Then a familiar voice calls out, “You know, we really should stop meeting in the middle of the night.” I peer though the window into the cab’s lit interior. It’s Nick Eliot, grinning like a schoolboy.
“You scared the hell out of me.”
“Get in. I’ll give you a lift.”
“I have a hundred more flyers to post.”
“Come on. You look like you’re about to keel over. I’ll take you back to my place and fix you something to eat.”
“I’m leaving the country tomorrow—today, I mean—and I wanted to get all these up.”
“Tell you what,” he says, opening the door. “Leave them with me. I can do it tomorrow. I’ll take you home after I feed you.”
“You sure?”
“Absolutely.”
Some people have a gift for making you feel okay, just by the fact of their presence; Nick is one of them. The coincidence of seeing him here is so strange, so oddly perfect, that I can almost believe for a moment in the existence of some cosmic designer peering down from above, pulling strings. If I were superstitious, I’d take this as a good sign about my trip to Costa Rica.
I slide into the warmth of the cab. There’s a briefcase on the floor by his feet, a garment bag on the seat between us. “What are you doing out this late? I thought I was the only one up.”
“Just coming home from the airport,” he says.
“Where were you?”
“Ljubljana. Have you been there?”
“No.”
“You should go. Great architecture, shopping, and museums. Something like what Prague was twenty years ago, before the backpacker invasion.” He puts his hand on my knee. “You okay?”
“Yes, thanks for asking.”
His hand feels good, calming, and I realize that my happiness at seeing him is way out of proportion with anything I should feel for a casual friend. Jake used to be able to put me at ease this way, just by his touch, but that seems like such a long time ago. The blocks slide by, the night is quiet as a church. The electric bus cables overhead glint in the moonlight, forming a low, metallic canopy above the street. Nick looks straight ahead, slouching in his expensive suit.
“I’m really glad to see you,” I say.
He smiles. “Likewise.”
We stop in front of a trashed-looking building at Harrison and Twenty-first. On the ground floor, there’s a taqueria with a neon sign glowing in the window. Beside it, a lesbian bar, closed. Nick pays and thanks the driver. At the door to the building, he punches a code into the keypad, and the door opens onto a narrow flight of stairs. The stairwell, carpeted and dimly lit, reeks of stale cigarette smoke and discarded food from the taqueria.
“I know what you’re thinking,” he says. “Trust me. It’s better inside.”
“I pictured you somewhere else, maybe Russian Hill.”
“I bought it the year I moved here, couldn’t pass up the price. Besides, I travel about forty weeks a year, so it’s not like I’m sitting around enjoying my place.”
On the third-floor landing Nick punches more numbers into yet another keypad and ushers me inside. The place is amazing, and not just in a Martha Stewart sort of way. It has an Architectural-Digest-meets-Industrial-Chic look. Clearly, nothing in the place came from IKEA, Home Depot, or Pottery Barn.
“How high are those ceilings?”
“Fourteen feet.”
“Just in case you have the Warriors over for dinner?”
“Exactly.”
The appliances are all brushed aluminum, the furniture sparse and angular: a tan sofa that covers the length of one wall, three chairs in soft metallic hues, a coffee table as big as my bed. The dining area has a beige rug, on which stands a large oval table with steel legs and a concrete top that’s been polished to a gray shine. The bedroom is set off with a mesh curtain. One entire wall is covered with built-in bookshelves made from art deco blocks. There must be two thousand books on the wall.
“How many of those have you read?”
“A few,” he says, looking slightly embarrassed.
The place reminds me of the cool spatula he bought me in Helsinki, only larger and more complex. “This is amazing.”
“Can’t take any credit for it. One of my brothers is an architect, and his wife’s an interior designer. A couple of years ago, for my birthday, they redid the place. Knocked out the walls and got rid of my furniture. Problem is, I spend so little time here I still haven’t entirely gotten used to the changes. It feels like someone else’s flat.”
“I love it.”
