The Look of Love: A Novel (8 page)

“I can only imagine,” I say. “But you wouldn’t have it any other way, would you?”

She sighs. “No, I wouldn’t. He’s the love of my life.” She reaches for the hair dryer and round brush. “But I’d be lying if I didn’t admit to wondering about his life on the road, wondering about all the amazing women he meets. They throw themselves at him, Jane. I’ve actually witnessed it.”

“
You
are an amazing woman, honey,” I say, locking eyes with her in the mirror in front of me. “He’s married to the very best one. You have nothing to worry about.”

She shrugs. “We’ve been talking about starting a family.”

“Oh, that’s wonderful,” I say. “You’d be a great mom, Mary.”

“We’ll see,” she says. “We’ve been trying for about six months now. No luck yet. I mean, his infrequent trips home don’t really help matters.”

“Well, if it’s meant to happen, it will happen.”

Mary nods. “Yes, you’re right. Eli gets home soon.” She finishes blow-drying my hair, then turns me around to face the mirror. “There.”

“Thanks,” I say. “Perfect, as usual.”

“Big plans for New Year’s Eve?”

I shake my head. “My brother’s throwing one of his usual parties, and he’s hell-bent on getting me to go.”

“Oh, how is Flynn doing?”

A long time ago Flynn had a crush on Mary, but knowing his track record with women, I did not encourage it. “He’s all right,” I say. “Roaming from one woman to the next, you know.” I grin. “Nothing new.”

Mary spritzes my hair with hair spray that smells like citrus. “Well, I think you should go to his party. You never know who you might meet.”

I roll my eyes. “No, I know exactly the type of guy I’ll meet, and he’ll be an artist, probably have a sleeve of tattoos and wear skinny pants, and possibly suspenders.”

Mary grins. “You’re too picky, Jane. Those guys can be great too.”

Just then, the salon door opens and an older woman walks in. I immediately recognize her as the British woman who recently passed Mel’s newsstand at the market. She is so polished and proud, and yet her presence has a lonely tenor to it. When her eyes meet mine, I smile, but she quickly looks away.

“What’s her story?” I ask Mary in a whisper.

“Oh, Vivian,” she says in a hushed tone that matches mine. “She comes in every Thursday for a wash and blowout. She doesn’t say much. For a long time, I thought she was an ice queen, but . . .” Mary stops and shakes her head. “Do you know what happened to her husband?”

“Her
husband
?”

“Yeah, she was married. I had to use some serious detective skills to connect the dots. One day she paid with a check, and I noted her last name. A quick Google search turned up quite a story. Jane, she’s the widow of Alastair Sinclair.”

I shake my head. “The name doesn’t ring a bell.”

“It didn’t for me at first either, but I did some more searching. He was a big deal. Knighted by the Queen for his humanitarian work in Africa. From what I can tell, she was fairly involved too.” Mary shakes her head. “He died in a helicopter accident ten years ago in Africa. With his mistress beside him.”

I gasp. “Oh, no.” I look over at Vivian sitting at the far end of the salon, staring down at her manicured hands, face pinched into a frown. “No wonder she’s bitter.”

Mary nods. “I suppose she has the right to be. To lose the love of her life and find out that his heart belonged to another in the same moment.”

I think of Mel, the antithesis of Vivian’s larger-than-life late husband. Could he thaw the ice around her heart?

After lunch, I drive downtown for my monthly appointment with my neurologist, Dr. Amy Heller. She’s been following my condition since childhood, and after Mom died, she became my mentor and mother figure, although she couldn’t be any more different from Mom. Where Mom was a romantic who’d sometimes put on her favorite Billy Joel song, “And So It Goes,” and listen to it over and over as she cried, practical Dr. Heller regards life with fact, not feeling. Nothing stands in her way, and as successful as she is, I’ve often wondered if she’s happy.

“Hello, Jane,” Dr. Heller says, taking her usual seat beside me in her exam room, with its beige walls and windows that look out over Seattle’s Capitol Hill neighborhood. “And how are we doing this week?”

Dr. Heller speaks in “we’s” not “you’s.” When her patients have cancer,
she
has cancer. When they have migraines, she rubs her aching forehead too. No, Dr. Heller may not be an emotional woman, but she does have the gift of empathy.

“We’re . . . OK,” I say.

“Just OK?”

I swallow hard as I begin to relate the details of my visit with Colette.

Dr. Heller sets my chart down, then nods. “So let me get this straight. A woman you’ve never met told you that the changes in your vision can be explained as your ability to see”—she pauses to clear her throat—“love?”

