“Ready when you are.”
“I’ll be on the cell this morning. With all this going on around us, I’ve got to find a place to live. I’ll see you in the newsroom late morning.”
As we hung up the phone, I swear to God I could hear him lighting up a cigarette.
The cell phone wasn’t down on the table more than five seconds when it rang with Travers on the other line.
“Well, I hope you’re pleased,” he said, without introduction. “You effectively hindered the investigation into your publisher’s murder because you thought you could tuck it to me. You’re only hurting yourself.”
“Can I help you with anything?” Stern, straightforward, aloof.
“I’m only going to ask you this once. Is there any other information you have that might help us catch Paul Ellis’s killer?”
I said, “You know everything I know.” And I hung up.
Perhaps the most extraordinary accomplishment of modern man is the ability to map the human genome, to be able to scientifically predict the onset of individual disease and then take definitive steps to eradicate it. But hard as that’s been, it hasn’t posed nearly as difficult a challenge as trying to find a landlord in Boston that will allow a dog. For this reason, I had decided to buy a condominium in Boston of my very own.
Should be a happy occasion, right? Well, not exactly. Life, like journalism, is all about context, and this was in the context of one of the biggest failures I hope to ever see.
It’s funny, though not really, how you can never in a million years imagine an end to a relationship that is just beginning, and such was the case with me and Elizabeth, who I sometimes fear is the last woman I will ever love.
We had met a little more than a year before, of all places, on a story. A deranged father from Auburn, Maine, in the midst of a divorce went out and firebombed the day care center that his four-year-old boy attended every day. The guy, it ends up, was about to lose all visitation rights, and decided that if he couldn’t see his own and only son, then nobody else would either.
I’m a little beyond covering breaking crime and grime stories, but the paper was short-staffed that day, so I threw my hand up, then just about set a land speed record getting there, just in time to watch three children carried out of the ash and rubble in tiny black body bags that shone in the light of the surging television crews. It was the coldest, bleakest day I’ve ever felt. The entire city of Auburn seemed to gather at the scene of all the carnage—parents in navy blue factory uniforms and waitress aprons desperately searching the crowd for any sign of their own kids, city officials looking to help rather than mug for the cameras, locals who simply, sincerely wanted to lend some moral support.
As the frigid late afternoon seeped into the unbearable cold of a Maine winter’s night, the crowd finally thinned out. The mayor and his crew returned to a situation room in the warmth of City Hall. The victims’ families returned to painfully empty houses and lives that would never be the same—an emptiness I knew all too well. My feet were so cold I could barely walk as I hobbled back to my car while trying to compose the story in my head.
It was then that I caught a glimpse of her across the way. She had her laptop computer powered up on the trunk of a State Police cruiser and she stood in the enveloping dusk tapping at her keyboard, occasionally taking long glances over at the fire scene in front of her as if playing out the tragedy in her mind. She had on a ski jacket and a black wool hat pulled low over her head, and her nose was so ruby red it looked like it might just fall off on the icy ground.
But it was her eyes that I remembered best—big, haunting eyes, oval-shaped eyes, eyes such that when she looked up and momentarily met my gaze from about ten yards away, it was as if someone had just flicked on a light, her eyes were that bright. My heart began pulsing. She looked back down at her computer and didn’t seem to give me another thought.
That night, after filing my sad story and transmitting it down to Boston, I sat at the bar of the Holiday Inn in Auburn eating an under-cooked hamburger and reading theNew York Times in a failing bid to forget most of what I had seen. I hope I’m not alone in conceding that all roads eventually lead to myself, so I ended up sitting at the bar reliving that awful morning three-and-a-half years ago when Dr. Joyce led me into a nondescript conference room at Georgetown Hospital to tell me that my wife and newborn daughter had just died at birth. Death was everywhere.
When I got up to head for my room that night, I saw her sitting alone at a table right beside the bar, picking at an unappetizing-looking vegetarian dish and sipping a glass of red wine. She had a few sheets of scribbled notes spread across the table, and her long brown hair was mussed, obviously from the wool cap. Her face, strangely familiar, appeared tired.
Unfortunately, I lack the chromosome that allows me to talk easily to women I don’t already know. Those rare times when I summon the courage to approach one of them, I end up saying something like, “The thing I like best about spring is that my hair stops being so staticky.” I actually said that once, but I’ll spare the details for now.
But fortunately for me, as I walked by her table she tossed me a lazy smile and said, “Tough story, huh?” I may not be able to talk to women about anything, but I can talk journalism with anyone.
“They don’t get much tougher,” I replied. Confident, reserved. I reached my hand out and said, “Jack Flynn. I write for theRecord down in Boston.”
She shook my hand firmly while staying in her seat and said, “I’ve heard of it.” Another lazy smile, her head cocked a bit. “And you. Elizabeth Riggs. I write for theTraveler.”
Oh my.
“I’ve heard of it.”
“This one really got to me,” she said, her weary face holding not even a hint of the smile of a few seconds before. As she spoke, she rested her chin in one hand and pushed a fork absently around her plate with the other. “Did you see all those parents, the panic and pain all over their faces? I even saw a fireman, some big burly guy with a mustache, sit on the edge of his truck with his helmet still on and sob.”
