In Some Other World, Maybe: A Novel (40 page)

“I’d like that,” she says, asks about what he’s doing in Illinois, and he tells her how sometimes he has to return to Advantage Electric’s headquarters.

“How was Detroit?” he asks.

“It was kind of a bust.” She’s surprised at her own honesty. “I was hoping to interview someone at this
Eons & Empires
convention, but a couple of the players didn’t show.”

He asks if she’s a fan of
E&E
.

“I guess you could call me sort of a closet fan,” she says.

And they talk about the comics and the TV show for a while. Until she remembers she’s still at her office, still has stories to write.

*   *   *

Phoebe feels drugged and exhausted and weirdly optimistic by the time she pulls in front of the Winston Tower (where she used to live) to drop Adam off. He says he’ll bring her down the
Divided
script, but he’s so awkward on his crutches that she takes Cassie from her car seat and follows him in.

Her favorite of the middle-aged doormen in navy suits is at the desk. “Good evening, Ms. Fisher, Mr. Zoellner,” he says, as if she hadn’t been absent for years.

Up the elevator, through the foyer, and into the den, where Adam leads her to a weird table that looks like it might be a tree stump. As he’s shuffling through a stack of papers, she notices a blue book with the Chicago skyline on the cover and catches the author’s name—
Gallaher with one G.

“Oh my God.” Setting Cassie on the couch, she picks up the book, opens the back cover, and stares into Sharon Gallaher’s enormous eyes. “I know her.”

“So do I—” Adam says, and then his face contorts slightly. “Sort of.”

“From NYU?” Phoebe asks, assuming what she worried about all those years ago is the case, that Adam had slept with her in college.

“Not very well, friend of a friend. You?”

“She was my brother’s girlfriend, the one who didn’t come to the funeral.” And Phoebe realizes she might never have told Adam that. All those phone calls to her brother’s apartment were something she never shared with him—all taking place in that brief part of their relationship when he was fully committed and she was the one holding back.

“Really?”

“Yeah.” She flips the book over, looks at the cover again. “Can I borrow this?”

“Keep it.” He pauses. “If you borrow it, does that mean we hang out again?”

There may be too many buckets of history between them for that to work. Arguably, they were never really friends in the years they shared the apartment in Studio City, before they were an official couple. Always there were glowing embers between them. Perhaps there’ll always be too much electricity for them to ever be the kind of pals that Cole (or any woman Adam might love) would be comfortable with. But maybe it’s possible that they can stay in each other’s lives.

“I’d like to try,” she says.

*   *   *

Oliver calls Sharon a few days later, as she’s straightening her apartment—washing crusty bowls from cereal suppers and throwing out half-drunk cans of Diet Coke, old newspapers, and magazines.

“I tried to find a totally fantastic reason to call, but really, I just wanted to say hey,” Oliver begins apologetically.

“That seems totally fantastic enough.” Sharon feels herself smiling, sits on the couch, and turns off her TV.

“I also wanted to tell you about this great book I read,” he says. “
The Atheist in the Foxhole
. I think you may have heard of the author.”

“Oh.” A ripple of the floor-swallowing, sucking-her-to-China sensation. All that time that Sharon was letting her relationship with Chase Fisher wilt because of her writing woes, she’d never let Chase read her work. Would shield her computer screen with her palm when she caught him looking over her shoulder, dismissed all of his offers to help.

“I’m sorry, is that weird?” he asks. “I Internet-stalked you a bit.”

“No.” She is pretty sure she means this. “It’s actually really nice.”

*   *   *

Setting
The Atheist in the Foxhole
on the end table, Phoebe wipes her eyes, remembers what it was like to have her brother in her life.

All the minute details that she sometimes forgets: how Chase used to rub his forehead and communicate whole worlds using only his eyebrows; the blissful look he had while running; and the way he was protective over those he loved, even if they didn’t fully understand his motivations.

And the truly wonderful, miraculous, spectacular thing is that, in this book, he lives. He breaks up with the girl he’s dating, but his story doesn’t end there. He gets married and has kids and all the things that Phoebe’s real brother didn’t get. Not a life free of conflict or challenges—that would hardly make a good story—but a life nonetheless.

And Phoebe isn’t quite sure exactly why she is so grateful, but she is. Wants to track Sharon Gallaher down and thank her, can’t wait to share this with her stepmother.