“Yes, in short.”

“And do you believe this woman?”

I shrug. “I don’t want to, but she spoke about my condition in a way that, for the first time in my life, made sense.”

“What?”

“Well, she said that I have until sunset on my thirtieth birthday to identify the six types of love as they appear in my life, or I risk losing the ability to ever find meaningful love myself.”

She takes off her glasses, rubs the lenses with the sleeve of her white coat, then replaces them.

“You think this is all nuts, don’t you?” I say.

“No,” she says. “I do not. Jane, do you know the old parable about the maiden and the fox?”

I shake my head.

“It goes like this: There once was a beautiful maiden in a kingdom far away. She watched as her four younger sisters were married off to eligible suitors, but the maiden, despite her great beauty, remained unmarried. A wise old woman in the neighboring village told her that for her to ever find love and marry, she’d have to identify a red fox in the forest under moonlight. Well, red foxes are exceedingly rare. But the maiden accepted the challenge. And night after night, year after year, she consumed herself with finding this elusive red fox. And then, one night, she found her fox, standing on a mossy rock in the moonlight. Moments later, it was shot with an arrow, by a prince on horseback, who immediately noticed the maiden’s great beauty. They married, and she became the princess of the land. So I ask, was it the fox or was it the maiden’s persistence to be thanked for her collision with love?” She nods to herself. “Jane, I believe in science, not magic. I believe there’s a logical explanation for most everything. And while this journey may not cure you of your condition, it may give you some sort of understanding into yourself. And in that, you have my full support.”

“Thanks,” I say, just as the door opens and Kelly, one of Dr. Heller’s longtime nurses, pokes her head in. “Dr. Heller, Dr. Wyatt needs to have a word with you.”

“Tell him to come in,” she says.

Kelly and Dr. Wyatt enter the room.

“Sorry for the intrusion,” he says to me.

“It’s no problem,” I say. I watch as Dr. Wyatt, a handsome, slightly younger doctor, hands a chart to Dr. Heller. Kelly looks on as they exchange a few words about another patient, which is when my vision begins to cloud.

“Sorry about that,” she says a moment later, after Kelly and Dr. Wyatt exit. “Male physicians,” she says with a sigh. “They come in so cocky, and when it turns out they’re wrong about something, well, don’t even get me started. I just had to . . .” Her voice trails off when she sees me rubbing my eyes.

“It’s happening, isn’t it? You’re having an episode.”

I nod.

“We need to track this. We need to see this on imaging. I’ll fast-track an MRI. If we’re lucky, we’ll pick up the tail end of this. Hurry, Jane.”

Kelly, the nurse, returns with a wheelchair and pushes me hurriedly down the hall.

“You OK, sweetie?” she asks in the elevator.

I rub my eyes again. The fog is lifting now. “Yeah,” I say. “But you have to tell me. How long has she loved him?”

“Honey, whatever do you mean?”

“Dr. Heller,” I say. “How long has she loved Dr. Wyatt?”

Kelly laughs nervously. “You’ll have to ask her about that,” she says, wheeling me down the long hallway to the imaging department.

1301 4th Avenue

F
lynn opens his eyes and turns to his right, where a nude woman sleeps beside him. Her blond hair is spread out on the pillow, and her mascara is smudged beneath her eyes. He sits up and notices the empty wine bottle on the nightstand beside him as the events of last night, still foggy, slowly come into focus. He was at his art gallery in Pioneer Square for his friend Ryan’s new body of work. His paintings weren’t memorable, or even very good, but Ryan was a friend, and Flynn couldn’t say no to hosting a friend’s exhibition. Thankfully, Ryan’s wealthy family dutifully bought every single canvas.

Flynn climbs out of bed quietly. He doesn’t want to wake what’s-her-name. Jenna? Cara? Julie? Is she a cocktail waitress or a dental hygienist? An esthetician or a flight attendant? He can hear his sister’s voice in his ear then: “You only date one kind of woman: bimbos.” But what does Jane know about love? At least Flynn
has
a love life.

He steps quietly onto the cold hardwood floors beneath his feet, careful to avoid the floorboard that creaks three paces from the bed. One creak and what’s-her-name would call him back to bed. Not that that would be a tragedy. But Flynn has a code of conduct. And morning sex, though quite enjoyable, is not something one does after a one-night stand. Morning sex is for relationships. Morning sex is for love. And Flynn has never been in love.

