Inside, her love was lost in a crush of people wearing suits and carrying briefcases. A bank of elevators on the far wall swallowed men and women in whole groups and took them up and up through the center of the skyscraper where Prudence imagined the elevator doors opening again on the very top floor, and those same men and women stepping into a gray office made of clouds.
Prudence stood inside the revolving doors and tried to catch her breath. Strangers moved around her, splotches and blurs in her peripheral vision. When someone brushed against her, she flinched. When someone said, “Excuse me,” or “Watch it,” she had to clinch her fists tight around the edges of her scarf to keep from crying out. She tried to whisper his name, to imagine the letters in her head like a spool of yarn unfurling—C Wilson, C Wilson, C Wilson—but it didn’t help. Inside this vast and sprawling marble-floored lobby, Prudence found nothing steady to which she could cling, and no safe corner to hide in.
A young man with a thin mustache and white gloves approached her. Prudence fixed her eyes on the gold buttons adorning the cuffs of his black suit jacket. They sparkled magnificently.
“Ma’am?”
The badge clipped to his lapel read “Security.”
“Ma’am? Are you all right?”
She forced her eyes up and saw that he was smiling. Keeping tight hold of her scarf, she said, “It’s so loud in here.”
He stared at her the way people so often did. Like she was crazy or dangerous, or both. The lobby was clearing out. Soon it would just be Prudence and this man alone.
He asked, “Are you here to meet someone?”
“Yes.” Prudence shook her head. “I mean, no.”
His smile faltered.
“I mean, not exactly and sort of.” She had never been very good at this kind of thing. She exhaled and tried again. “I have an appointment later this afternoon, but unfortunately I lost the paper where I wrote down all the pertinent information.” She liked that word, pertinent—it was a college word.
“Do you remember who you were meeting?”
“Mr. Wilson.”
“No first name?” He walked toward a tall mahogany desk in the center of the room.
She followed. “I believe it starts with a C?”
He tapped a keyboard, frowning at a screen. After a few seconds, he smiled at her again and said, “Lucky you. There’s only one C Wilson in our directory.”
“Oh?” She leaned against the desk.
He nodded. “Cuthbert. Does that ring a bell? Cuthbert Wilson.”
For a moment all other sounds ceased, and there was only his name, echoing through the lobby and corridors of her mind: Cuthbert Wilson, Cuthbert, Wilson. It was the sound of brooks babbling and church bells ringing and babies laughing, of every beautiful song she had ever heard. Cuthbert Wilson: the name of love.
His name stayed on her lips the entire eight blocks back to her apartment. And all day—until 4:00 p.m., when she returned to her place by the window to wait for him—she stood in front of the bathroom mirror and practiced their names together. “Mr. and Mrs. Cuthbert Wilson. Mrs. Prudence Wilson. Cuthbert and Prudence Wilson. Prudence and Cuthbert. Cuthbert and Prudence,” and then she couldn’t help herself. She giggled and started to sing, “Cuthbert and Prudence sitting in a tree, K-I-S-S-I-N-G.”
The phone rang only once before he answered.
“Hello?” His voice was raspy and deep and made Prudence swoon. “Hello?” he said again, louder, with more force. “Who is this? Who’s calling?”
In her mind, Prudence said so many wonderful things about love and fate and the strange course of their lives, how they had found each other even after all this time. But when she opened her mouth to speak the words aloud, all she managed was a wistful sigh. Cuthbert Wilson hung up.
An hour later, Prudence dialed his number again. She’d found it easily enough in the phone book—there were only two C Wilsons listed, but the minute she’d heard his voice, she knew she’d found the right one. She had his number memorized now.
“Hello? Hello?” He waited several long and silent seconds, and then said, “I think you have the wrong number. Please stop calling.”
If Cuthbert Wilson knew who was on the other end of the line, he wouldn’t hang up so quickly—Prudence was sure of that.
