Ms America and the Brouhaha on Broadway (32 page)

Mario sighs. Then: “You know what, Happy? I’ll trust you on this. If you’re not ready to rule out homicide, I won’t, either. So I’ll call in a favor.” He chuckles. “After all, it is your birthday.”

I smile.

He lowers that mellifluous voice of his to the register that makes me shiver. “I’m glad I’m getting the chance to wish you happy birthday. I hope it’s a blockbuster year for you despite everything you’re going through. And to help kick it off right, I sent a little something to your apartment.”

I’m dying to know what that is. “So you’re giving me two gifts. Is that what you’re telling me?”

“I’d give you more if I could.”

We have a moment of silence. Then I clear my throat. “Well, what’s the best way for me to get this ball bearing to you?”

“Can you come to Greenwich Village? I’m on West 10
th
. And I’ll be here a while.”

He’s on a shoot, I soon learn, at a redbrick townhouse built before the Civil War. Number 14 is purportedly haunted by so many ghosts—twenty-two, to be exact—that it’s come to be called “The House of Death.” Mark Twain not only reported supernatural phenomena when he lived there for a year, it’s said that after his own trip to the Great Beyond he put in a spectral appearance or two, complete with white suit and mane of white hair.

Mario joins me outside soon after I arrive, dashing in black trousers and turtleneck. It doesn’t seem to matter how often I see him: every single time a jolt of electricity pulses through me. Everything gets bigger and brighter; everything amplifies. He pulls me into a hug and whispers happy birthday against my hair.

I pull back from him, always a challenge, and hand over the ball bearing wrapped in tissue. “I probably contaminated it even more myself.”

He makes a wry face. “If this was used to murder Lisette Longley, maybe it’ll rile up some of the ghosts in there.”

“Does the building feel haunted?”

“Not really. Not that I say that in my standup.” We both smile. “It does have that feel of a very old building,” he goes on, “as if the walls could tell stories. Some of the building is original, too, like some of the windows. Can you believe that? The very same glass people were looking through during the Civil War.”

“That’s hard to imagine.”

“Anyway, if any place is haunted, this place should be. There were several murders back in the day and people have reported all sorts of supernatural episodes. Phantom women in flowing gowns, a ghostly cat, shadows that won’t go away, sickly cloying odors that seem to come from beyond the grave—”

A young man wearing a headset calls to Mario from the open front door of the townhouse.

“You’ve got to get back in there,” I say. “Thank you for doing this, Mario.” I gesture to the ball bearing in his hand. “It’s so lucky you’re here in New York because otherwise there’d be no way I could get that tested.”

We gaze at each other. I think I hear the young man call again, but in Mario’s orbit I’m rarely sure of anything. Then: “I didn’t come to New York because of you,” he tells me, “but I knew you’d be here. I keep telling myself to stop keeping track of you, but somehow I never actually do it.”

I’m a little breathless hearing that. Mario is saying these things despite Esperanza. He’s saying them despite that morning a few days back when I saw him on
LIVE with Kelly & Michael
and he seemed so unreachable he might as well have been from another planet. Yet he was thinking of me all the while. “You didn’t call me, though,” I say. “I mean I know you shouldn’t be calling me, but—”

“I wanted to. I had to force myself not to. It was dumb luck that I ran into you at Cantwell’s law firm.”

I’ve got no business castigating Kimberly, I realize, when here I stand having this conversation with Mario, reveling in it even though I know Jason would hate it, wishing I didn’t feel this primal pull toward Mario at the same time I don’t want it to go away.

The young man calls again. Or maybe he yells, because this time we both hear him. “Give me a minute!” Mario shouts before turning his gaze back to me.

“I don’t know how,” I hear myself say, “but we’ve got to stop doing this.”

Mario doesn’t say anything for a while. I guess he doesn’t care that an entire production crew is waiting for him inside. Then: “Are you really sure, Happy? Are you really sure that’s what you want? Because something happens every time we see each other. And it’s not just me. I know that. It’s you, too.”

