This Must Be the Place: A Novel (36 page)

“Come by tomorrow at noon,” Mona told him.

“This is going to be fun,” Oneida said. Then she shut her door with a thud.

Had this all been the same day? Had everything that just happened occurred in the space of the same twenty-four hours?

Some days expand, Mona thought; their seams stretch and they hold more than a day’s worth of time. More than a day’s worth of memories old and new. Falling into a time warp would explain why she was so exhausted; why she was so nervous about what was going to happen next. Why she was so excited. She thought about pouring herself a cup
of coffee but realized she was nuts, today had
not
been a coffee day, and poured herself a juice glass of gin instead.

The kitchen was dark and claustrophobic and Mona didn’t think she’d survive if Anna should show up and ask what the hell was going on, she heard shouting earlier—so she took her gin into the den and curled up on the couch. She turned on the stereo for the company of sound and sipped her drink in the dark, and remembered both the recent and the distant past, which had overlapped today in ways Mona didn’t think were strictly kosher with the space-time continuum. Different pieces of her life folded and bent back, reached across time and touched like origami.

She didn’t think the weddings of people you didn’t really know should be fun at all, let alone
that
fun. Maybe it was the fact that every one of Carrie now-Kessler’s guests seemed to know the story of the Magical Photographer Savior and that Mona was responsible for delivering both the cake
and
him. Maybe it was because Carrie and her husband, Charlie, a funeral director in training (apparently the industry had a high rate of intermarriage), adored each other plainly and perfectly. Maybe it was the food (delicious), maybe it was the cake (not to be overly pleased with herself but: divine), and maybe it was the music (a live nine-piece funk band that practically tore the gilt off the walls).

Don’t kid yourself, kiddo
. It was the company.

Arthur Rook was alive again. Mona, who had really only known him two weeks, had been unprepared to meet this version of him. He smiled easily and laughed often and gave of himself in a way that was absolute and charming. He listened to Carrie’s ideas, orchestrated formal photos that were extremely well composed, and wove in and out of the day’s activities, cautious not to miss a single moment, no matter how small. In the words of his thesis adviser,
photojournalistically interesting yet formally sound,
Arthur told her, one brow arched, when she complimented him on his style later. He was professional and accessible and involved, and Mona, who wasn’t a bad businesswoman herself, saw an opportunity to align more than their bodies.

“Arthur,” she said, handing him a plate of food from the buffet, “would you go into business with me?”

He took the plate and balanced it on his knees. They were alone in the ballroom lobby, in a small sitting area to the right of the grand staircase. He smiled at her and took a bite of roast beef.

“I’m going to take that as a yes,” she said.

The volume of the band spiked as a guest opened the ballroom door.

“You’d have to change the name on the shirts.”

“White Wedding stays. It weeds out the humorless couples.”

Arthur swallowed. “White Wedding Baking and Photography is a bit . . . cumbersome. It’s a lot to say—or to print on a business card or T-shirt.”

“I’m serious,” Mona said. “Not about the name—well, I
am
serious about the name—but I meant the offer. Think about it.”

Arthur speared another piece of roast on his fork. He jiggled it over the plate and then set it back down. He turned to Mona. “Do you want to dance?” he said.

Arthur couldn’t have known that Ben Tennant, chaperoning the Ruby Falls Winter Semiformal, had sat in that exact same chair sixteen years earlier and asked her the same question, or that Mona would respond to both of the men Amy loved, sixteen years apart, with the same words.

“Are you sure?”

Arthur cocked his head toward the ballroom. “It’s the Bee Gees,” he said. “I’m going to dance regardless. But I’ll look like less of an idiot if you’re dancing with me.”

Ben had answered
Of course—for old times’ sake!
So history isn’t repeating itself, Mona thought, relieved.
Not completely.
She remembered wondering, at fifteen, if Ben was being irreverent or if he actually
was
referring to the old times they’d shared: when she was thirteen and he was nearly twenty-five, when he made her popular just by living in her house, and when her best friend thought she loved him. And in these new times, when her best friend probably
still
loved him. Mona wasn’t in the Drama Club, but Amy was, head of the tech crew, and Mona knew she interacted with Ben Tennant all the time: director to head of tech, going over set changes and lighting and sound cues. The less Amy talked about something, the more important it was to her,
and, since that one afternoon years ago, she had never mentioned Ben Tennant again.

Ever.

Screw it
, Mona thought. She took Arthur’s hand, and they stepped on the parquet dance floor together, as the band played a funked-up version of “How Can You Mend a Broken Heart?” And Arthur was right: he danced like he couldn’t help himself. He put one hand on her back and she wrapped both of hers around his neck. While she faced him, the happy photographer was all Mona knew. But when he spun her out the length of his arm, she saw ghosts in the dark corners of the ballroom. In the corner by the chocolate fountain she saw the other Arthur, blank-eyed and bleeding grief. Beyond the last row of dining tables she saw Amy—fifteen, wearing a plain black dress, her hair in a messy ponytail like she’d just pulled it back—her head turning as she searched for someone. Mona saw a much older Amy with another Arthur as they danced close together, as they surely must have. And there, to the right of the band, was an Amy Mona had never known, reaching for a wire live with electrons, moments before the thoughtless touch that would make her body dance for the last time.