In the morning, she was waiting in her usual spot by the window, when a brown sedan pulled up to the curb. The driver, a young man with a long, dark ponytail, went around to the passenger door and helped Mrs. Barbado out of the car and into the building. She had been away for so long, the apartment so quiet, Prudence had forgotten about her almost entirely. The door to A12 opened and closed, and a few seconds later the music started. Most of what Prudence could hear through the wall was a thumping bass, but every few beats she caught trumpeting horns or clashing cymbals. She was surprised at her foot tapping, her hips swaying gently. She was surprised to be smiling. Maybe in a few days she’d bring Mrs. Barbado a tater-tot casserole. Yes, that was a lovely idea. She started to make a grocery list in her head: mushroom soup, ground beef, tater tots, cheese—
Cuthbert Wilson marched into view. He passed the brown sedan and then Prudence’s window. She rushed out the door, thinking today was the day. Today she would shout his name and he would turn and they would . . . She turned the corner too quickly, expecting her love to be several blocks ahead, and ran right into him. He stood frozen, head tipped up, staring at something in the sky.
She and he. Prudence and Cuthbert. Two asteroids careening alone through empty space for so many, many years, and now, and here, and finally: colliding.
She felt him against her—the structure and weight of his bones, the heat and strength of his blood. And he felt her, too. And he turned. Turned and looked her straight in the eyes. Steel-gray flints sparking with something like recognition.
“My apologies. I didn’t mean to block the sidewalk, but it’s just,” and he lifted one finger, a single perfect piano-man finger, above his head. “Have you ever seen a cloud shaped like that?”
Prudence forced herself to look up. A puffy white cloud bobbed alone in the vast sky, stretching above them like so much blue silk. It could have been anything: a rabbit, a turtle, a heart, a polar bear French-kissing a toad. It could have been anything, but the cloud wasn’t as important as the fact that he had stopped here, breaking his routine, and waited for her to come around the corner. It was something and nothing and everything—this shape that wasn’t a shape, this simple, drifting cloud.
“Remarkable,” Cuthbert Wilson said, staring at her, and she at him.
He left her standing there, barely breathing, as though what they had shared was no more monumental than two strangers crossing paths, lives intersecting briefly, before carrying on their separate ways. Prudence wondered at the burning sensation under her skin, the sudden rush of warmth to her cheeks and the back of her neck. I must be dying, she thought. And love has killed me. Someone brushed against her, shouting at her to move out of the goddamn way. Jolted, Prudence turned and ran the half block back to her apartment. She locked the door, drew the curtains, and spent the rest of the day in bed, beneath her blankets, trembling.
That evening Prudence dug through cardboard boxes and garbage bags piled in her closet until she found her mother’s jewelry box. She opened the lid and sifted through long strings of pearls and silver bracelets, hoop earrings and ruby necklaces, until she found them: two nearly identical gold bands. One was wide and meant for a finger larger than hers. The other was delicate and thin, and slipped perfectly onto her left hand. She held the ring up to the light. It glittered and sparked. She took it off again, and then dropped both rings into a small black velvet bag. She tightened the drawstring, slipped the bag onto a long red ribbon, and tied the ribbon around her neck so that the rings rested close to her heart.
Her mother told her once that finding true love was like playing the lottery. Buy enough tickets and, with a little luck, you might someday strike it big. Prudence prefers to think of l
ove as being struck by lightning. You have to be in the exact right place at the exact right time, and it only ever happens once.
Her time has come. Today is the day. The Universe has brought her to this moment, this very one, and she is ready.
Prudence opens her front door at exactly 6:30 a.m. and finds a place to stand in the shadows and wait. For him. For Cuthbert Wilson. Her one true love. Her lightning strike. Here he comes now around the corner, wearing the scarf she made for him. He walks the usual route, in the usual way, at a brisk clip, shoulders slightly hunched, and arms swinging in rhythm at his side. Right, left, right, left, up, down, up, down, and on and on . . . except for . . .
Except.
Today.
Except.
See? There. He’s limping.
