Eighty
NOW, I HAVE TO TELL YOU that what happened next couldn’t have happened, which, I know, must seem crazy given what has happened already. But here goes.
An ambulance brought Michael to Northern Westchester Hospital. I followed close behind in a police car. A very kind doctor named John Rodman told me that Michael had blockage in all four arteries to his heart and that he would be going in for an immediate angioplasty. Heart surgery was also a possibility. The doctor wanted to know things about Michael that I simply didn’t know, like how old he was and whether he had had trouble with his heart before.
Then the doctor was gone, and I was alone in the waiting room. Soon other people started to drift in, looking as nervous and uncomfortable as I was sure I did.
Now here’s where it gets really strange.
One of the other women in the room—sandy blond hair, midthirties, very likable, even at a glance—got up for a drink of water from the fountain and then came over to me.
“May I sit?” she asked. I nodded numbly, and she took the chair next to me. “I’m a friend of Michael’s,” she said, which made my head jerk up. I looked into her kind, open face. “We all are.” She gestured to the other people in the waiting room, who looked over at me and nodded warmly. “We’re that kind of friend. Imaginary?”
“Oh.” I was speechless for a moment, looking around at all of them and then back at the woman. “I’m Jane.”
“Yes, I know. Well, Jane, we all love Michael. How is he? Do you know what’s going on?”
“There’s blockage to his heart,” I said. “Four arteries.”
The woman shook her head. “That’s… too strange. I’m Blythe, by the way.”
“It’s not strange considering what he eats,” I said wryly.
She gave a little smile. “But, Jane, we don’t get sick. None of us. Ever. So yes, it is strange. Something totally unexpected, totally bizarre, is happening here.”
I thought about our doomed love affair and shook my head. “You have no idea.”
Blythe took my hand in hers. She was so sweet, a perfect friend already. “Actually, I do. Michael has been talking about you. He never shuts up about you. We all approve, not that you need our approval, but we do. We’ve never seen Michael so happy. We like you, Jane.”
So we sat together, Blythe and I—my new imaginary friend—and we waited, fretted, and were scared. Finally, Dr. Rodman appeared and headed my way. There was no way to read his face, but he definitely wasn’t smiling. I felt my own heart contract painfully, and my throat went dry.
Desperate, I turned to Blythe, and she shook her head. “The doctor can’t see us.”
Oh, okay. Of course not. I’m the only crazy person here with imaginary friends. At thirty-two years old.
“Jane,” said Dr. Rodman. “Can you come with me? This is a little strange. Please, come.”
Eighty-one
MICHAEL WATCHED JANE as she walked into the recovery room with his doctor. Now this was another new one—his doctor. Michael had never been sick a day in his life, had never been examined by a physician, certainly had never had a heart procedure. And, oh, one more thing: He’d never been frightened out of his mind like this before.
Not about dying: He was all right with that, more or less. Cautiously optimistic anyway.
But he had just found Jane again, and he didn’t want to lose her for any reason. He couldn’t lose Jane.
“Hi,” she said, and he smiled weakly. He adored the sound of her voice.
“Hi. I must look like I was hit by a speeding truck. I feel like it.”
“You look terrific. For somebody who was hit by a truck.”
The doctor gave Jane a pat on the shoulder and left. Jane came over to Michael’s bed and leaned in and kissed his forehead—and suddenly he remembered doing the exact same thing to her when she was eight. He reminded her.
“We’re on the same wavelength, Michael. Of course I remember,” Jane said, and smiled. “I told you that I would never forget you.”
Then they held hands, all four of their hands entwined together.
“Your doctor is in mild shock because you came out of the anesthesia so fast. Like, too fast.”
Michael shrugged. “Don’t know why. But what happened to me?”
Jane smiled again, and Michael felt better. “What happened to you is too much rich food, too much junk food, for God only knows how long. And I mean that quite literally. But here’s the good news.”