“You cool, Chicago?” Cole asks, and Phoebe realizes that she didn’t hear him come home from the restaurant, glances at the digital clock on the cable box. It’s nearly two in the morning.

Phoebe nods.

“You sure?” Cole asks nervously. Sitting down beside her, he puts a hand on her thigh, and she leans against his shoulder.

“I know I’ve been a little weird lately,” she says.

He rubs her leg, warmth seeping through her yoga pants. “I just want to make sure you’re peachy keen.”

“I am.”

“And not going to run off with your movie star ex-boyfriend.”

“He can’t run for at least eight weeks.”

“So you’re saying I’ve got time?” He smiles.

“I’m not going anywhere,” she says. “I’m afraid you’re stuck with me.”

*   *   *

Five weeks and Adam is no closer to mastering crutches. In Phoebe’s driveway he’s about to drop a sack of Bosc pears while trying to shut his car door and remain upright. Luckily Evie, top down on her M3, pulls up behind him.

“If it isn’t the hobbling embodiment of my ulcer,” she says, on her way to help. “Tarnish my reputation any further on the ride over?”

Kissing his cheek, Evie whispers, “If her Donna Reed shtick gets to be too much, give me a sign, and I’ll have you outta here pronto.”

“Thanks,” Adam says, extremely touched. “I’ll give you the finger as the signal.”

“Wouldn’t have it any other way.”

Cole is the one who answers the door, gives Evie a hug, and extends a hand to Adam.

“Hey, man, how’s it going?” he asks, looking all of twelve—younger than the new crop of CW and QT stars Adam had to kill in
Murder Island 3.
Adam could have seen Phoebe with someone older, maybe one of her professors or the doctors she works with, but this kid?

“Can’t complain.” Adam remembers the pears, hands them over. “These are for you.”

“Awesome, they’re Pheebs’s favorite.” Cole shakes his head. “Which, I guess, you knew.”

But then he does smile, gets endearingly excited explaining how they can tuck a pear slice under Gruyère cheese on the burgers he’s making. And Adam can see a hint of what Phoebe must.

The three of them head to the deck, where Kraken barks enthusiastically seeing Adam through the sliding door. Cassie in arms, Phoebe’s parents hurry to greet him. And even though he hasn’t thought about them in at least a year, he’s overwhelmed by how much he
has
missed them.

“Honey, it’s so nice you could come.” Gennifer’s golden hair tickles his nose when she tries to embrace him around the crutches.

Phoebe’s father claps him lightly on the shoulder.

“Dr. Fisher,” Adam says, pleased when Phoebe’s father grins wide. Adam’s refusal to call him by his first name had at first been ingrained politeness but had become an ongoing joke between them during all the holidays and weekends and dinners they’d shared.

“Seriously, son, you’re almost forty years old,” Larry Fisher says, and asks about the doctor who set Adam’s ankle and the prognosis, tells him he’s extremely lucky he didn’t need surgery.

Coming through the screen door with a glass of wine for Evie, Phoebe offers Adam a drink, raises her eyebrows when he says he’ll stick with water. He raises his eyebrows back.

Doing magical things on the grill, Cole’s brown hair is long and everywhere. Adam wonders if he wears it like that at the restaurant; that’s definitely got to be some sort of health code violation. Kraken stays at Adam’s side despite Cole’s proximity to raw meat. Periodically Evie checks in to make sure she doesn’t need to instigate the great escape.

Salmon, burgers, grilled vegetables, and salads on the table, the adults take to the patio chairs while Cassie chubbles enthusiastically in the activity center.

Gennifer assures Adam there’s no shame falling over one’s feet and claims to have broken three toes tripping on her college roommate’s cat.

Evie tells everyone how Adam wanted the role in
Divided
so badly he insisted they let him do a screen test on crutches.

“That’s going to be the big story when the show starts,” she says.

Adam shrugs, though he’s acutely aware no one has mentioned the Howard Stern incident since the HBO execs offered him the role. “You don’t need to sell me to these people, E. They’re our friends.”

Everyone laughs.

Adam wonders if it’s true.

And it’s awkward, but not.

While Cole goes inside to do something indecent with fruit and balsamic vinegar and everyone else is distracted by the baby, Phoebe puts a hand on Adam’s forearm—enough chemistry remaining between them that it tingles.

