The Book of Someday (13 page)

The driver points to a photo clipped to the visor above the steering wheel—a dimple-faced toddler with skin the color of dark caramel. A little boy no more than two; a developmentally disabled child in a surgical helmet and leg braces. “But I guess he knew what he was doing when he picked us. Now when I look at him every day I see how big his courage is, how good his heart is. It makes me humble. I am honored to be his dad.”

Micah absentmindedly glances at the photo as she’s holding up the payment slip, asking: “Is the tip included, or do I need to add one?”

“There is a tip included. No need for more.” After he has taken the signed slip from Micah, the driver gives her his card. “Next time you are in Louisville, I will be happy to drive you where you need to go.”

Micah drops the card into her purse without looking at it, wondering if she’ll have time to get something to eat before her plane takes off.

The driver is helping her out of the car, flashing his dimpled grin. “I have a question I need to ask—are you a movie star?” He’s extending the collapsible handle of Micah’s suitcase, putting it within easy reach. “You are beautiful like a movie star.”

She walks past him, taking the suitcase and wheeling it toward the terminal. “I’m not a movie star.”

“Maybe you are a supermodel…?”

Micah doesn’t have the will, or the energy, to look back at him. “No,” she calls out. “That’s not who I am.”

Her thoughts are on Jason, in the coffee shop in Kansas—how happy he was, as if she’d left absolutely no mark on his life. Then she’s remembering the question that came after the doctor told her about her cancer—
“Do you have anyone you can call?”

As Micah is turning around to catch sight of the driver, she’s thinking,
Who
I
am…is nobody.

***

“What’s the matter, Miss Lesser? You’re breathing funny.”

“I’m running to catch my damn plane.” Micah is moving her phone from one ear to the other; the reception is spotty, and she’s trying to keep the call connected. “Is everything okay with the galleries? No problems?”

“I need to move money to do payroll,” Jillian’s voice is fading in and out. “You didn’t leave me the pin number on the new account.”

Micah slides into an empty seat in a row of chairs along the wall and pulls a pale blue Smythson notebook out of her purse. Clinging to the cover of the Smythson is the business card she was given a few minutes ago; the card from the limo driver with the wavy hair and dimpled grin. Micah tosses the card aside and quickly flips through the Smythson.

“The new pin number is sixty-eight, seventy-one.” Micah has closed the notebook. When she tries to wedge it back into her purse, it slides out of her hand.

“Six-eight, seventy-one.” Jillian’s voice is now coming through strong and clear. “Okay. That’ll take care of payroll.”

The Smythson has landed on the floor a few inches away from the limo driver’s business card. While Micah is retrieving the notebook, Jillian is asking, “Is there anything else you need?” and Micah is responding, “No, I don’t think so.”

The Smythson is now safely in Micah’s purse, but her attention is being drawn back to the floor, to the business card. “Wait,” she’s telling Jillian. “Hold on for a minute.”

Micah has picked up the card, snapped a photo of it, and is pressing Send on her phone. “There’s a driver for a car service in Louisville. I’m texting you his information. His name is Armando Rojas. Get some money to him.”

“How much?”

“Ten thousand.”

“Wanna tell me what’s going on? That’s a lot of cash.”

“Make sure he knows the money is for his son…and no information on where it came from. Talk to you later.”

Micah is now joining the swarm of passengers hurrying toward the departure gates. She’s also opening her hand and letting the business card flutter back onto the floor.

“Don’t hang up yet.” Jillian is insistent. “There’s something else.”

Micah is intent on getting to her boarding gate; only two or three people are left in the waiting area. She’s about to miss her plane. “I’ve got to run. I’ll check in again in a couple of—”

“They called. They’re ready to come and take her.”

The words have struck Micah like a physical blow—staggered her. She’s losing her balance.

A teenage boy, hurrying past, dragging a scuffed duffle bag, reaches out to steady her.

“What do you wanna do?” Jillian is asking.

Micah is only a few feet from the departure gate—watching the boarding agent processing the last passenger remaining in the waiting area. And all she can think about, all she can see, is the one person who has meant the world to her. The woman in the silver dress and pearl-button shoes.