“I’m listening.”
“You have a heart, Michael. You could have died. You’re human, Michael. You are human.” Her face was lit with an inner joy.
“So let me see if I have this right,” said Michael. “The big whoop about being human is that you get to die?”
“Live and die,” Jane said. “But yeah, that’s pretty much it. The big whoop.”
And then Michael and Jane were both crying and hanging on to each other fiercely.
“This,” he finally managed to say, “what happened today, is a miracle.”
Eighty-two
WHILE WE’RE ON THE SUBJECT of miracles, consider this one:
Just because life is hard, and always ends in a bad way, doesn’t mean that all stories have to, even if that’s what they tell us in school and in the New York Times Book Review. In fact, it’s a good thing that stories are as different as we are, one from another.
So here’s how this one ends: happily, I should warn you.
Huge spotlights rake the night sky of Manhattan, signaling that this is a really big deal. People are waving pens and pieces of papers, screaming for autographs from the actors. Police hold back the crowd at Sixth Avenue and 54th Street. It’s pretty cool. It’s a genuine rush.
My stomach is all in knots, and I smile as if it isn’t and walk past the paparazzi into the theater. I’m wearing a red satin dress. It’s a little snug at my hips and flares at the bottom. But I look good, and I know it. Sort of. In my own way of knowing these things and feeling good about myself, which I’m slowly getting a lot better at.
As I walk down the aisle to my seat, I can almost hear my mother saying, “Oh, Jane-Sweetie, a fancy dress like that deserves better jewelry. Why didn’t you go to my vault and pick out something nice? You look so… incomplete.”
I almost say out loud, “Mother, please, not tonight.”
I slide into the third row, all by my lonesome. That’s all right, though. I can handle it. I’m a grown-up.
Then I see Michael. He looks dashing, as he dashes down the aisle and sits in the empty seat next to mine. “Made it,” he says.
“I’m a nervous wreck,” I tell him, as if he didn’t know.
He gives me a hug, and my nerves instantly calm. Slightly. He’s comforting, sexy, sweet—all in one.
“Okay, now I’m a nervous wreck who’s wildly in love with a man who may or may not be real.”
Michael pokes me lightly in the side—the poke is our thing these days. “Okay, you’re real,” I say.
The houselights finally dim, and the movie begins.
People in the audience cheer immediately, but I know they’re all with the studio and PR agencies, so it doesn’t count.
“They love it!” Michael says.
“It hasn’t started.”
A title card fills the screen: “Jane Margaux, in association with ViMar Productions, presents Thank Heaven.” More cheering, much appreciated.
I lean toward Michael and say, “The music sounds fabulous, anyway.” Violins and a little soft brass.
Just right to introduce the first scene of this nice, light comedy.
A camera moves through a crowd, then in tight on a table at the Astor Court of the St. Regis Hotel. The scene was really shot at the St. Regis.
An adorable little girl sits at the table. The camera lingers on her for a moment, lets us get to know her. Apple-red cheeks. An irresistible smile.
Then the camera continues across and catches her companion, a handsome man, maybe thi
rty years old. Hard to tell for sure. But he’s definitely a star.
“So what’ll it be?” he asks.
“You know,” the girl says.
“I know. Coffee ice cream with hot fudge sauce.”
The actor playing the part is perfect for the role. He’s an unknown, whom I just happened to discover. Plus, he needed the work.
It’s Michael—playing Michael. Who else could it possibly be?
I watch him up on the screen as I hold his hand in the audience, and I think that everything in life is kind of unreal, isn’t it?
And then I’m thinking—is it so impossible to imagine or believe?—that a man and a woman can find happiness together for a little while, which, after all, is all that we have. All anyone has.
I think it can happen. It happened to me, to Jane-Sweetie, so it can probably happen to anybody.
By the way, the movie audience loved Thank Heaven.