“So I was thinking, if you’re going to stay in town, maybe you’d want to take Kraken for a while?” she says. “Once you get your cast off?”

Flashback to the first day he saw her at Theta Tunney’s workshop more than a decade ago. How he’d thought he wouldn’t like her, still wanted to sleep with her. Figured she’d be just one more wannabe actress who floated in and out of his life as he plowed his way into the industry.

“That would be great,” he says, swallowing over something lumpy and emotional in his throat. “Thank you.”

“No, thank you for…” She gestures toward the kitchen.

He nods.

It hurts and it doesn’t. That’s not really right; it feels more like his ankle does now—active pain gone but itchy as the bones knit back together.

And Cole makes the best fucking cheeseburger he’s ever had.

*   *   *

By the time Oliver shows up for their first date the day he gets back to New York, Sharon has talked to him on the phone two dozen times and feels as though she’s known him much longer than five weeks. Thinks that she felt that way when she first met Chase, but it isn’t agonizing, just interesting.

In honor of the thirtieth anniversary of Ed Munn’s first
Eons & Empires
comic book, an indie theater by her apartment is showing the film version from 1992 starring Michael Douglas and Jake James. She’s not entirely sure if it had been her idea or Oliver’s that they see it, but he was the one who suggested they meet beforehand at the coffee shop where they’d had their sort-of date when he returned her notebooks. She arrives first this time, sits at the same little table they shared before, and takes the liberty of ordering a tiramisu to split. It arrives as he’s walking through the door.

They’re finishing it when he reaches for a plastic bag. Handing it to her, he explains, “So I got you a little something.”

Inside is a six-inch plastic action figure still in its original packaging: Adam Zoellner in the black robes from
E&E: Rising
’s first season. Not a particularly good rendering, the eyes are especially wrong, but the head shape is right and something about the set of his jaw.

“You got me a Captain Rowen action figure?” Sharon feels tears in her eyes.

She remembers how she used to feel locking herself in the bathroom and reading the comic books while she was babysitting. Not wanting to share the world with anyone, because it would somehow be less real. But this feels real.

Ollie’s hands are in the pockets of his khakis, and he slouches a little. “It’s dumb. I should have gotten flowers or something—”

“No.” She cuts him off. “This is the best gift ever.”

“You like it?”

“I love it.”

“I figured you’d be more into Rowen than Bryce or the Snow sisters.”

“Seriously, this is amazing,” she says.

He asks if she’s ready to go see the film, signals for the check, and helps her into her coat. It’s only a few blocks to the theater. Halfway there she takes his hand, and he smiles.

Maybe he’ll kiss her during the movie. Or maybe she’ll be the one to turn and lean into him. Perhaps they’ll be too engrossed and wait until the closing credits are rolling. It’s quite possible that the film won’t seem nearly as good as it did when she was fourteen and longed for anything other than the safety of suburbia, for some other universe. Maybe she and Oliver will be bored, leave early, and walk the four flights up to her apartment, where she’ll clear a space for them on her bed. Or perhaps she’ll end up not liking him nearly as much as she suspects she will. So many different potential outcomes, nothing but options, in this world and those just one or two away.

acknowledgments

I’d like to thank everyone at St. Martin’s Press, especially Katie Bassel and the incredibly insightful Laura Chasen, who has talked me down from a ledge or two.

Alex Glass is still my Jerry McGuire, and I am forever grateful to the amazing Jamie Beckman and her blue pencil.

Over the years a handful of people were kind enough to read this book in various incarnations, and I owe all of them drinks and thanks and cheese conies: Camille Sweeney, Diane Cardwell, Terri Goveia, Anna David, Taj Greenlee, Michael Ferrante, and Mandy Beisel. And a shout-out to all the wonderful writers I worked with at OSU and Northwestern, who always go above and beyond: Richard Ford, Michelle Herman, Lee K. Abbott, Lee Martin, Bill Roorbach, and Chris Coake.

Sometimes book stuff makes me grouchy, yet my family continues to put up with me. Thank you to my parents, Nancy and Michael Goldhagen, and sister, Jacqui Holland. And to my husband, Bob, and daughter, Victoria, who continually remind me what’s really important.