Prudence watches his right foot carefully and, yes, there and again and not just a fluke: a hitch up, a shuffle forward instead of a firm step, as if there is something in his shoe. A pebble or a thorn. They are side by side, and then he is passing her. Now. She must do it right now.
Prudence steps from the shadows, reaching for his sleeve. “Excuse me?”
He stops, turning toward her. She hesitates only a second, hoping he’ll speak first and make this easy, but he doesn’t and, when she says nothing else, he shakes off her hand and starts to walk away.
“Please,” she calls after him. “Wait.” And when he stops and turns again, she says the first thing that comes to mind: “My cat! My poor, poor baby! It’s stuck in the dryer vent. Please, help me!”
She reaches and grabs his sleeve, tightens her grip around his wrist, and pulls him back to her. Through the heavy linen, she feels his forearm tense and flex, and something unfamiliar and wild snaps awake inside her. Her thoughts and all reason are falling, collapsing, and there is a surge of heat rising in her chest, and then her teeth are chattering, her skin is stretched too tight. There’s no turning back. She has him now; she must never let go.
She says, “This way.”
He follows her, asking for the name of her cat, where the poor thing is stuck again, and how in God’s name did he get there? She doesn’t answer any of his questions, only leads him into her apartment building and back and back through the narrow hallway without any real plan of what to do next.
She keeps tight hold of his arm, fearing that if she loses him, she will lose herself. If she lets go, she will break free from the earth and float loose, drift high into the atmosphere, too high, all the way to the sun where she will explode into a million broken, burning pieces.
He points at a door marked “Laundry” and says, “Through here?”
She pulls him farther on, and he begins to drag his feet a little.
“Wasn’t that . . . ?” But he doesn’t finish.
They are almost to the other side of the building, to the back door that opens out into a small and sad forsaken garden, but before they reach it, Prudence turns a hard right.
“Where are you taking me?” He twists his arm, but Prudence is stronger and leaves him no other choice: he follows her up four flights of stairs and through a red door that leads out to the roof.
The wind is bitter up here, sharp and cold, and it claws them apart. Prudence situates herself between Cuthbert Wilson and the door, the only safe way off this roof.
Free from her grip, he takes a step backward and away from her. “What are we doing up here? Where’s your cat?”
I will explain everything, she wants to say, but the wind rips her words from her mouth and her hat from head. Her hair flies in a frenzy, tugging her scalp. She spreads her arms as if to try and capture what she’s lost, and finds herself blinking and blinking into the sun. When she looks back at Cuthbert Wilson, he is an angel, a god.
“Your cat?” he asks again, with a mixture of disbelief and fear.
Prudence holds out her hand, but he doesn’t take it.
He shuffles closer to the ledge. “Listen. If there’s no cat, then I really just . . . I need to be on my way. I’d hate to be late for work over this.”
She appreciates his composure, how he smooths down his jacket lapels and readjusts his grip on the briefcase. How he rearranges the scarf around his neck, the scarf she made for him, so it falls in two perfect cascading blue-gray waterfalls over his stomach.
“It looks lovely on you,” she says. “Really lovely. Matches the color of your eyes brilliantly, which is a rather unexpected, but pleasant, surprise. I picked the color to match your tie, actually. But what a happy accident—if I believed in accidents, which I don’t. Do you believe in accidents, Cuthbert, my love?”
His hands are up around his throat, his fingers brushing, caressing the scarf. He freezes and then starts to unwind the scarf slowly.
“No,” she says. “Please. Leave it.”
Twice around. Three times. One end growing longer, unraveling to the ground.
“Please,” is all she can manage to squeak as he finishes unwrapping the scarf.
He drops it in a lonely heap at his feet.
“I’m going.” He takes a step forward, making a motion to go around her, but she matches his step, blocking his way.
“Cuthbert, please. Did I do something wrong?”
He shakes his head and takes a small step backward. His brow creases, and Prudence understands now his insecurities, how he is afraid to accept the love she is offering and needs her to show him the way. He switches his briefcase from his right hand to his left.
