by John Jaffe
Becky ushered them in just as Laura came down the stairs to the living room. Her scowl changed to a look of surprise when she saw Jack’s son.
“Matthew?” Laura said, then turned toward Jack. Before she could say anything else, Jack said, “I brought him because I knew you wouldn’t kill me in front of a witness.”
Becky laughed and her mother shot her a look. “Very funny, Jack,” Laura said. “Matthew, it’s nice to see you again, but your father and I said everything we needed to say at the office. Now if you’ll excuse us, Becky and I were just heading out.”
“We were?” Becky said. “But don’t you want to hear Mr. DePaul explain what happened?”
Laura paused. Jack knew he had to seize the moment before she stormed away or, worse, Matthew jumped in to help. He grabbed his cell phone and held it up. “Five minutes,” he said. “Just give me five minutes and a call to Proctor.”
“Proctor?” Laura said. “What’s he got to do with your little Kathleen drama?”
Jack shook the cell phone at her. “That’s just it. There is no little Kathleen drama. There’s no big Kathleen drama, there’s no Kathleen drama at all. She stole my e-mails, she’s the thief of words, not me. That’s what I’ve been trying to tell everybody all week.”
“Which one’s Kathleen, Mom?” asked Becky.
“She’s the bad guy,” Matthew told her.
“Just hear me out, Laura. What’s the harm?” said Jack.
“Yeah, Mom, let’s hear him out,” said Becky, wide-eyed at finding herself in the middle of an adult drama. Laura gave her a goto-your-room-right-now-young-lady glare; Becky ignored it.
“Yeah, Mom,” said Jack, grinning. His opinion of precocious twelvle-year-olds was changing rapidly.
“Okay, okay,” said Laura. “Let’s go to the kitchen.”
The kitchen table was centered by last night’s take-out pizza box and strewn with sections of that morning’s Star-News. Laura moved the papers aside and sat down, quickly followed by Matthew and Becky. Jack sat opposite Laura and, ignoring the fact that two referees under the age of twenty-five had been added to the scene, plunged ahead with his story.
He started with the knock at his hotel room door and his surprise at seeing Kathleen, then he marched through all the major points of that Friday night: walking out on Kathleen, leaving the laptop on, Annie’s phone call, Kathleen’s treachery. He told her everything, including how many drinks he’d had with their boss.
“This is where Proctor comes in,” Jack said. “Kathleen told Annie I was there when she called. In fact, I was nowhere near that hotel room when Annie called. I was getting shitfaced—excuse me, Becky—with my fellow slime-sucking editors. And Proctor can vouch for me.”
Jack dialed a number on his cell phone and waited a few moments. “Proc? It’s Jack, I’m sorry to call you at home on a weekend. No, everything’s okay. But I have a favor to ask you. I know it sounds crazy, but I’m at Goodbread’s house and I need you to tell her where you were last Friday night from nine till one, and where I was. No. No. I’m serious.”
Jack handed the phone to Laura, who, before she could even say hello, heard Proctor say, “Goodbread, what the hell’s going on? Are you guys on drugs or something?”
“Proc, it’s too complicated to explain the whole thing right now,” said Laura. “I promise I’ll fill you in first thing Monday. But in a nutshell, Jack thinks you can save his sorry butt. So, what did happen last Friday night?”
“Nothing happened. Except we got smashed,” said Proctor. “A bunch of us decided to go for drinks. We got to the bar a little after eight, Jack joined us about nine. We closed the place down. Left about one, one-thirty in the morning. Does this have something to do with that blowup at the office with Faulkner?”
“Kind of,” said Laura. “Thanks, boss, you’ve been a big help.” After Proctor hung up, Laura handed the phone back to Jack. “Well?” asked Jack. “What did he say?”
Laura scowled at Jack for a moment, then she slowly turned it into a reluctant smile. “Okay, I believe you,” she said.
Jack let out a sigh of relief.
“I guess I’m sorry,” said Laura.
“No need to apologize,” said Jack. “Just call Annie and tell her. Tell her everything. In fact, tell her I’m on my way over to her house right now.”
