wings. Oh, God. Oh, God, what was I doing?

I buried my face in Abe’s chest. His mouth came down to my ear, and his words came out worried. “Are you okay?” He smoothed one hand over my hair.

My words were muffled against him. “I give us ten seconds to live.” I lifted my eyes the smallest bit so that I could glare at him.

But then I caught sight of something behind him.

The land sprawled out beneath us, rolling hills and snaking lakes. I caught my breath. The trees were green gilded with white, the water lightly frosted with sheets of ice. Snow blanketed the landscape, matched by the white clouds that drifted through the bright blue sky above us. I was drifting through a snow globe.

I started laughing. I’d done it. I was here. I was as proud of myself as though I’d sprouted wings or engineered the balloon myself. I’d made it. I was in the air. Below me, the patchwork world spread out in greens and whites. I hugged Abe tightly, and then pulled away and leaned toward the basket’s ledge.