Destined (18 page)

“A new service provided by the city?”

“Our little protégé, a child of the
streets. Emily feeds her.”

“She’d better not splash my new car.”

“She won’t. She’ll be in here in a
jiffy, anyhow. Wants her breakfast.”

“I see,” Tony said, turning back to
smile at me again. “So now you’re adopting waifs, Emily?”

“I found her eating garbage in the
alley,” I said, transferring the hot scones off the cookie sheets onto a
cooling rack. “She has a sick mother somewhere nearby, she says. She won’t tell
me where they live.”

“You know, most people wouldn’t do
anything about it,” Tony said reflectively. “It’s admirable that you have taken
the time to help.”

“Yes, yes, Emily takes care of us all,
don’t you know?” said my employer fondly.

The two men settled into chairs at the
kitchen table. They drank coffee and talked while they watched me work. I
finished mixing the brownies and put them in the oven, then I took four warm
scones off the rack and served them on a platter, placing it in the middle of
the table. I added a crock of butter and two knives, with two small plates and
a couple of napkins.

Mr. Paradis jumped up to rummage in a
cupboard, coming back to the table with a jar of raspberry preserves. His guest
grunted an affirmation, his mouth already full. They dug in, and I helped
myself as well. Tony and I regarded each other somewhat warily as we chewed, as
though many unspoken questions stood between us. There was a knock at the back
door.

“I’ll let her in,” I said, and went to
open it.

Today Amy was dressed fairly
conservatively, for Amy. She wore baggy green camouflage-print pants, hacked
off below the knee, with black ankle socks and black sneakers, and a ripped
black T-shirt. Her ragged hair was black with Crayola red stripes, and her
fingernails matched. She held a plastic shopping bag containing several cans
and bottles.

“Returnables. You want ‘em?” she said,
knowing the answer but scrupulously honest, as always. The girl had values,
regardless of her circumstances. She rinsed the recyclables every day and
emptied all the trash for me. I never asked or reminded her, not once.

“No thanks, can you get rid of them
for us?”

“Sure,” she said, strolling into the
kitchen. When she saw Tony, she stopped in her tracks and stared at him
suspiciously.

“Mr. Paradis has a guest today Amy,” I
said, coming back into the room behind her. Tony smiled and nodded at the girl
in a friendly way, his mouth still full of scone and raspberry jelly.

“A house guest, actually,” Henry
confirmed. “Tony will be staying with me for a while, in the rooms upstairs.”

This was news to me, and Amy and I
exchanged doubtful looks.

“Upstairs?” I asked, not
understanding.

“On the third floor. I suppose I never
took you up there? Don’t use it much.”

He had not. For some reason, I had
assumed the third floor was an attic. I wasn’t really sure how to get up there.
I had never snooped further than my employer’s study and the book room, not
wanting to intrude on his domain.

“It’s really a little apartment,” Tony
said. “Henry and Margaret used to rent it out sometimes.”

Amy lingered in the doorway, obviously
uncomfortable about entering with a newcomer in the kitchen. I noticed her
looking at the fresh-baked scones and wrapped one in a paper towel, handing it
to her. She silently mouthed the word “Later!” and backed out of the room,
closing the back door carefully with a quiet click.

“So. Now you’re back, and you’re,
like, moving in here?” I asked, trying to wrap my brain around the idea. Tony
seemed quite happy with my perturbation. Just then the telephone on the
countertop began to ring and Mr. Paradis got up to answer it, turning his back
toward us.

“Henry offered to let me stay here
while I look for a new place,” Tony said, sipping his coffee and waggling his
bare feet.

“You’re getting a new place?”

“Yes,” he said, “That’s why it took me
so long.”

“Took you so long for what?”

“Why it took me so long to get back
from England,” he said. “I had to deal with the agents, and sign a lot of
papers, supervise the packing, and all that.”

“What are you talking about?” I
demanded impatiently.

He looked abashed, and spoke in a
placating tone, “Don’t be short, now, Emily, after all, I am homeless! You
should be more
simpatico!
I
have nowhere to go!”

“You are
not
homeless!” I said.

“I am,” he protested. He shrugged his
shoulders. “I sold my house. I literally have no home, currently.”

“You sold your house in England?”

“Yes. Last week. The house in London
and the Mercedes, all at once. It is almost too much to bear,” he said in mock
distress, one hand to his chest.

I couldn’t believe it. I had no idea
he was on the verge of such a major change.

“What made you decide to do this?” I
asked.

“I’ve been thinking about it for a
while,” he said, seriously. “I actually put the house on the market last year.
It didn’t sell, so I took it off again. Then a couple of weeks ago I heard from
a friend who is a real estate agent. Her client was looking for a Georgian
townhouse just like mine. They made me a good offer. I decided it was the right
time.”