EPILOGUE
Strawberries with Whipped Cream
Eighty-three
MICHAEL WAS SEATED at a table in the Astor Court at the St. Regis, with an absolutely adorable four-year-old girl named Agatha, who preferred to be called Aggie.
Aggie was Michael’s latest mission, and although he always tried to do something fresh and new with every one of his kids, he couldn’t resist the St. Regis on a Sunday afternoon. This place was all about good memories, right?
The waiter placed a bowl of melon balls and lemon sherbet in front of him.
“Thanks so much,” said Michael, as if the waiter had done him a great favor, which Michael believed he had, since he did his job so well.
The waiter had already given Aggie her sundae—strawberries with whipped cream, over strawberry ice cream, with a dab of strawberry jam.
“You’re such a girl,” Michael kidded her.
“I am a girl, silly,” said Aggie, who had the most amazing smile to go with her beautiful green eyes.
Michael was tempted to teach her something that he would call the Aggie-and-Michael game, but he resisted this urge. He needed something even better for Aggie—and here it came now.
“Aggie, look!”
Jane had taken their one-year-old son, Jack, to the restroom, and the two of them had just reentered the Astor Court and were now hurrying across the restaurant. Jack was pointing at the ceiling, and exclaiming, “Yite, yite,” which was his word for “light,” or anything else that he liked a lot.
“Here come Mommy and Jack!” Michael exclaimed, and he felt his heart spike with excitement, as it always did. He felt so lucky, so fortunate, so blessed, to have Jane, and to have this family.
“Now we can play monkey in the middle,” said Aggie, laughing. “And you’re the monkey, Daddy. Okay?”
“Okay,” said Michael, “except that we need a ball for that game. But of course I’m the monkey. I’m the hairy, homely one, aren’t I?” Then he turned to Jane, smiled, and whispered—just for her—“I missed you. I always miss you.”
“I missed you too. But now I’m here,” said Jane. “We’re all here, the four of us. And there’s nothing in the world that’s better than that. Nothing I could imagine in my wildest dreams.”
Jane sat down at her place and dipped a spoon into her sundae—hot fudge over coffee ice cream—and gave Jack the first taste of this delicious confection.
“Yite!” the little boy exclaimed.
With affection,
James Patterson
Gabrielle Charbonnet
Reading Group Guide
Discussion Questions
1. So many New York City landmarks lend atmosphere to this novel: the St. Regis Hotel, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Central Park, the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, and, of course, Tiffany’s. If the novel were set in your town, what local landmarks would it feature? Do you think this novel would be as interesting if it were set somewhere else?
2. Michael says that the role of an imaginary friend is to make children feel less alone and to help them find their place in the world. Do you think imaginary friends help children deal with their lives or keep them from dealing with life head- on? In what other ways do we use our imagination to cope with life or hide from it?
3. When Michael leaves Jane on her ninth birthday, Jane is devastated and says, “I’ll never forget you Michael, no matter what.” Do you think there is one perfect love for each of us? How influenced are we by portrayals of love and love affairs in the media, movies, and on television?
4. Jane is involved in an unfulfilling relationship with Hugh McGrath. Is it surprising that without a good role model for loving relationships from her own parents, she would find herself staying in a bad relationship? With so many of us coming from divorced homes, how can we break the cycle and have successful love relationships?
5. Jane’s play, Thank Heaven, is based on her childhood friendship with Michael. Would you have an interest in seeing the play? Do you prefer the play’s ending where Michael leaves on Jane’s ninth birthday or do you prefer the book’s ending where Jane and Michael meet again as adults?
6. Jane’s special emergency feel- good food is Oreos. Do you have a favorite comfort food? Is it good to avoid your favorite foods or does that just lead to more bingeing behavior? How can you help children so they develop healthy relationships with food?
7. Jane “gifts herself” with a diamond ring from Tiffany’s to wear on her right hand. The salesperson assures her that more and more women are buying them. If you could afford a $65,000 diamond for yourself, would you like one? If a woman does not have a man in her life, do you think it is an empowering act for her to buy her own diamond ring?