“Thanks.” He walks over to the kitchen. “Have a seat. I’m going to fix you something. You look hungry, very hungry. Do you like French toast?”
“Love it.”
“Good, it’s the only thing I know how to make.”
While he cooks, I peruse the bookshelves. I can’t detect any particular order in the arrangement or selection. He has a little bit of everything: Trotsky’s My Life shelved beside To the Finland Station, Colette next to Jack London, Lolita and Madame Bovary bumping spines with several thick texts on the fall of communism in the Balkans. He has poetry by Auden and Ashbery and Plath, essays by E. B. White, plays by Harold Pinter, a book of folk songs for the banjo by a Texan named Wade Williams. One whole shelf is dedicated to the Albanian writers Jiri Kajane and Ismail Kadare—in the original, as well as the French and English translations.
“I can honestly say you’re the first guy I’ve ever met who has two Albanian writers on his bookshelf.”
“There’s quite a bit you don’t know about me.”
There are a number of books in French and German, a Neil Young biography, an encyclopedia of Chinese medicine, and a few dozen Southern novels, including Walker Percy’s The Moviegoer.
Nick is cracking eggs into a bowl, mixing something with a whisk. “You see anything you like,” he says, “feel free to take it with you.”
“You’ve read this?” I ask, holding up the Percy book.
“Quite possibly the best book I ever read. Are you a Percy fan?”
“I tried once but couldn’t get into it.”
“You should give it another shot,” he says, dropping a slab of bread into the batter. “I insist you take it with you. It’s actually quite apropos for you. There’s this one great line I always come back to—‘To become aware of the possibility of a search is to be onto something. Not to be onto something is to be in despair.’”
“That’s very nice. It’s the truest thing I’ve heard in a while.”
He drops a chunk of bread in the skillet. The bread sizzles, and the apartment fills with the fragrance of butter and cinnamon. “You never mentioned where you’re going.”
“Costa Rica.”
“Vacation?”
“No. It’s about Emma. Long story.”
“What’s your fiancé’s take on all this?”
“He thinks I’m chasing a ghost. We fought about it. Unfortunately, fiancé probably isn’t an accurate word at this point.”
Nick looks surprised. “I’m sorry to hear that.”
“Are you?”
“I went through a bad breakup a couple of years ago, and I wouldn’t wish that on anybody. Still, I’ll confess I’d like for you to be single, for selfish reasons.”
He scoops the toast up with a space-age spatula, slides it onto a couple of red plates, pours two glasses of milk, and sits down beside me at the bar. “Try it.”
I bite into the toast. The bread is thick and spongy. It tastes of butter, cinnamon, powdered sugar, and something else I can’t quite identify. “This is without a doubt the best French toast I’ve ever had.”
“Listen, do you have somewhere to stay when you get to Costa Rica?”
“I made a reservation online, someplace near the airport in San José.”
“Cancel it. The motels in the city are dodgy. I know a woman there who rents a room in her house. It’s cheap and clean, she’s friendly, and she speaks a little English. When do you arriv
e?”
“Around ten tomorrow night. According to United Air, the shortest distance between San Francisco and Costa Rica involves Chicago and Miami.”
“I’ll let her know you’re coming.” He scribbles an address on the back of his business card. “I’ll write down a couple of restaurants, too. I know it’s not a pleasure trip, but you have to eat, right?”
“Thanks.” I can’t help smiling. “I bet I could name anyplace—Budapest, Bucharest, Anchorage—and you’d be able to come up with several recommendations.”
He laughs, stabbing a piece of French toast with his fork. “Not really—though, if you ever do go to Budapest, you should definitely stay at the Hotel Gellert—communist chic, great bargain. Last time I was there I had a piano in my sitting room.” He reaches into his pocket and pulls out a BlackBerry. “Something else. There’s this guy down there. Wiggins.” He punches some letters on the BlackBerry, then writes a phone number on another business card. “You should call him when you get to San José.”
“Wiggins?”