She held Arthur closer because she was afraid of what she would see the next time he let her go. So they danced and Mona almost forgot everything. Everything that had happened since the night Ben Tennant asked her to dance. Everything she had done. Everyone she had lost. And gained—and when Mona realized she had almost forgotten her daughter, she stumbled. Arthur caught her.

“You’re a slippery one,” he said, and she thought,
Everything could still happen. Every choice could still be made. Every future could still come to pass.

They had talked about the future, she and Ben—sixteen years ago, right before he asked her to dance, Ben and Mona were talking, just talking, out in the lobby. Mona had been bored silly by the semiformal—the food was disgusting, and the music was lame, and Amy was bitching with Chuck Wozniak about all the sets they’d need for
Mame
—so she had left the ballroom and was sitting by herself in a deep blue velvet high-backed chair in the ballroom lobby to the right of the grand staircase, the exact same chair she would sit in with Arthur Rook half a
lifetime later. She was wearing a kelly green dress that made her feel like she was sixteen, at least. Her shoes were off, but her toes still hurt. She rubbed her bare feet together and sighed because she was utterly, inescapably, soul-crushingly bored.

And then Ben passed by, a short glass filled with amber liquid in one hand. He must have run over to the bar on the other side of the lobby. “Desdemona Jones!” he hailed. “How are things at the old Darby-J?”

Her conversation with Ben replayed for Mona in fuzzy loops of spectral audio for the rest of the Waters-Kessler reception. No matter how hard she tried to lose herself in the present, she heard herself gossiping in the past with Ben: about his life, about the other tenants he’d known when he still lived at the Darby-Jones.

Ben had asked,
How are you?

Honestly?

Carrie and Charlie hugged her and Arthur before rushing out to start the rest of their lives.

Honestly.

Arthur passed her a small paper plate with a slice of cake on it. “I grabbed us a piece for the road,” he said. “They’re packing everything up, closing it down. This is now an ex-wedding.”

I’m bored
, she had said.
I’m bored as shit, Ben.

Ben had smiled his beautiful smile at her and said
I promise you it gets so much better than this. I promise you the future—your future—will be interesting.

She had believed him. Mona, at fifteen, believed him absolutely—believed him enough to blush and grin, flattered beyond words that Ben Tennant—the famous, the talented and brilliant and Hollywood-and Broadway-bound Ben Tennant, who could come and go from Ruby Falls as he pleased, who had seen other parts of the world and would see more—could see into her future. Could see that it was interesting.

Then he asked her to dance.

Are you sure?

Of course—for old times’ sake!

And then Amy—who Mona hadn’t even noticed approaching across the lobby—hurled her purse at Mona’s head, opened her mouth to say something but didn’t, and ran away. Actually
ran
, staggering on her
heels so badly that Mona thought she was going to snap her ankle or wipe out face-first—but no: Amy’s will was iron, no matter how wildly she pinwheeled her arms, she would right herself or be damned. Ben Tennant dropped his empty glass on the carpet and followed, calling out for her to slow down, Amy, calm down—wait.

And Mona just sat there and watched Ben Tennant run after her friend, around the corner, down the hall of the Landmark Hotel. She looked down at her hands and knew, intuitively, that the futures of other people were solidifying all around her. Her presence was neither required nor wanted. She picked up Amy’s purse and went back into the ballroom, where she half-listened to Chuck and his nerd buddies quote lines from
Wayne’s World
at each other for about an hour. When Amy returned, her cheeks were pink with tears. She took her purse when Mona handed it to her and she said,
I’m so ready to get out of here
, and Mona couldn’t agree more, so they left .

Amy Henderson had made all the choices she was ever going to make. There were no more futures available to her. But for Mona, everything could still happen. Every choice could still be made, and every future could still come to pass.

And here Mona sat. She tossed back the last of the gin and realized that Arthur was standing in the doorway.

“Foreigner?” He smiled.

Mona had turned on the stereo just so she didn’t have to sit in the dark, in the quiet, alone. She hadn’t even been listening before now, but sure enough, “Cold as Ice” was oozing out of the giant speakers that had been in the den her entire life, that were older than Mona.

“The kid must not have taken his CD when he left,” she said. “Pretty sure I don’t own any Foreigner.” She blinked. “I’m drinking gin alone in the dark, listening to Foreigner. How . . . did I get here?”

You know exactly how you got here, Jones
, she thought.
Where you go
from
here . . . that’s the question worth asking.

“I hope you don’t mind,” Arthur said, “that I offered to help them.”

She shook her head. “You’re a good person.” She raised her empty glass. “Cheers.”

He sat on one end of the couch and patted the tops of his thighs. Grinning, she stretched her legs out across his lap.

“My feet might smell.”

“I thought female feet didn’t smell.”

“That’s a myth.”

“Myth? Oh, myth!”

“Yeth?” Mona laughed. “Sweet mother, you
are
a dork.”

“And you’re not alone,” Arthur said, cupping her bare feet in his hand.

“Well.” Mona wiggled her toes. “Not
anymore
.”

She felt the world tilt and caught her breath. Until she said the words, she hadn’t known—despite Anna and Sherman and Bert, despite her daughter—how very alone she’d been; or how very frightened she was now of the moment, closer than ever, when she would have to be alone again.

17
Untitled (Satellite)