He thinks about this as he stands naked in his kitchen, gazing out at the city beyond the floor-to-ceiling windows of his eleventh-floor loft apartment. He scoops the pre-ground espresso into the machine and pulls a shot. As he listens to the familiar hum of his espresso machine, a gift from a girlfriend whose face six years post-breakup is now fuzzy in his mind, he thinks about his life. Thirty-five. Never married. Never in a serious relationship. And maybe he’ll always be this way.

He takes a sip of his espresso and looks out the window at the apartment building directly across the street, where he stares into the first bank of windows on the eleventh floor. Flynn wonders if she’s awake yet, the woman he sometimes sees cooking in her underwear, or nothing at all; crying late at night, or early in the morning; working in the spare bedroom that she uses as a pottery studio, spinning her wheel with such concentration, such intensity, he cannot look away. And then she emerges from her bedroom. She wears a white tank top and a pair of red panties. Her long brown hair is pulled back into a messy ponytail and it swings from side to side as she wends her way into the kitchen, where she pours a cup of coffee into an oversize white mug before walking to the window. She looks out across Fourth Avenue to Flynn’s apartment. For a moment, time stands still as their eyes meet. Flynn lifts his hand to wave just as he feels a pair of thin arms around his waist.

“Whatcha lookin’ at?”

He turns around to face the woman from last night. She’s wearing one of his T-shirts, her long tan legs exposed beneath. And he remembers the way he lifted them this way and that only hours before.

“Oh, nothing,” he says quickly, pulling the blinds down.

“Come back to bed,” she says seductively.

“I shouldn’t,” Flynn says with a grin. “I’ve got a packed schedule today.”

“Oh,” the woman says, a little injured. “Tonight, then?”

He shakes his head. “I’m busy tonight too, sorry.”

“Call me, then?” she asks, with puppy dog eyes.

“Of course . . .”

“It’s Julia,” she says.

“Right, exactly. Julia.”

“I gave you my phone number last night. So you have it. I mean, if you wanted to call. We could go out sometime. Do this again.”

“Right,” he says, making a mental note to delete her number from his phone. It’s not her fault. She’s twenty-five, beautiful, and just so . . . typical. Flynn knows women like Julia well. They were psychology majors in college, but now work in advertising or marketing. They order fruity drinks at bars and spend all their money on expensive shoes and handbags. They laugh about vapid things and bat their eyelashes at him. And so he dates these women. He buys them their fruity drinks and takes them to restaurants and tells them things they want to hear, while he waits for
it
to come along, even if he doesn’t quite know what
it
is.

Julia manages to find her clothing, strewn across his bedroom from last night. She dresses, and he gives her the obligatory good-bye kiss. After the door clicks closed, he pulls on a sweatshirt and laces up his running shoes, then opens the blinds and looks out the window again, across Fourth Avenue. She sits at her pottery wheel. He loves watching her work. And he’s thought, dozens of times, that he should walk over and introduce himself. He could invite her to display her pottery at his gallery. It would be a perfectly natural thing to do. A business opportunity. And yet, when he thinks about doing it, his stomach quivers, though Flynn never gets nervous. Point to any beautiful woman at a bar and he’ll walk up to her.

But this woman? She looks up from her wheel then and adjusts her dark-rimmed glasses with the edge of her hand, and Flynn feels weak. She sees him again. And this time, she lifts her hand up to wave to him. He smiles, but she looks away quickly. He watches as she suddenly leaps up from her chair and runs to the door. She peers through the peephole and then pauses with trepidation.

After a long moment, she unlatches the lock and opens the door, slowly. She takes a few steps back, as a man walks through the door. He’s carrying flowers, an enormous vase of pink roses. She takes them in her hands, but Flynn can’t tell if she’s smiling. He can’t see her face. He can only see the man, tall and businesslike in a well-tailored pinstriped suit. He takes off his hat, a fedora (who wears fedoras?), and his silver hair is the only indication that he’s older than she is. Flynn hates to admit that this man is handsome, perhaps better-looking than he is.

The man points to the couch, and the woman nods slowly, as if she’s hesitating. Flynn knows he should look away, but he can’t. He is transfixed by every detail of this living room scene, every detail of her life. Who is he? Clearly he’s in love with her. But is she in love with him?

The woman walks to the window, and Flynn’s neck erupts in goose bumps once again when she catches his gaze. But this time, her eyes are sad, distant. She reaches her arm higher, and in one movement of the wrist, the blinds are lowered and, once again, the iron curtain is drawn.