“Imagine,” I said, “dropping off your three-year-old, not that I have one, but dropping off your three-year-old at day care at nine in the morning and finding out at two in the afternoon that there’s been a fire, then realizing at three that your kid has been burned to death. How are you ever supposed to get over that?”
Likewise, imagine racing with your pregnant wife to the hospital one morning expecting her to give birth, only to return home alone a few hours later without a thing in your life that even remotely matters? I thought this, but didn’t say it. Not the right time.
She shook her head. “I don’t even know how I’m going to get through the next couple of days. You know my paper. They’re going to want every conceivable angle covered, and all I want to do is go home, lock my apartment door, and be alone.”
To the uninitiated, that line would only have stated that she was tired of this story and wanted to get off it as soon as possible. But to the more probing, more perceptive male mind, what it really said was that she lived in an apartment rather than a suburban house, and alone rather than with a husband and a couple of kids. What it said more than anything else was that she was available. What it meant to me was that I was breaking out of my self-imposed funk.
I was standing over her table like a lug, typically unsure what the next move was, when she nodded to the empty chair across from her and said, “Do you have a moment to sit?”
I did, silently. And then we talked. We talked about her paper and about my paper, about how and why we got into the business, about the other big stories we’d covered over the years, about the frustrations of deadline reporting, about how editors never know when to let it go. She asked me about my time in Washington, about my relationship with the president. We drank some wine and then some coffee and one hour turned to two and two to three and finally the bartender walked over and said they were shutting down the lounge. She fixed those eyes on me, those m
esmerizing blue eyes, and said, “I feel a little bit better. Tired, but better.” And she smiled.
We both got up and walked toward the elevator in silence. Once on board, she pressed the button for three, I pressed four. I moved toward her ever so slightly to see if there was the possibility of a parting kiss. God forbid I do anything more overt. She reacted not at all, so I stopped and abandoned the sketchiest of plans before failure reared its ugly, late night head.
When the door opened for her floor, she turned to me and said, “Goodnight. I’m glad you were there.” She looked at me for a long, confident, tired moment and walked off. I mustered only a simple “Nice to meet you.”
Suddenly very much alone, I stared down at the floor as the doors squeezed shut. I was staring at the floor when I saw her foot jut between the closing doors, causing them to slide back open. She walked back on, staring at me, probing me. “Do I sound too forward,” she asked, pausing right there, almost theatrically, “if I ask you for a goodnight kiss?”
I shook my head and put my fingers on her perfect cheeks and kissed her right there on the elevator of the Holiday Inn in Auburn, Maine, at first tentatively, then softly, then a little more passionately. As it continued, I heard the doors shut behind her and felt the elevator begin moving up and remember wishing that I was staying on the top floor of a high-rise hotel, and not just for the free breakfast and evening cordials that go with being on the club level that I like so much. I put my hand on her soft neck, then ran my fingers through that hair that I wanted to touch all night—hers, not mine—and we kissed again, all of it in loud silence.
The doors chimed and opened for my floor, and not knowing anything better to do, not knowing what I was supposed to do, I got off, kind of awkwardly walking backward with undoubtedly an absurd look on my unbelievably happy and surprised face. She gave me a cute little wave and a timid smile. And walking down the hallway to my room, I thought it amazing that something so good could come out of something so bad. Never for a second did it occur to me that I would someday have to think of it in reverse.
Two weeks later, in a fit of uncharacteristic emotion, I told her I loved her. I told her that I didn’t ever think in a million years that I’d ever feel that emotion again, but here it was, in all its warm and wonderful glory, all because of her. Never, did I tell her, would I feel even a droplet of doubt.
I told her that as we were walking Baker in the Public Garden at about eight o’clock on a wintry Sunday morning with nary another human being around to see the majesty of a freshly fallen coat of perfect white snow. She was wearing my shirt, my sweater, my favorite cap—“Cabot’s Ice Cream, every day is sundae”—and my jacket, in that inexplicable way that women just assume a man’s wardrobe, whereas, if we did the same, we’d be considered perverts.
“Never?” she asked me. She asked me this as she blocked my way, boring her huge eyes into mine.
“Never,” I said, and she kissed me, engulfing my head in her mitten-covered hands mashing her lips hard against mine in sharp contrast to the cold all around us. I knew then—I probably knew it before—that I would marry her.
We walked another dozen or so steps when she hit me in the side with a closed fist and said, “Never means never, right?”
“Never means never,” I replied. I had no idea then the number of times I would hear those words over the next many months, though if I thought about it a little at the time, I could have easily imagined that they’d become the most comforting words I would ever know.
• • •
Suffice it to say that my mood was not particularly good when I arrived at the corner of Beacon and Charles streets on prestigious Beacon Hill to meet my real estate broker. But Julie Morris, God love her, was there to make it better.
