Traveling Light

by Thalasinos, Andrea

  * * *

  Paula called Roger again as she hovered with coffee and food in her hands, waiting for an elderly couple to gather their things and vacate a booth so she could sit. His phone immediately went to voice mail, this phantom husband of hers.

  “Hi, call me,” she said. “I’m thinking of inviting Tony and Celeste over for a welcome back dinner and to show off the house. If I don’t hear from you by ten, I’m inviting them and shopping for food.”

  Roger called after a few minutes.

  “What a great idea,” he said. “I’ll invite Jackson and Heather, too, and a few others. Call the caterer. Their card is up on the fridge—it’s a magnet. Are you home enjoying the kitchen?”

  “Yeah,” she lied, looking around as if to tell everyone within earshot to keep it down.

  “Who’s talking?”

  “It’s just the radio.”

  “What radio?”

  She ignored the question. “If the caterer can’t on short notice, maybe they can recommend.”

  “Last night was amazing,” Roger said. “You’re amazing.” His tone made her blush.

  “How come you left?”

  “Had to go in early.”

  “How early?”

  “Early,” he said. “Didn’t want to wake you.”

  She wanted specifics but left it. The familiar muzzle of silence fell over her. Don’t ask or push. Don’t be the pain-in-the-ass wife; turn the other cheek and let it be.

  “Let me know what happens with the caterer,” he said. “Say, dinner for ten at eight tonight. I’ll invite some of the Foundation people.”

  “Okay.”

  “I love you.”

  “Me too.”

  Paula ate quickly and then hurried back to the brownstone. The caterer’s magnet was right where Roger had described. Luckily the caterer had a last-minute cancellation and was only too happy to recoup the lost work, plus the previous client’s cancellation fee.

  Paula phoned Heavenly, telling her about the dinner party. “So can you guys come?”

  “Uhh … sure,” Heavenly said.

  “Well, you don’t sound too excited about it.”

  “I was thinking a more casual dinner and not the Coronation. You know, pants with an elastic waist, braless, but for you, my darling”—Heavenly used one of her funny voices—“anything.”

  “I owe you.”

  “Bullshit.”

  “Yeah, yeah, yeah,” Paula said. “I searched the place—nothing. Recognized some of his parents’ antiques, but the junk’s gone.”

  “Hmmm.” Heavenly was thinking. “I’ll call around, see what I can find. I’ll ask Tony. Sometimes he hears stuff around the precinct.”

  “Thanks,” Paula said. “Maybe you can pick up some sort of ‘vibe’ from him tonight, you know, that old-lady Sicilian village thing,” Paula said, half-teasing, half grasping for answers.

  “You miss it, don’t you?”

  “The junk?”

  “No, genius—being out there. Your birds.”

  It came from out of the blue, catching Paula off guard. “What makes you ask that?”

  “You know, that old-lady Sicilian village thing,” Heavenly said. “I can … hear it.”

  Paula was quiet.

  “I know you do, miksa mou,” Heavenly taunted her.

  “Yeah, Heav, I do,” she said, not wanting to sound ungrateful for their friendship. “More than you know.”

  * * *

  The caterer arrived promptly at five and began with preparations. It felt like crashing someone else’s party and Paula didn’t know what to do with herself. She wasn’t used to watching people work. Several times she’d offered to set out plates, silverware, anything, but the staff looked annoyed. Instead she slinked upstairs and paced, biding time by e-mailing Rick until Roger came home. She asked about Eleni, Fotis, the eagle and the new cases that had been admitted since she’d left. She asked about Maggie and Ephraim and Marvelline. Rick e-mailed Paula right back, having been up all night and day with a newly admitted eagle patient that had lead poisoning. The levels were so high they didn’t even register on the lead analyzer. Rick was trying out a new method of detoxing another rehabilitator had recommended, and it was going to be another long night. She could picture it all so clearly, the smells, the sound of the analyzer when it was off the charts. She missed it. Heavenly was right.

  * * *

  Roger came home by six and Paula met him at the front door as if she were Fotis greeting her after a long day.

  Swinging from Roger’s index finger were dry-cleaner hangers covered with plastic. He kissed her and she followed him up to the master suite, leaning on the doorframe of his closet near the newly hung clothes, listening to the sound of shower water hitting the tiles. As he was drying off from the shower she remarked. “So, uh … what’s happened to all of your clothes?”

  He startled at the sound of her voice. “Oh.” He chuckled. “These were at the dry cleaner’s.”

  “I can see that, Roger. I’m talking about everything else.” She felt like she was speaking to someone who could only read lips. “Did you forget them in France?”

  He looked at his closet door and then glanced back at her, his face an open question mark.

  “It’s empty,” she framed it for him. “Did the personal organizer ditch them?”

  Paula gestured at the two pairs of pants and three hanging shirts. “When I left you had more than this. Remember? We went shopping last spring.” Funny she should be scolding him for having too little of something; the irony was not lost on her.

  “When the organizer called,” he began, “she said so many of my pants were ratty and outdated she asked to toss them.”

  “Ratty?” Paula raised her voice. “They were new.” Who was this personal organizer? Paula imagined the woman had put them in a resale shop or else had a husband that size who was walking around in Roger’s clothes.

  “I told her to toss whatever she thought,” he said, holding up both hands in a don’t shoot gesture. “I brought shorts and jeans to France,” he said. “When I came home, this was what was left.” It sounded plausible. Roger always sounded plausible, though now a bit nervous with Paula’s cross-examination.