“He’s with the embassy. Might be able to help you. He’s out of the country a lot, so if he’s not around when you arrive, you should keep trying to make contact with him. Tell him you’re a friend of mine.”
“How do you know him?”
“Long story.”
I’m wondering if this French toast is really some of the best food I’ve ever had, or if I’m just that hungry. I clean my plate and look up to see him staring at me, grinning. “Sorry,” I say, wiping my chin. “I was famished.” I realize that I’m actually taking pleasure in this food. Maybe it’s true what everyone has been telling me, the thing I refused to believe: life does go on.
“No apology necessary. I love a woman with an appetite. Now, keep this number handy. Don’t forget.”
“I won’t.” I take a sip of the milk, and it tastes so good I chug down the whole glass. “What’s in this French toast, anyway?”
“Nestlé Nesquik and vanilla extract are among the secret ingredients.” He wipes a spot of syrup off my chin. “Tell me something.”
“What’s that?”
“If we’d met under different circumstances—you know, if you hadn’t been engaged, if things had been more normal in your life—do you think we might have had a chance?”
It’s not a question I have to think about. “I do.”
“It’s all about timing, isn’t it?” He circles the rim of his glass with one finger. “Listen, international phone calls are a pain down there, but there are plenty of Internet cafés in the tourist areas. Promise you’ll drop me a note every now and then.”
“I will.”
“And call me when you come home, so I can badger you into having dinner with me. No pressure, not a date, just dinner.”
“Of course.”
“One more thing. Do you speak Spanish?”
“Un poco.”
He goes over to the bookshelves and comes back with a pocket-size Spanish phrase book and a copy of The Rough Guide to Costa Rica. “Just to help you get by.”
I slip the books into my bag. “Why are you so nice to me?”
He shrugs. “I like you. But you know that already.”
“Funny, single women always say it’s impossible to meet a good straight guy in San Francisco. But I’m not looking, and here you are. Half the single women I know would kill to date someone like you.”
He grins. “Maybe they already did and they weren’t too impressed.”
“Thanks,” I say. “For these, for everything. I better go. Long day tomorrow.”
“Let me drive you home,” he says. “I’ll just get my keys.”
Then the drifting, the forgetting, and a hand shaking my shoulder.
“Abby?”
“Hmmm?”
“You fell asleep.”
I’m still sitting at the bar, my head resting in my arms. “What time is it?”
“Four-fifteen. I was only gone for a couple of minutes. You conked out.”
Then his arms are under my legs, my back, and he’s carrying me, and it’s a sensation I remember from childhood, the way my father would rock me to sleep, then carry me to bed; half awake, cradled in his arms, it felt as if I was flying. Nick lays me on the couch, disappears for a moment, and returns with a blanket.
“I can’t stay here,” I say, sitting up. But the couch is soft, and I’m so tired I can barely keep my eyes open.
“Just for a little while.” He slides a pillow under my head and pulls the blanket up to my chin. “I’ll wake you up early.” The last thing I remember before falling asleep is the sound of Nick brushing his teeth.
At 5:35 I wake to a quiet apartment. I tiptoe over to his bed and find him sleeping in a blue T-shirt and boxers, one foot dangling off the edge. Uncovered like this, unaware, he looks less like a mysterious jet-setter, and I fight an urge to crawl in beside him. I imagine how warm his skin would be, the pleasant pressure of his legs against mine. I imagine how, in another life, another time, I might be lying beside Nick right now, with nothing bigger to worry about than our weekend plans. I’ve thought of it more and more lately—how much better it would have been simply to never have met Jake, or Emma. If I’d never met them, I couldn’t have hurt them, and I couldn’t know what I was missing by not having Emma in my life.
I look at Nick one last time, scribble a thank-you note, grab my messenger bag, and slip out as quietly as possible.