On the phone, she sounded perfectly pleasant, professional, knowledgeable about the market. In person, when I met her that morning for the first time, I noticed that she was, I don’t know, about nine feet tall, six feet of which were legs, covered by approximately two feet of a black skirt. A good choice not going with that guy named Horace over at All-State Realtors.
More to the point, she showed me a couple of places that were remarkable only for their price, which was, in a word, outrageous. I feared she might have some false assumption that because I was well-known around town, that I was also rich, which I’m decidedly not. Anyway, buying property in Boston is like purchasing a diamond—no one knows exactly what they’re doing, and there is absolutely no chance of achieving perfection, the only goal being not to get completely screwed.
The third place I liked before we even went inside, first because she let me know the price, which was much more in my range, and second because it was situated in a stunning turn-of-the-century—the last century, by the way—brick townhouse on the flat of Beacon Hill, just a couple of blocks from the Charles River and the Public Garden—two places where I often walked with Baker.
We went inside to an elegant though understated lobby, with mail and assorted catalogs resting on a nice antique buffet. She unlocked the only door on the parlor level and we stepped inside.
Seeing a house or an apartment for the first time is like coming face to face with a blind date. You know immediately, within about three seconds, whether it’s wrong. You may not know for another thirty or forty years if it’s right.
This place passed the first test, and then some. The living room, with huge bay windows overlooking Brimmer Street, had soaring ceilings and elaborate bright white moldings set off against dramatic bluish-gray walls. Someone obviously still lived here, and the furniture, set around a marble fireplace, was big and soft and comfortable, though easy and clean to the eye. The antique rug was a rich navy blue and burgundy.
“It’s only been on the market for a couple of days, and I don’t imagine it’s going to last,” Julie said, locking the door behind her.
She added, reading from a sheet of notes, “It’s a short-term, furnished rental right now, and the current tenant is due to be out in a few days, so that’s not going to be a problem. It’s available to close as soon as anyone wants it.”
As she spoke, I was already wandering back to the kitchen, which was in the middle of the apartment, with its own bay window complete with a window seat looking out over a side courtyard filled with red and yellow tulips.
“You can see the modern appliances, all stainless, oversized refrigerator, built-in microwave.”
As I walked out of the kitchen, I heard her voice trailing off and saw her out of the corner of my eye approach the refrigerator and look at some photographs stuck on the door with a magnet.
In the back of the apartment, the bedroom was big and bright, its windows rising from floor to ceiling with what agents call a “river glimpse”—a snippet of the Charles in the distance. A pair of women’s jeans was tossed on the bed and some running shoes on the floor, and the dresser was filled with black-and-white snapshots set in an eclectic array of frames.
“Jack, um, do you have any questions?”
I turned toward Julie because her voice sounded different, halting. She stood in the bedroom door with her arms folded over her clipboard. She looked at me as if I had just done something wrong, which perhaps in all my self-pity, I had.
“How flexible do you think they are on the asking price?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” she replied, distant, almost absent. She continued to stand in the door looking at me as I wandered about the bedroom drinking in the mood of the place. There was something familiar about it all, something soothing. Maybe it was the sunlight or the colors on the wall or just the fact that it represented someplace permanent, an antidote to the vagabondish existence I’d had for the past few months.
“Jack,” Julie said, “have you seen this place before?”
Her voice was higher now, somewhat nasally. She still stood in the doorway. I still prowled the room.
“I don’t think so,” I said. “Why do you ask?”
She walked over to the dress
er, slowly, and looked at the photographs, picking one up in her hand. I wandered into the bathroom to finish my tour.
When I came out, she said, “You’re sure?”
“Positive. Why?”
She had a frame in her hand and held it toward me. “Because your picture is on the bureau.” She paused, looking at me. “And on the refrigerator.”
I grabbed the photograph out of her hand and sure enough, there I was, posing with Baker on the front steps of my old apartment on Commonwealth Avenue, where I lived when I was married. I had an absolutely ridiculous smile on my face. Baker had a tennis ball in his mouth. I couldn’t help but think for a moment that we were a pretty good-looking pair.
I quickly walked out to the kitchen and looked on the refrigerator. There we were, me and Elizabeth, standing outside the Albergo del Sole on the Piazza de Pantheon in Rome, during a quick getaway weekend early last fall. I vividly recalled the scene. An old Italian woman in a black cape was shooting the picture for us. I was whispering in Elizabeth’s ear what on film looked to be my deepest, most heart felt emotions. That’s partly right. I was telling her I couldn’t wait to get her into bed, and she was telling me—smiling for the camera—that I had better hope she was in the mood.
She was, by the way.
No matter. I began to shake and feel nauseous. I flung open the closet doors and rifled through the hanging clothes. There was my favorite black suit of hers, next to my favorite skirt, next to the silk tank top I bought her at a Newbury Street boutique to wear to the theatre one night a year before.
“Shit,” I said, not loudly, not even firmly. Just resigned.
All this time, Julie stood there watching me. Eventually, she asked, “Are you alright?”
“It’s my ex-girlfriend’s apartment.” That didn’t exactly answer her question, though maybe it did.
She held both her hands to her perfectly formed chest and said, “Oh my God, Jack, I’m so sorry.”
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