Worlds Apart (2 page)
It was on the night that Lonnie and Laurie went ice-skating that it became obvious that strange things were happening.
The indoor rink was cold, and Lonnie was glad that it had been Laurie who’d suggested the adventure, for between the temperature and their combined unsteadiness on the ice, the touching they had both denied themselves on their previous date was not only constant, it was necessary.
“
Aaagggghhh
!
I’m sorry,” Lonnie huffed out as he once again latched onto Laurie’s arm to prevent a tumble to the slick, unyielding ice.
“Don’t worry, we’re good,” Laurie answered calmly. She widened the distance between her skates to help maintain balance while Lonnie righted himself. Ice skating, which Laurie had chosen on purpose instead of a movie or another dinner date, was something at which she’d once excelled, although she hadn’t let Lonnie know that. And since twelve years of absence from the ice had reduced her to the level of a beginner again, she wasn’t about to mention it.
Until much, much later.
“Oh, jeez!
Sorry, sorry. I thought I had it there, but – OH!” Lonnie once again reached for Laurie. And she couldn’t help but beam, for the solicitous gentleman of the other night, who’d so conscientiously remained on his own side of the table and maintained that distance until their brief goodbye, had gone into abeyance, allowing the return of the more carefree Lonnie who had sat next to her at the circus just a week and a half before.
“Have you had enough?” Laurie asked with a twinkle.
“YES! I mean, no, or maybe, or whatever you’d like to do!” For Lonnie was enjoying himself, no matter his physical ineptitude.
“Give me your hand,” Laurie ordered. And he did, his ungloved hand practically swallowing Laurie’s
mittened
one. Feeling the heat pulsing from her, the tension melted from Lonnie’s limbs and he stood straight and confident.
“Now.
Push off with your right foot. Like this. And just copy me. NO, don’t let go! There. Like that. We’re going to loop once around the rink and neither one of us is going to fall, and then we’re done.”
And there was no more talk as they skated hand in hand to an old song by the Bangles, surrounded by the cacophony of yelling kids, the
whoosh
es of the figure skaters occupying the center of the rink, the tinny plinks and bells of the arcade games strewn about the sides of the huge building.
“We made it!” Laurie cried as they both stepped out of the rink and onto the rubber matting. “Was that really so bad?”
But Lonnie could only smile back at her. Holding Laurie’s hand as they slowly
skated
their lazy circle had brought warmth to every last atom of his being. He was suffused with love for Laurie, with desire and just sheer
want
of her!
They removed their skates and slipped into their shoes. Their eyes kept meeting. They were both aglow. The skates were returned to the rental window, and without even the slightest of hesitation, their hands met once more, fingers entwining and palms pressing together. Lonnie pushed open the first set of glass doors leading toward the outside, but neither of them could wait. They were alone in the vestibule, but it wouldn’t have mattered one whit if they weren’t, for both Lonnie and Laurie were blind to the world as they reached for the other, pulled close, and lips met for the first time in a tender crush, as each of them allowed the other to know physically what they were experiencing emotionally.
Seconds passed, minutes and hours and years. Who they were didn’t matter, where they were was inconsequential. Time was as frozen as the ice they had just plied. There was only need.
And giving.
In equal measure from both.
*
*
*
*~
But as is natural, the ardor was eventually spent, the immediate longing quenched. And Lonnie and Laurie pulled delicately apart, limbs still interwoven, eyes opening tactfully. It was noiseless in the vestibule.
“I think I love you,” Lonnie said quietly.
And Laurie couldn’t help but giggle. “You
think?
I
know
I love
you
. Or at least I’m beginning to!”
“Beginning to?” Lonnie asked. And then they were both laughing at their silliness. Separating without awkwardness, they clasped hands once more and Lonnie pushed open the outer door for Laurie. “Let’s go get hot chocolate!” he said.
But there wasn’t going to be any hot chocolate for Lonnie and Laurie.
At least not that night.