What Mario is saying is too huge to ponder. I resort to the most screamingly obvious statement of all. “But I’m married.”

He moves a step closer. “Believe me, I know. But I’m having more and more trouble making myself care.”

I’m vaguely aware that Headset Man has given up and gone off somewhere. I half wish I could, too, because I didn’t bargain on a conversation half as serious as this one. “I guess I was hoping we could keep this on the level of a flirtation, a fun fantasy, you know, a what might have been.”

“I think you’re not sure what you’re hoping for,” Mario tells me. “I think you’re torn. And that’s what keeps me coming around.” Very gently he runs a finger down my cheek. It’s a whisper of a touch, so light I barely feel it. “You need to think about what you want, Happy. Really think about it. Because if you’re sure you want me to go away, I will. But I won’t until I know you mean it.”

We stare into each other’s eyes. I know that in other circumstances Mario would kiss me, if we weren’t in the situation that we are, if the insistent young man weren’t lurking close by, if either of us were one iota weaker. But I manage to step away and Mario manages to go back inside the townhouse.

I’m not sure how I make it to the corner without toppling over. As it is, I’m so rattled that at one point I grab a lamppost and just hold on.

What happened back there? I guess what eventually happens when a man and a woman dance around each other the way Mario and I have been doing. What did Shanelle say to me once? It was way back when in Vegas, I think.
He likes you, girl. You got no business stoking that fire if you intend to douse the flames …

She was right. And Mario was, too, just now. I am torn. And he knows it.

Man. All I wanted was to hand over the ball bearing and sneak in a little harmless one-on-one time with Mario. So much for that agenda.

I’m halfway up the block making my way past a white brick apartment building when something dark sprints across the sidewalk in front of me. I stop, startled. It’s a black cat, hard to see in the fading light. The feline halts at the curb, turns to peer at me with yellow eyes, whips around and crosses in front of me
again
.

I don’t like to imbue innocent beasts with evil intentions, but that darn black cat crossed my path
twice
, as if once weren’t enough to do the job. And this comes after I nearly broke a mirror Saturday before the chocolate-spewing incident, walked beneath a ladder Friday before my catastrophic meeting with Mr. Cantwell’s lawyers, and heard a man utter the dreaded M word inside a theater Thursday night right before Lisette died.

I may not have been superstitious before this sojourn in the Big Apple, but I’m fast getting there. So what’ll go wrong now?

I don’t want to know the answer to that question.

I’ve just loaded my stressed self onto a crowded bus going north on Fifth Avenue when my phone rings with a call from Rachel. Fortunately I’ve recovered sufficiently from both Mario and the black cat to have a coherent conversation with my daughter. “I missed you making my birthday breakfast,” I tell her.

“I did, too. But you had a great waffle, Dad said.”

My heart clenches when I realize I won’t get a Rachel breakfast next year, either. Thanks to her overseas program, she’ll be living far away in some soon-to-be-determined Spanish-speaking country. At least I’ve finally made peace with her delaying college.

“So tell me what your birthday’s been like so far,” she says, and I regale her with bits and pieces of my day. I feel sneaky leaving out the Mario events and my back-and-forth with The Wench Kimberly, but I certainly can’t broach either of those topics. So the latest with
Dream Angel
and the to-do with her grandmother’s fur get a lot of play.

“I decided for sure I don’t want to go for head of the prom committee,” she tells me when I ask what’s going on at school.

“Really? That kind of disappoints me. You’d be so good at it.”

“At least I’m not totally bailing on the committee, Mom, like Madison did.”

I’m shocked Rachel even considered bailing. This is yet another sign that she isn’t herself these days. “You told me Madison quit because of that new boy J.T., who I gather disdains all extracurricular activities that don’t involve throwing a ball through a hoop.”