“So you just, sold it,” I said,
amazed, thinking that most people agonize over major decisions of this type. “Just
like that.”

“Yes, Emily, just like that,” he
confirmed. He looked me straight in the eye, and for a moment I felt we were
together in a long dark tunnel, just the two of us, with the rest of the world
closed off and far away.

“I can live anywhere I like, you know,”
he said, rising to walk toward me.

“Yes, I know,” I said, taking a step
backwards.

“It was lucky she called when she did.
I tell you, I was sitting there wishing I could just get rid of all my old
baggage and start over again, and the phone rang. It was synchronicity. It was
meant to be.”

There was a tiny white patch of
shaving cream on the jaw line just below his left ear. I absentmindedly reached
out with my dish towel and wiped it off. He took another step toward me. We
stared at one another.

My employer hung up the telephone with
a melodious “Farewell!” and turned back to face us where we stood silently in
the middle of the room.

“All right now, children,” he said,
breaking the spell and taking Tony by the arm to steer him toward the back
hallway. “It’s time to get to work. You mustn’t distract Emily from the paying
customers, Tony, it’s bad for business!”

“Oh now, Henry, I would never do that!”
Tony exclaimed with a quick backward look in my direction. The men started up
the back stairs and I heard Tony say, “I’ve brought some interesting things to
show you, my friend. Somewhere in my luggage…” Their voices faded as they
continued up the stairs and were gone.

I danced silently around the empty
kitchen for a minute or two, shaking off the nervous energy. I couldn’t stop
grinning. I saw a long beautiful flash of something wonderful and magical
coming into my life, at last. It was like looking into a telescoping tunnel
into the future, a glimpse of happiness and love. It wasn’t my imagination or
wishful thinking this time, it something that really could happen. I could tell
the difference, now. I was late opening the store, but nobody was waiting so it
didn’t really matter. At least I didn’t burn the brownies. And that was a minor
miracle, considering my distracted state of mind.

When Siri came to work that day she
had a message for me from her father, Gupta. It seemed the “Market Street
Irregulars,” as the old man called the teenagers he had rallied to watch the
neighborhood, had come up with some information. A girl who met Amy’s
description had been seen doing laundry and Rashid had struck up a conversation
with her, confirming her first name. One of the other boys had tried to follow
her when she left, but had lost her somehow. She had disappeared again, for the
moment. But Gupta felt he was “closing in on her,” as Siri put it.

“My father is really enjoying this
Sherlock Holmes fantasy, you know,” she laughed. “He is the perfect armchair
detective!”

“Well, he is having success where
nobody did before,” I said.

“Yes, but it’s too bad the boys lost
her again. Bad luck,” Siri said regretfully.

“Well, maybe she’s not ready to be
found. Maybe it’s not the right time,” I replied.

So much has to do with luck. Luck and
timing. Or is it really luck? If we influence reality simply by being observers
of it, as the science of quantum physics says, by simply
thinking
about it, then is there such a thing
as luck? Perhaps we actually make our own destinies in a much more pro-active
way than merely by being the passive recipients of luck. What if we actually
create destiny, not just from our life choices and the way one thing leads to
another, but what if we
dream
our destinies? As in, “dream them up.” Conjure them. Perhaps not with
deliberate intention, but certainly with desire, wishes and thoughts. Thoughts
can build a bridge to the future of one’s choice. That has nothing to do with
luck, and everything to do with the power of the human mind.

This might be where the timing comes
in. When the dreamer creates his or her destiny, it’s by imagining the future.
This action automatically defines a path towards that future, which is like a
line of dominos standing on end. The path to the dreamed future is a circuitous
route, and may take many forks or turns along the way. The dominos are events,
people, ideas, etc., the basic components of everyday life. When a domino on
the path falls, it needs to hit the next one in the sequence. You can’t jump
over one or two and move on. You may feel impatient and want to, but there are
probably lessons to be learned, events to occur, or people you need to meet,
before you get to the step you yearn for. It’s just not the right time, yet.

Had I conjured up the ad in the paper
that led me to this job? I had certainly dreamed of something similar coming
along. Had Tony Novak conjured up the buyer who suddenly appeared to purchase
his house, just when he was wishing he could get rid of it? He seemed very sure
that the timing was not merely fortuitous.

Was it just “bad luck” that Amy had
disappeared before the boys could find out where she was going? Or did she have
such a solid willpower investment in remaining hidden that nobody could
possibly break through? If so, when she decided to let down her guard and
accept help, we would find her. Maybe Amy had conjured me up. Maybe her
self-created destiny was to find a safe haven about now, a place for her to go
and seek nourishment emotionally and physically, to make her stronger for the
tasks she had set for herself.

Luck, or destiny. Either way,
sometimes the tide of life seems to be with us, and sometimes we have to fight
against it to get where we want to go. I decided to stop worrying and float
along with the current for now, to see where it would take us.