“Oh my God!”
Laurie exclaimed, “What happened?”
“I… I don’t know.”
“It’s deserted! There’s nobody here!”
And Laurie was right. The entrance to the ice skating rink was on a busy avenue, but just now, not a single car was moving, no pedestrians were in sight, and even the street people that normally haunted the sidewalks were missing.
“Lonnie, this is weird!” Laurie said. “What
is
this?”
“Do you want to go back inside?”
“Yes!” she replied.
Lonnie wasn’t sure what was going on, but perhaps someone in the rink could help explain it. He couldn’t believe that he’d just been holding this woman in his arms, an unprecedented surge of emotion overwhelming him, and seconds
later,
here they both were, confronted with a mystery that was sure to evaporate the aura of oneness that had so tightly bound them.
But Lonnie was incorrect about that last part. What he and Laurie would discover would only bind them more strongly to each other. For the ice skating rink was devoid of human beings as well.
“Where did everybody go? Where could they all have gone?” wondered Laurie aloud, while Lonnie’s ruminations echoed hers. “Lonnie, Lonnie, what’s happening? Why are we the only ones here?”
Lonnie didn’t answer. For all of a sudden he was recalling the previous Sunday night, when after their dinner together he and Laurie had exited the restaurant to find the plaza empty as well, the parking attendants gone, the restaurant appearing to have closed down immediately following their departure.
“Laurie, I think…” he began, but he shook his head, unable to entirely decipher what he thought.
“Lonnie, where
is
everybody?” Laurie was clutching his arm, obviously about to succumb to an onslaught of panic.
Lonnie gripped her hands firmly. “This happened on Sunday night, too,” he said.
Laurie tried to shake loose. “No! No, it didn’t!”
“Yes.” Lonnie held on.
“After dinner.
We walked to the garage. There was nobody there.”
“But we would have noticed. It didn’t happen then! I drove home; there were cars and people and this one total jerk
who
honked when I didn’t go at a light. I was so happy, and I hadn’t even noticed that it had turned green.”
Laurie’s words died and she stopped struggling. She took a deep breath.
And then another one.
Lonnie was patient.
“Oh. It happened when we were together.”
“Yes,” he said. “I think. It makes no sense, but I think that’s what happened.”
“Why?
How?”
Lonnie caressed Laurie’s hands. “I have no idea. But I hadn’t put it together till just now, the fact that the garage was empty when we… said goodnight, but after you drove away I walked to my car and sat there a few minutes. And it was so quiet and I was grateful, but I didn’t see anybody else until I drove onto the street. A couple was walking, and a guy with a dog. But I didn’t think about it. I didn’t… it wasn’t obvious like tonight.”
Laurie’s face had relaxed as Lonnie spoke, and she was now almost smirking. “Did we stop time?” Her hands, still enclosed within his, began to swing from side to side. “Did you and I stop time, Lonnie?”
Lonnie was smiling too, relieved that Laurie had calmed, even if the two of them weren’t exactly in charted waters here. “I don’t think so, but why are we still standing here?” Their joined hands were having a party. “If we really are alone, if everyone else has really disappeared, what are we doing? Let’s go look around!”
*
*
*
*~
And look around they did, exploring as much of the familiar city in its unfamiliar tranquility as they could. Indeed, time appeared to have stopped, as every clock they spotted was suspended in the vicinity of 8:47. The doors they tried were mostly closed and locked, but those of more public buildings, such as hotels and cafes, were open. All were
deserted,
all were devoid of any human life except Lonnie and Laurie.
“Apple pie!”
Lonnie exclaimed as they strolled past a diner. The lights were on, the bakery items on display brilliantly visible from outside. “Look at that! I’m hungry, aren’t you?”
“Wouldn’t we be stealing?” Laurie asked. Though after an indeterminable period of reconnoitering, she felt the craving as well.
“We’ll pay for it.
I’ll
pay for it. I’ll leave the money by the register.”