Jillian, at the other end of the phone, is warning Micah: “I need to know what you want to do about her. We can’t stall any longer.”

Micah deliberates. Then says: “Tell them I need another week. A week—then it’ll be over. One way or the other. I guarantee it.”

“Why put it off? Why not decide now?”

Without thinking, Micah says: “I have a family issue I need to take care of.”

Immediately there’s concern in Jillian’s voice. “Miss Lesser, what’s going on? You always said you didn’t have any fam—”

Micah has pressed the End Call button. With far more force than was needed.

She’s running full speed toward her departure gate.

***

Three days. That’s how long Micah has been locked in this hotel suite. The entire time since her flight from Louisville and her arrival in Newport, Rhode Island. It has been precious time that Micah is wasting. Because she’s frightened of what she’s here to deal with, and of what will still be waiting for her after this is done. Her cancer. And the woman in the pearl-button shoes.

Micah is finishing off the last of the four small bottles of tequila she took from the mini-bar less than twenty minutes ago. And she’s as tense as she was when she broke the seal on the first one. Which is why she’s lunging across the width of the gleaming mahogany end table. Toppling a Waterford vase filled with an extravagance of flowers. Scrambling for the phone.

She’s calling the hotel spa, telling the receptionist: “I want a massage. A long one. Right now.”

“Everybody on our staff is booked, but I can have one of the on-call therapists here in a half-hour.”

“Fine. Half an hour.”

After she hangs up the phone, Micah leaves the sofa and wanders the room—eventually stopping beside the window and gazing down onto Bellevue Avenue.

This end of the avenue, where the hotel is, is lined with tourist places; charming little shops and art galleries. At the other end of the avenue are Newport’s fabled mansions; the oceanfront palaces built by the Dukes and the Astors. And somewhere in between is the spot where Micah’s demons dwell.

***

The treatment room in the hotel spa is unlike anything Micah has ever seen—extraordinarily spacious, the size of a large bedroom. The floor is satiny-dark and the walls are wainscoted in wood paneling the color of vanilla custard. The massage table is lavishly plush, and on either side of the table are wood cabinets in the same custard color as the walls. On each cabinet top, there are bouquets of flickering candles in jewel-toned vases. At the foot of the massage table is a curtained alcove and a freestanding porcelain soaking-tub, filled with water that has been floated with a carpet of rose petals.

Micah is slipping between the sheets on the massage table. They feel weightless, spotlessly clean. The spa attendant has lowered the lights, leaving the candles as the only illumination, and has provided music that sounds like murmurs from a galaxy of distant stars.

The attendant is placing a satin mask over Micah’s eyes, saying: “Unwind. Enjoy. Your therapist should be here any minute.”

The attendant is very young, petite, and birdlike.

While Micah is listening to the quick, light tap of the attendant’s retreating footsteps and the soft click of the closing door, it is occurring to her that one day, perhaps very soon, she’ll be lying precisely as she is now—with her eyes closed, in a quiet room, stretched out on her back, on a table, naked, beneath a sheet. She’s imagining the grip of the toe-tag—wondering if they still use toe tags and, if they do, which foot they’ll put it on. Her right. Or her left.

Micah, drifting in the darkness created by her satin eye-mask, is hearing the noise of another soft click—the door of the dimly lit massage room being opened. She’s listening to footsteps that are a little louder than the ones belonging to the spa attendant—this must be the massage therapist.

Not bothering to open her eyes, Micah simply puts the mask aside and rolls over, so that she’s lying facedown.

“Any specific areas you want me to work on?” the therapist asks. Her voice is mellow and comforting.

“Nothing specific,” Micah says.

“What kind of pressure do you prefer?”

“Firm.”

The massage begins. The therapist’s technique is faultless.

Micah drifts into sleep.

After what seems like a luxuriously long time, there’s a light touch on Micah’s shoulder—the therapist wants her to change positions. As Micah is coming to rest on her back, she’s sleepily pulling the satin mask over her eyes.

Micah senses the therapist is very close, inches away from the top of her head.

“This is lavender oil on my hands,” the therapist is saying. “I want you to inhale as deeply as you can.”