Jack, nearly overcome with relief and the prospect that Laura would get him out of this mess, was about to jump up and throw his arms around her broad shoulders when he noticed she wasn’t smiling anymore.
“I wouldn’t start celebrating right now if I were you, Jack,” she said.
“Huh?” said Jack. “Isn’t everything cleared up? You believe me, you just said so.”
Laura shook her head, and for the first time in her life felt actual pity for an editor. “Sorry, Jack. It’s not going to be that easy. First of all, Annie’s in Atlantic City with her mother. I’ll call her there and tell her everything, but don’t get your hopes up. There’s a lot more to Annie’s vanishing act than Kathleen’s nasty trick. Kathleen was an easy out for Annie. That way she didn’t have to face you after Arthur appeared in her office asking all those questions about what happened at the Commercial-Appeal. She can’t forgive herself for what she did, so how can she expect anyone else to?”
“But I don’t care about her past!” Jack shouted.
“No one does. Except her—and a group of circle-jerk editors looking for a story where there isn’t one,” Laura said pointedly.
“How was I supposed to know Annie was on Arthur’s list?” Jack said. “I’m no mind reader—if I were I’d know what to do now. Do you have any ideas?”
Laura shook her head, and the little entourage gathered around the kitchen table fell silent. Jack stared at the pizza box. Laura stared at Jack staring at the pizza box. Matthew and Becky held their breath waiting for someone to talk. Finally it was Jack.
“Maybe I should follow my own advice for once,” he said, pushing around a piece of pizza crust with an index finger. “How many times have I harped on you that when you get stuck writing a story, it’s because you need more information. That’s what I need, more information. So, what exactly did happen in Charlotte?”
CHAPTER 65
Jack got up from the Mac and arched his back. It was nearly eight in the evening. He’d been writing and polishing since early afternoon.
The idea had come to him when Laura was in the middle of her Annie Hollerman history lesson. By the time he returned to his apartment, he had mapped out the entire e-mail. The most important e-mail of his life.
Before Laura had begun her tale, she’d shooed Becky and Matthew out of the house. “Go to the Towson Mall,” she’d ordered them. “Buy some CDs or something.” Then she’d put on another pot of coffee.
“I’d been at the Commercial-Appeal for six months when they hired Annie. We were friends right from the start,” Laura said.
She told Jack how Annie beat out all the other applicants— even the Ivy Leaguers with their upper-crust pedigrees—and how she felt pressured from the beginning. “The editor told her to make page one in three weeks; she made it in two and half.” Jack heard about Annie’s meteoric rise to stardom, her relationship with fellow wunderkind Andrew Binder, how they were nicknamed A-Squared and were expected to be running the New York Times in ten years. He heard about her downfall and how Andrew left her soon after, about her abject shame at being a plagiarist, and how all of it led to a dismal marriage and an increasingly lonely middle age. Laura told him how, after twenty years, Annie still flinched when she heard the word “plagiarist” and how amazing it was that she finally gave in to Laura’s pestering and agreed to go on a date with a journalist.
“I’ll call her after you leave,” Laura said when she’d finished, “but like I said, don’t get your hopes up. You think I’m stubborn? Annie makes me look like a pushover. What’re you going to do if she won’t listen to me?”
“I don’t know,” said Jack. But by then, he did.
He was already fine-tuning the idea, which had flashed into his head nearly fully formed as Laura described the day Annie was fired.
Jack looked down at the final lines on the computer screen. The last time he’d written her, she’d told him to go to hell. “Save your words for your next partner in time travel,” she’d replied. He couldn’t let that stop him. Words and imagination had won her once. And, like Cupid’s little arrows, words were all he had left in his arsenal. Besides, it was a lot harder to hang up on an e-mail than a phone call.
He sat back down. “There’ve been so many words, it’s hard to know which ones are true,” Annie had said. These are true, Jack thought, as true as I can make them. Then he made a plea—a prayer, if truth be told—to whatever fates or gods there are: Please make Annie believe what I’ve written.