And so apple pie it was, with some vanilla a la mode from the diner’s freezer scooped on the plate as well.
And some coffee, since it was ready, and good, and needed.
Lonnie even placed their dishes in the kitchen before leaving a ten dollar bill on top of the till.
“How much time do you think has passed?” Laurie asked.
“None!”
Lonnie answered, and they laughed and embraced.
The question of why, the question of how, these remained the topics that engaged their curiosity throughout. Analysis and reexamination of these issues resolved nothing. But as the night proceeded without any visible progression, the realization came to both Lonnie and Laurie that the how and the why didn’t matter. It only mattered that they were there, together, and blissfully so.
“Will this happen again, do you think?” Laurie wanted to know.
Lonnie shook his head. He couldn’t believe it was happening right at that moment! The idea that the two of them could somehow experience this on a regular basis was fantastical.
“Do you think we could get stuck here?” Laurie asked.
“Would that really be so bad?” Lonnie returned.
But thinking of her sister, and Belinda, and the few friends she had whose company she
did
enjoy, Laurie understood that as much as she could sense in every fiber of her body that Lonnie was the one for her, she wouldn’t want to remain in this secluded world forever. Even with a man she knew she could love without reservation, without fear.
“I couldn’t do it,” she answered, feeling a touch guilty for her honesty.
Lonnie took her hand again. “I didn’t mean it,” he said. “I mean, I
did
, but I know that neither of us could survive being here by ourselves. It would drive us crazy.”
Laurie giggled. How incredible it was that they could so calmly discuss this! And then she tried and failed to stifle a yawn.
“We should go home,” Lonnie said, swinging her hand in an echo of when she’d swung his something like years before.
“We should,” she answered. “Will everyone come back in the morning?
Or on the drive home?”
Another yawn, louder this time.
“We’ll find out,” said Lonnie as he began to guide her toward the ice skating rink where the evening’s escapade had begun.
“Soon enough.”
And once again, he walked Laurie to her car, but instead of a hasty embrace, they kissed goodnight.
Deeply, and since time didn’t matter, until both of them had taken
and
given all that they needed.
Lonnie and Laurie quickly became used to the idea that if they shut out the world, their own world would appear. Or if
appear
wasn’t quite the right word for it, their private tour of familiar sights would
manifest
itself. If they tried too hard to make it happen, it wouldn’t. But on practically every occasion when the two of them genuinely lost themselves in each other, they would find themselves alone.
If it happened at night, they would wander hand in hand, taking leisurely lovers’ walks without fear of being accosted, or hurried, or hemmed in by a necessary bedtime. Though it happened less frequently in the daytime, on weekends they would head to a bookstore, where with doors unlocked and the shelves laden with tomes, they would snuggle up and enjoy
other
people’s exploits, fictional or not.
They made love for the first time, and then the second, and then in an endless succession of intimate encounters of which neither tired. Laurie didn’t like her body, but Lonnie loved it, not considering inverted nipples and the fine remains from where Laurie used to cut herself after Jake to be disfigurements.
One of the most memorable nights they experienced was when they crashed the old Drake Hotel, two blocks from the restaurant where they’d had their first date. Lonnie swiped the key from behind the desk in the lobby, and they had taken the elevator to the twelfth floor. No room service, but the view of the city, and the mountains! The whirlpool tub for two with bath salts and sponges!
Lonnie and Laurie might have spent a little too much time in the tub, for after making love for the second time atop the silk sheets of the Executive Suite’s king bed, they fell asleep. And the next thing they knew, the room was turning pink and yellow as the morning sun crept over the mountains, and there were
two
couples sharing the Executive Suite’s bed.
“Who the hell are you? How’d
they
get in here?” a shrewish voice had blared, and within seconds, Lonnie and Laurie were scrambling out of the crowded bed, searching for clothes and belongings and the door. “I’m calling hotel security!” the woman yelled.