Leaving like this, so early in the morning—while the city is deserted and the shops are closed and a pinkish light is settling over the streets—reminds me of family vacations when I was a child. My mother would come into our rooms before dawn, usher us outside in our pajamas, and settle us into the back of the station wagon. Annabel and I would lie side by side, a single blanket spread over us, and drift in and out of sleep as the car wound through the quiet neighborhood.
The smell of my mother’s coffee would fill the car, and we would hear the rustling of the maps, my parents’ quiet whispers. It was on those morning escapes from our ordinary house and our ordinary lives that my parents seemed to belong together; the front seat seemed to be a very long distance away, and with their maps and coffee, their whispered plans, they appeared to live a secret life. Annabel and I would wake up in some unfamiliar town as the car rolled to a stop outside a McDonald’s or Stuckey’s. We’d change clothes in the back of the station wagon, then go inside for breakfast and a bathroom break. At some point inside the restaurant, with the sun streaming through the windows and the business of the day settling in, our regular lives would resume, our parents would begin to bicker, and the ride through the dark streets in our pajamas would feel a dream, like a false but pleasant memory of a thing that never happened.
When I told Annabel about my trip, she was less than enthusiastic. “Are you sure you’ve thought this through?” she said.
“I have.”
She was quiet for a minute. “I still believe what I told you in the beginning—you have to follow the search to its logical end. I just worry about you, Abby.”
“You’re my sister,” I said. “It’s your job to worry. But I’m not crazy, if that’s what you’re getting at. It feels really good to have a plan. It may not be a perfect plan, but it’s something.”
I hurry to the bus stop at Folsom and Twentieth. A couple of early risers are already waiting—a woman in hospital scrubs, a nervous teenager who looks like he’s been out all night. No one speaks. No one meets the eyes. Somewhere, a motorcycle revs to life, one long, angry roar. Five minutes later, a bus appears down Folsom, a moving beam of light in the near-dark of an urban morning, its fluorescent interior impossibly bright.
Just before the bus reaches us, sparks fly in the air, and the pole connecting the bus to the matrix of wires above swings free. The teenager besides me curses softly, shoves his hands into his pockets. What he does next is so startling that for a moment, I believe I’m imagining it: he begins to cry.
The bus comes to a stop, and
the driver slowly gets out. With the bored patience of someone who’s done this hundreds of times, he uses a long stick to guide the pole back into place. More sparks, and then he’s on the bus again, and in a few seconds he pulls up beside us. The woman in hospital scrubs steps back to let the teenager get in first. Head down, he moves to the back of the bus, and I’m thinking it must be some girl, some tragedy that for the moment seems impossible to survive. And I want to tell him that you find a way, somehow, to get through the most horrible things, things you think would kill you. You find a way, and you move through the days, one by one—in shock, in despair, but you move. The days pass, one after the other, and you go along with them—occasionally stunned, and not entirely relieved, to find that you are still alive.
62
We begin again, we never give up.
—Lars Gustafsson, The Death of a Beekeeper
ON THE afternoon of day 232, I wake to rain, a thunderous racket on the tin roof. Outside, something creaks and moans. It takes a minute to remember where I am—the long flight, the missed connection, the late arrival in San José, the disorienting taxi ride through unfamiliar streets.
Through the window, I can see a stand of bamboo trees, tall and golden, swaying in the wind. Everything here is captured in a state of rampant growth; everything is alive. The rain comes down in torrents, and minutes later subsides to a trickle. Raindrops slap the banana leaves just outside the window. Roosters crow in the distance, dogs bark. A church bell tolls—one, two, three, four, five.
A few hours ago when I arrived, a middle-aged woman greeted me at the door. Two small children clung to her legs.
“Buenos días,” I said. “I’m Nick Eliot’s friend.”
“Bueno,” she said. “I am Soledad. I expecting you.” She smiled and stepped back, motioning for me to come inside.
She showed me to my room and I thanked her, explaining in broken Spanish that I was very sleepy.
“Bueno,” she said. “First you sleep, then you eat.”
The Year of Fog Page 26