He scrolled to the top of the e-mail and read it through, stopping here and there to change a phrase or cut something extraneous. When he reached the end it was complete but for the last sentence. He had avoided writing it during the rough draft stages, wanting to save and savor the moment. With a bit of a flourish he wrote it, hesitating a moment over the final keystroke. It was just three words.
He leaned back and looked at it for a moment, head askance. Then he smiled.
CHAPTER 66
Well, he used to be funny on Johnny Carson,” said Joan Hollerman Silver. She waited as Annie walked through the door to their hotel room, then double-bolted it.
“Don Rickles?” Annie said, flinging herself dramatically onto the bed. “What were you thinking? I can’t believe I let you talk me into going to see him. What’s on for tomorrow night, Soupy Sales?”
“I think he’s dead. But Fabian’s at Trump’s. Remember the crush you used to have on him? Okay, so the show wasn’t great, but it’s better than you brooding all night. Ever since you talked to Laura you’ve been a pill.”
Annie’s mother walked to the desk and opened the laptop. “Check your e-mail, I’ll bet you he’s written. And stop looking at me like that.”
Annie flipped over and buried her face into the puffy mauve bedspread. Her words came out muffled. “You have no money left to bet and you’re breaking your promise.”
“Promise, schromise, what’s your password?”
Annie jumped from the bed and bolted to her laptop.
“Oh relax, Annie, I wasn’t really going to do it. But you can’t keep going around like an ostrich. I’m going to take a bath now so you and your computer can have some privacy.”
Annie’s mother gathered her night things and walked to the bathroom. She went in, closed the door, and came right out. “I know, I promised, but one last thing, then I’m finished. The happiest I’ve ever seen you was when we were in Asheville. And it wasn’t because you were with your mother. Annie, this Jack DePaul makes you happy, and I’ve waited a long time to see that. Second chances don’t come along every day. You were on a winning streak with Jack and you should never quit while you’re winning. He didn’t do anything wrong, Annie, give him a break. Okay, now I’m finished, not another word.”
With that, Joan Hollerman Silver closed the bathroom door behind her and lit a Virginia Slim.
Annie hovered by the computer, waiting for her mother’s final, final last word. When the mirrored bathroom door stayed shut for five minutes, Annie figured it was safe. She signed on and saw, sandwiched between offers of cheap printer ink, a message from jdepaul, entitled “Proposal.”
When she read his opening paragraph, she laughed. A laugh that quickly became a knowing smile. If Joan Hollerman Silver had been spying on her daughter—which, surprisingly, she wasn’t—she would have seen a number of other expressions color Annie’s face as she read Jack’s message: understanding, appreciation, fleeting melancholy, happiness, and, finally, a kind of bewildered relief.
Annie closed the laptop and walked to the bathroom door. She knocked, opened it a crack, and said, “Ma, you better come out now or you’ll end up a prune. I’m going for a walk. Don’t wait up.”
Before her mother had a chance to list all the horrible things that could befall a lone woman on the Boardwalk at night, Annie was out the door.
CHAPTER 67
Annie didn’t notice the sea air’s tang or the sliver of a moon with a bright star at its cusp. She didn’t hear the soft thumping of the waves or the clip-clop of shoes against the Boardwalk’s planks. She didn’t see the neon lights flashing “Jackpots Here!!” or the rolling chairs carting white-haired ladies from casino to casino. She was deep in memories of her life before and after Jack DePaul.
A month ago—had it been just a month?—he’d written her that he felt like a stranger to himself, like the wind blew right through him. That’s how she’d been feeling for twenty years. Who was that woman masquerading as Annie Hollerman? But with Jack, she remembered.
And it felt good to be the old Annie again. Jack made everything seem possible, even a new past. But she’d been deluding herself. The visit from the Star-News reporter proved that. Now she was back to the other Annie, the woman masquerading. And it didn’t feel good.
She walked slowly past the Sands casino, oblivious to a crowd of teens watching a guy juggling butcher knives. Why couldn’t she let go?
She grappled with the question for a while but gave up. It didn’t seem as important as it used to. Maybe it wasn’t the right question anymore. She looked up and, for the first time that evening, noticed where she was. Ahead of her were the colored lights of Steel Pier.