The man in the bed, tousled and drowsy, was nonchalant. “
You
can stay if you’d like,” he said, pointing to Laurie. “You, though.
Out!”
Laurie couldn’t stop giggling, even while the irate woman was yammering into the bedside phone about intruders. And all the way down eleven flights of stairs and jogging through the hotel’s laundry room and running down the alley behind the Drake that led to where they’d parked the night before, Laurie kept exploding with laughter.
“You could have stayed!” Lonnie cried, “He invited you!”
“I was fine with
him,
I just couldn’t stand the thought of
her
touching me!” Laurie retorted, tears running down her cheeks.
*
*
*
*~
There were some nights that they just stayed in, even if the clocks at Lonnie’s house or Laurie’s apartment produced their telltale freeze. TV being out if it happened, they would sometimes watch DVDs, or play board games, or just hold each other, knowing that for the time being they really
were
the only two people on the planet.
They settled in, the secret life they shared buoying them as they carried out their daily routines of work and chores and errands, as they continued to socialize, however minimally, with others. People noticed that both Lonnie and Laurie were happier, more outgoing, more
interesting
than they had been before, but that was about it. Mostly concerned with their own lives, acquaintances thought it was
fine
that those two found each
other,
it’s
nice
they manage to be so content. Another single friend not to worry about!
Lonnie and Laurie weren’t worried about anybody else. They took Belinda to the movies, they practiced cooking with Laurie’s sister, they tried to outdo each other with outrageous suggestions for how to spend their next time together alone.
“Let’s set up a display of free beds outside Bonham’s, each with mannequins in dirty positions!”
“Let’s borrow a Porsche from the dealership and take a ride!”
“We should put a banner on the city hall clock tower saying it’s Free Love Day!”
“No, Free
Parking
Day!”
“Uh, uh.
That’s just for us.”
“Which one!?”
“Let’s open all the cages at the zoo!”
They rarely followed through with any of these. Impracticalities aside, neither wanted to jinx the good fortune that had allowed them their surreptitious activities.
Belinda appeared to be the only one who was suspicious, or at least aware that something wasn’t entirely normal.
“You guys have secrets, don’t you,” she said to Lonnie one Saturday afternoon as they played gin rummy in her backyard.
“Secrets?”
Lonnie asked. He could feel the flush staining his face. He stared at his cards. “Not really. Not more than other people. Why do you think so?”
“I can just tell,” Belinda stated. She picked up a jack and discarded a five. “I’ve never seen Aunt Laurie this happy. I heard my mom say it too, but I’d already thought it.”
Lonnie picked up the five and placed it in his hand before realizing he didn’t need it. He put it back down.
“You can take one from the pile,” Belinda said. “You weren’t paying attention. So are the secrets good?”
Lonnie picked the top card off the pile.
An eight.
Which gave him gin.
He discarded the eight on top of the five.
“Of course.
What secret isn’t a good one?” He finally looked at Belinda and attempted to smile.
“I know you’re not
gonna
tell me what they are. My mom and dad have secrets, too. They make funny noises at night and they tell me they’re tickling each other but they look goofy when I ask. Like you and Aunt Laurie look goofy sometimes. Like right now. You look goofy, Lonnie.”
Lonnie couldn’t help but laugh out loud. “
Goofy’s
a good word for it, Belinda. It’s not that the secrets are that good, it’s just that they belong to Laurie and me, and they make us happy.”
Belinda had needed the same eight. Up it went, down came a discard and “Gin!” she announced. Lonnie looked at her displayed hand.
Six through nine of hearts and three kings.
“That’s four games for me, three for you,” Belinda said. “Winner picks the next game. And I pick Parcheesi.
With Aunt Laurie and my mom, too.”
Parcheesi it was. And so the afternoon went, like so many of the weekend afternoons since the day of the circus. Not a bad way to spend time. Just as the secrets Lonnie and Laurie shared weren’t a bad way to spend time, or rather the lack of it, either.