8. Michael explains to Jane that when children turn nine years old, their imaginary friends must leave them. But he recalls that when Jane was just four, she told him, “Love means you can never be apart.” Does this statement from Jane explain why they don’t forget each other? How do you explain it?
9. Michael gives up his immortality to be with Jane. Do you think he could have made another choice? Do you support his decision? If you had been presented with a similar situation, what would you have done to be with the one you loved?
10. Michael takes Jane to Nantucket because he doesn’t want to waste a minute of the time they have together. Michael says, “Is it so difficult to imagine or believe that a man and a woman can find happiness together for a little while, which, after all, is all that we have?” Is this the moral of the story for you? If not, what is?
Either with a reading group or on your own, please feel free to share answers with the author at www.jamespatterson.com.
IN A WORLD WHERE FREEDOM HAS ALL BUT DISAPPEARED…
WHERE MUSIC, READING, AND CREATIVITY OF ANY KIND ARE STRICTLY PROHIBITED…
WHERE EVEN CHILDREN ARE KIDNAPPED AND IMPRISONED BY THE GOVERNMENT…
THERE IS ONLY ONE HOPE LEFT.
WITCH & WIZARD
Chapter 2
WHIT
HERE’S WHAT HAPPENED, to the best of my shattered ability to recall it.
I do remember that I couldn’t have been more lost and alone as I wandered the streets of this gray, crowded, and forsaken city. Where is my sister? Where are the others from the Resistance? I kept thinking, or maybe muttering the words like some homeless madman.
The New Order has already disfigured this once beautiful city beyond recognition. It seems like a decaying corpse swelling with mindless maggots. The suffocatingly low sky, the featureless buildings—even the faces of the nervously rushing people flooding around me—are as colorless and lifeless as the concrete under my feet.
I know the general populace has been efficiently brainwashed by the New Order, but these citizens seem a little too hushed, a little too urgent, a little too riveted to the scraps of propaganda clutched in their hands like prayer books.
Suddenly, my eyes spot a word in bold letters on the paper: EXECUTION.
And then the huge video displays hanging above the boulevard light up, and everything becomes c
lear to me. Every pedestrian stops and stands stock-still, and every head turns upward as if there has suddenly been an eclipse.
On the video screens, a hooded prisoner—small-framed, frail-looking—is kneeling on a starkly lit stage.
“Wisteria Allgood,” blares a bone-chilling voice, “do you wish to confess to the use of the dark arts for the wicked purpose of undermining all that is good and proper in our society?”
This can’t be happening. My heart is a big lump in my throat. Wisty? Did that voice really just say Wisteria Allgood? My sister’s on an executioner’s scaffold?
I grab a slack-jawed adult by his dismally gray overcoat lapels. “Where is this execution happening? Tell me right now!”
“The Courtyard of Justice.” He blinks at me irritably, as if I’ve woken him from a deep sleep. “Where else?”
“Courtyard of Justice? Where’s that ?” I demand of the man, throwing my hands around his neck, nearly losing control of my own strength. I swear, I’m ready to throw this adult against a wall if I have to.
“Under the victory arch—down there,” he gasps. He points at a boulevard that runs off to my left. “Let me go! I’ll call the police!”
I shove him and take off running toward a massive ceremonial arch maybe a half mile away.
“You! Wait!” he yells after me. “Don’t I know your face from somewhere?”
He does. Oh yes. And so would everyone else, if they took the time to notice that there was a wanted criminal running loose in their midst.
But his fellow citizens’ eyes remain glued to the screen. They’ve got an insatiable appetite for malicious gossip of any kind and, of course, an equal taste for senseless death and destruction.
Even when the falsely condemned are kids. Just kids.
I can hear a distant roar now. The sound of hunger—for “justice,” for blood.
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