“She must’ve had her reasons,” Rachel allows, which surprises me even more. My daughter has often raged about the “stupidity” of girls who change to please boys. Now it appears she may embark on that path herself. “Speaking of Madison,” she goes on, “apparently she and J.T. went on a date this weekend. Not that I care. In fact, I couldn’t care less. If he asked me out, I don’t think I’d even go.”

My heart slumps further hearing that. That’s DENIAL in capital letters blinking neon bright. My sweet, sweet Rachel. I knew someday a boy would come along who’d bring out all her vulnerabilities and maybe now he has, in the form of new-to-school, shirker J.T. “You know,” I say, “from what you’ve told me about this new kid, I’m not exactly bowled over by him.”

“You shouldn’t judge him before you’ve even met him.”

“I’m relying on what you told me.”

“All the time I was growing up, didn’t you tell me I should judge for myself and not listen to what other people say? Now you haven’t even met J.T., but you’re already saying you don’t like him. How hypocritical is that?”

Okay, this is fast becoming one of those conversations where if I say A, Rachel says Not A. It doesn’t surprise me. She’s hurting. I do so wish I were home to give her a hug, though when she gets in this mood she doesn’t always let me.

“I’m sorry I said that,” Rachel says a moment later. “I didn’t mean it.”

“It’s okay, sweetheart.”

“Anyway, I’ve got to go. I really hope you have a great birthday, Mom. I’m going to bake cupcakes so we can celebrate again when you get home. Which would you like better, lavender or red velvet?”

“How about lavender for a change? And I love you, Rachel.”

“Love you, too, Mom,” and then she’s gone.

A misty-eyed minute or two later I get off the bus wondering if we’d all be better off if hearts came in unbreakable models. I don’t think we would be. All that breaking and healing is what makes hearts strong. And since that’s what I want Rachel to be, I must stand by and watch as she pinballs through life, hitting one obstacle after another, getting over or around as best she can. Like I’m still doing after all these years.

35, to be exact.

My mood lifts as I near 30 Rock, the site of my rendezvous with Jason. I’m amazed that this is the twentieth year he and I have kept up the tradition of ice skating on my birthday. Never before have we been away from home, though, and never at a location as special as this one.

The Rockefeller Center Christmas tree is down for the season, but in the darkness of early evening, with the oddly warm day turning into chilly night, the scene is magical nonetheless. White lights flicker in the trees surrounding the Lower Plaza, among two hundred flags from all the world’s nations flapping high on tall flagpoles. And over it all presides the gilded statue of Prometheus.

I am tense, though. If, as I asked her to, Kimberly admitted to Jason that the calendar is far from a done deal, which she knew before he came into town but never told him, he cannot be a happy camper.

Jason finds me among the hordes clustered around the ice rink. He’s a big piece of eye candy in jeans and motorcycle jacket over white tee shirt. We kiss and he hands me a cardboard coffee cup. “Cappuccino. Low fat, just the way you like it.” Then he flourishes a pair of tickets. “VIP reservations to avoid the lines.”

“You’ve thought of everything.” I kiss him again, trying to gauge his mood. In deference to my birthday, though, I know he’d pretend to be cheerful regardless how he felt.

“I aim to please, especially on your birthday,” he says, and takes my hand to lead me past the lines, through skate rental, and onto the ice. The rink is smaller than I expected, and hardly empty, but there’s room to maneuver. That’s something Jason and I are both well capable of—thanks to hockey for him and childhood skating lessons for me—which is a mercy because I feel a bit like a fish in a bowl with so many tourists on the plaza gazing down at the skaters.

Holding hands, Jason and I do a few warm-up laps. Mid-rink, a ponytailed blonde executes an impressive layback spin. “So do you want to bring it up or should I?” Jason asks me.

I’m relieved he’s said something. Somehow the calendar snafu feels like a threatening cloud over both our heads. “Kimberly told you?”

“I wish she’d told me before.”

No kidding. “Would you have made the trip if she had?”