Her palms are above Micah’s face; Micah can feel their warmth, and that they’re just shy of brushing her skin. The scent of the lavender is soothing, and the slow breath that Micah is taking is the first full one she has drawn in weeks.

She’s suspended in tranquility.

The therapist is massaging Micah’s neck, her thumbs resting lightly on either side, her fingers working the knotted muscles at the back.

The sensation is pure pleasure.

Then the therapist says: “I’m Christine. But I don’t know what to call you…the girl at the desk didn’t give me your name.”

It takes Micah a few seconds to snap back into reality and tell the therapist: “Just so you’re clear on how this works—I lie here, conversation-free, while you make me feel human again. If what you’re asking is where the bill goes, I’m in Suite 419. Micah Lesser.”

In the space of a microsecond, the time it takes to blink, the therapist’s thumbs are clamping down on the sides Micah’s throat. Jamming against her airway. Strangling her.

Then, as quickly as the incident begins, it ends.

And the therapist is whispering, “Ohmygod…Ohmygod.” Sounding horrified.

The satin mask that was covering Micah’s eyes has fallen onto the floor. And the therapist is coming around to the side of the massage table, her hand over her mouth, as if she’s approaching something disastrous and incomprehensible.

“You could’ve killed me,” Micah is rasping. “Are you fucking nuts?” She’s sitting up now, leaning forward. Both she and the therapist are straining, in the massage room darkness, to get a good look at each other.

The woman sounds agitated and afraid. “Micah…? Micah Lesser? The Micah who shared the apartment in Cambridge with me?” She’s taking a candle from a nearby countertop and holding it up, suddenly bathing herself, and Micah, in a glow of golden light. Her long strawberry-blond hair and the sound in her voice—the confusion, the distress—are almost identical to what they were on that morning two decades ago. When Micah last encountered her.

The shock of being with this woman again is overpowering—Micah is, briefly, on the verge of losing consciousness.

“It’s me.” The therapist’s words are cold, clipped.

Micah knows this is the beginning of something lethal. The phrase
It’s me
was the little metallic click—the sound that comes right before someone pulls a trigger.

“It’s me, Christine,” the therapist says.

“I know.” Micah’s reply is a cautious whisper.

“If I hurt you, I didn’t mean to—I wasn’t trying to choke you. When you said your name—it was like I was touching somebody who was buried and dead. It startled me.”

Micah is agitated. And disoriented. “What are you doing here?”

“I live across the bridge—in Jamestown. Don’t you remember? This is where I grew up.”

“But what are you doing
here?
What are you doing giving massages? You’re a photographer, why aren’t you taking pictures?”

Christine’s laugh is fast and bitter—her anger, burning hot.

Micah is edging off the massage table. Taking her spa robe from a hook on the wall.

While Christine is returning the candle to the countertop and explaining: “I
was
a photographer. Until a couple of years ago. I had my own studio, up in Portsmouth, then the economy collapsed and took me with it.”

She makes a sound that is halfway between a chuckle and a groan, and gestures toward the massage table. “I moved back home with my parents a year and a half ago—stomped the dream, packed up my cameras, and learned a new trade.”

She pauses as if she’s waiting for Micah to speak. When she doesn’t, Christine tells her: “I didn’t get to be you, Micah—never got to be famous. I ended up taking pictures of brides and babies. My work isn’t studied in art schools—it’s dangling from nails above fireplaces. In New Hampshire.”

Micah’s voice is so unsteady she doesn’t recognize it. It sounds like it belongs to a stranger, somebody old and shattered. “You didn’t have to settle for brides and babies, Christine. You were better than that.”

“Really? I guess we’ll never know.” The statement is laced with resentment.

Micah’s reply is defensive, guilty. “It wasn’t the only job in the world—”

“—but it was mine. It belonged to me and you took it.”

On Christine’s face there is a look of insurmountable loss.

Micah recognizes it immediately.
That’s the same look that was on her face the last time I saw her,
Micah is thinking.
In
the
apartment, that morning, back in Cambridge, when we were kids. When she was twenty-four and I was twenty-two.

The details of that morning are crystal clear to Micah. It’s as if she’s watching them play out on a reel of perfectly preserved film.