Now it was filled with Tilt-a-Whirls and other amusement rides, but to Annie it would always be the place where she watched the diving horses. She closed her eyes and imagined what the riders of those horses must have felt right as they leapt from the platform down forty feet into a small pool of water. The fear, the adrenaline rush; how everything must have disappeared except the heart-stopping question: Will I land safely?
Will I land safely?
Those riders always did. And they were jumping horses off a platform. All she was trying for was a second chance. It was her turn on the platform now—behind her were all the trepidations of a life made miserable by one mistake. In front was Jack DePaul, the welcoming pool of water.
She ran back through the exuberant lights of the Boardwalk to Caesar’s and her hotel room. Her mother was asleep, or pretending to be. It didn’t matter. Without hesitation, she took the leap.
To [email protected]
From [email protected]
Subject: Diving horses
Jack,
If a red-haired woman comes up to you at 3:00 this Sunday afternoon at the corner of Boardwalk and Park Place in Atlantic City and says, “There are storm clouds over Lisbon,” don’t be alarmed. It’s her way of saying, “I’ve been a fool.”
Love,
Annie
CHAPTER 68
Jack walked to One World Café with the Sunday New York Times stuck under his left arm and the Star-News sports section rolled up in his right hand like a baton. It was the kind of bright June morning that indulged petunias in flower boxes and flattered Baltimore’s brick row houses. The kind of bright morning you might find in the lede of a feature story by J. R. Thelman.
Jack flicked the sports section back and forth as if he were conducting a sprightly march. He was feeling good. He made a mental checklist of his fifty-year-old self and found everything in working order. Lower back—check. Hamstrings—check. Career—check. Emotional state—well, he’d done everything he could. Jack made a backhand swing with the sports section. The ball was now in Annie Hollerman’s court.
He ended up sharing an outdoor table with a twenty-seven-year-old stock analyst who talked about his time-share in Cabo San Lucas. By the time he got back to the apartment it was after ten. He considered ignoring the e-mail possibilities that lurked inside his computer, but signed on anyway.
In less than fifteen minutes from the time he clicked on the message from ahollerman, he was in his car heading to Interstate 95 and Atlantic City. An overnight
bag was tossed into the backseat, the windows were rolled down, and the radio was turned to the oldies station.
Jack gunned the Pathfinder up the on-ramp singing “Last Train to Clarksville” at the top of his lungs.
He arrived at the Boardwalk at 1:30. Plenty of time to fret about Annie’s message. It was an invitation, right?
The afternoon was lightly overcast and, as he walked along the dark gray planks, the bright gray background made the colors of the signs and storefronts pop out like neon. After an hour’s meandering, he headed to Park Place, where he found an empty place on a bench next to an old lady selling knitted cat figurines the size of small Christmas ornaments. A dozen of them were arranged on a blanket spread at her feet. Her face was tanned to leather.
The figurine lady didn’t make any sales. For starters, she had even fewer marbles than teeth, and her sales approach lacked finesse. When any tourist veered to within ten feet, she would dangle one of her items from a finger and shout, “Hey, look here!”
It took imagination to picture the Atlantic City that Annie had described to him. That place from her childhood was full of Eisenhower innocence. Sandcastles and saltwater taffy by day, mink stoles and spike heels by night. This modern-day Atlantic City had no Heinz Pier, no one giving out little samples of relish or pickles; there was no Planters Peanut store, let alone a Peanut Man tipping his hat to fine ladies in elegant dresses. Platform sandals and T-shirts with sequined dice represented current Boardwalk fashion.
Only a few things seemed to have survived the tide of slot machines and ninety-nine-cent sunglasses. The rolling chairs were still rolling, Fralinger’s was still selling saltwater taffy, and the Boardwalk fortune-tellers were still reading palms and looking into crystal balls.
Madame Chanel’s had caught Jack’s eye, with its white plastic chairs and purple paisley cushions and wind-up dogs yipping from a corner table in the souvenir shop next door. Madame Chanel, according to her sign, promised to “Solve all problems,” “Answer questions,” and “Reveal the future.”