“It’s okay to be scared,” she says. “I was scared once too. But ours is a Great Love like the great loves of old. Romeo and Juliet. Tristan and Isolde. Bill and Hillary. We are better together. Powerful and strong. I don’t work without you. And you—you don’t work without me.”
He’s still shaking his head. “What are you talking about?”
“You don’t have to be scared anymore.” She bends and picks up the scarf, shakes out the bits of dirt and small rocks, holds it out to him again.
But he doesn’t take it. He shakes his head harder now, like he’s trying to wake himself from a bad dream.
“Cuthbert, listen to me—”
“How do you know my name?”
“Oh, my love. Your name is etched on my soul. And mine on yours.”
She reaches for him; he backs away.
“Listen, ma’am, I’m sorry, but I think there’s been some kind of terrible mistake.” He keeps shuffling backward. “You said your cat was in trouble. I was only trying to help. That’s all. I don’t know who you are, and I don’t know who you think I am—”
“Do you believe in fate, Cuthbert?”
He doesn’t answer.
“Do you believe in God?”
The sky stretches above them, the color of burned sugar. Five pigeons wing past, skimming the roof’s edge, dipping, weaving, flashing out of sight.
“I do,” Prudence says, close to him again, as close as yesterday on the street when he spoke to her for the very first time. “Before we were even born, this day was planned, laced into the fabric of existence. The Universe has conspired to bring us together, my love. We are each other’s destiny.”
She reaches, strokes his cheek with her fingers. He flinches away from her touch.
She does not mean for it to happen. If she’d had any say in the matter, she would have chosen a different ending, but the Universe, in all its infinite wisdom, chooses this: his foot catching on a pipe protruding from the roof and tipping him over backward, his fingers reaching, brushing hers, but he is too heavy and slips from her grasp. She tries but cannot keep him from falling.
No more than a minute after he lands on the sidewalk below, as many seconds as it takes her to run down the stairs, she is beside him, pressing her fingers for a pulse, leaning to feel his gasping breath on her cheek. He is alive, as she knew he would be—the Universe would not part them in this manner, not now, so quickly, violently, not after all they’ve been through.
She takes the rings from the pouch around her neck, holds his left hand
in hers, and says, “As long as we both shall live.”
Cuthbert Wilson’s eyelids flutter open only briefly before closing again, but it is all the commitment Prudence needs. She pushes the smaller ring onto her own finger and then leans over and kisses his bloodied lips.
An ambulance is on its way—the sirens rejoicing, marking this day of love. With only seconds until they arrive, Prudence takes Cuthbert Wilson’s keys from his pocket and slips them into her own.
III
Days have passed. Weeks. So many, Cuthbert Wilson has lost count. And still, his legs are useless. During this time, only the doctors, specialists, physical therapists, nurses, and administrators have come to see him. There is no one else. His parents are dead. He’s an only child. When he called his boss, his boss said, “Tough break, old man,” and gave him the phone number for a disability insurance company. None of his coworkers sent flowers or get-well cards, because they did not know he was here; or if they did, they did not care. A reporter tried to interview him a few days after it happened, but Cuthbert turned him away. This isn’t any kind of story he wants to share with the world.
He watches television with the volume low. QVC, sometimes. Soap operas and talk shows, too. The news. Reality TV. Whatever’s on—for the company and the feeling that he’s not alone, not entirely. The nurses open the drapes, letting in blinding white light. When the nurses leave, Cuthbert closes the drapes again, more comfortable in darkness. At night, he dreams of falling. He dreams, too, of the woman. And when he is awake, he stares at the shadows lurking in the corner and tries to guess her name. Something old-fashioned, he thinks, something hard to spell.
Sometimes, when the nurses have gone and the television is off and the drapes are closed, he cries for Goldie, because she can’t possibly be alive, not after all this time, without anyone to feed her and clean the algae off her glass, to tell her about the sun and the rain and what ridiculous things humanity got up to today. Sometimes he wakes and his pillowcase is damp, and his heart is broken.
Day One, Year One: Best New Stories and Poems, 2014 Page 3