  “She got rid of everything? Look.” She twirled around in the empty closet, exaggerating to illustrate the empty space.

  He shrugged in a way that said it was out of his hands.

  “How come she didn’t throw out any of mine?”

  He shrugged again. “Maybe you have better taste.”

  She stared at him in disbelief, her face incredulous. “So now we have to go shopping to repurchase what we bought you last May,” she said.

  His face looked almost gray, as uncomfortable as she’d ever seen Roger look. “I don’t have time now.” He frowned, drying off his legs and arms from the shower, and then draping the towel around his waist.

  “You need clothes, Roger.” She scowled in a wifely way and her voice got louder. “You spend umpteen hundreds of thousands of dollars creating this palace; you can’t go walking around in shorts and a T-shirt.”

  “I don’t have time for this.” He raised his voice along with his hands, urging her to calm down and lower her voice. “As soon as this photon project—”

  Whatever. She turned into the bathroom, closed the door and stripped down, standing on the cold tile in the shower, trying to figure out how to turn it on.

  * * *

  The dinner went as planned, Roger entertaining the Foundation crowd as if he always stood poised in the living room this way. He was graceful and at ease, seamlessly moving around with an assurance that made her curious about the man who got so agitated if she moved one of his piles or questioned him about where something was. It was like a magical pill had cured whatever it was that had kept him stymied for so many years. And the more relaxed and comfortable he seemed, the more out of place she felt.

  He turned on the gas fireplace insert in the living room with the flip of a swi
tch and leaned against the marble mantel with a glass of wine, swirling it about as he laughed with a colleague. She couldn’t look at him. A whole well of resentment rose from nowhere and she felt like she could hurl one of the vanilla-scented candles at him.

  Paula looked at her watch. Where the hell were Tony and Celeste? Just as she felt ready to scream, the doorbell chimed. One of the caterers moved to answer it. “I’ll get it,” Paula sang, and raced from the room.

  “Oh thank God you’re here.” She stepped out into the doorway and clutched them both.

  “Jeez, party’s that good, huh?” Tony said.

  Paula laughed as she shifted to hug him tightly. “Thank God you’re here,” Paula said again.

  “Jesus Christ, let go, Paula; I can’t breathe,” he joked.

  Paula ushered them in, giving a tour of the house.

  Celeste tapped her arm in the master suite and pointed. “Isn’t that your couch?” she whispered.

  “Yup. You don’t have to whisper.”

  “Yeah, I know, but I feel like I should,” Heavenly whispered back.

  “This is fucking gorgeous, Paula,” Tony said. Both he and Celeste stood ogling and not believing their eyes.

  “Yeah, no meth labs, huh, Tone.” Heavenly elbowed him. As they walked down from the third floor, both Paula and Celeste stopped to sit on the stairs.

  “It’s all very odd,” Paula said.

  Tony sat on the step below, looking at the creases in his hands. “You know, Paula, for all the years you’ve lived here, this is the first time I’ve ever been in this house.”

  “I’m so sorry, Tone.” She leaned over, hugging him and kissing the side of his head. “You wouldn’t have wanted to be; I swear.”

  “Yeah, Heav told me. Strange how out in the street people seem perfectly normal. But there’s lotsa weird shit behind the walls of New York City. Behind any city for that matter.”

  The three of them sat for a while before making their way down to the dinner party. “So what’s next for you and Roger?” Tony asked on the way downstairs.

  Paula didn’t answer.

  * * *

  Roger slept right through until morning. He drank and ate so much at the dinner party that it was more like he’d passed out, and she was relieved to wake and find him still there.

  CHAPTER 20

  For the next few days Paula wandered around Manhattan like a lost child. She couldn’t settle into the brownstone and preferred a park bench or the McDonald’s around the corner.

  And while Roger was home every night for dinner, more often than not she woke in the morning to find herself alone. One night, she awakened to find him pulling on his pants to leave.

  “You’re going?” She yawned and sat up. He kissed her mouth before it was even closed and hurried off.

  “I just got an idea; I’m going in while the lab is quiet.”

  “Oh, Roger, again?”

  “Sorry, sweetie, I’ll see you at lunch today. Sarbonne’s? Noon?”

  She nodded and yawned again but couldn’t sleep after he left.

  Later that evening they were rushing to get ready for a Friday dinner on the Island with some of his friends from the Foundation. She pressured him to commit to going shopping the next day for clothes.

  “I don’t have time,” Roger dismissed. He walked back into the bathroom and lathered up his face with shaving cream in a hurried bid to get cleaned up and ready.

  She stood in the doorway of the bathroom to watch. The words made sense, but he didn’t. Back to the old state of confusion—the old eggbeater in the brain school of personal relationships. No one else but Roger made her feel like this, the one person she wanted.

  “How come you don’t work at home like you used to?”

  He turned to her, his face covered with a white foam Santa’s beard. She would have laughed had it not been for the seriousness of the moment.

  “I thought I told you, new security protocol.” He turned back to slice off part of Santa’s beard. “None of us can work from home anymore.” His voice echoed in the marble bathroom. “This photon project’s crazy.” He bent over and kissed her, leaving a drop of shaving cream on her cheek. She couldn’t tell if he was acting guilty or not. “It’ll be over soon.”

  “I’ll say no more.” She threw up her hands. “Soon you’ll be leaving at the crack of dawn up to Columbia balls-ass naked,” she said.

  “You about ready?” The keys jingled in his hand. They still needed to catch a cab to Lexington to fetch his car from the garage.

  “Yeah,” she said halfheartedly.

  * * *

  Though Roger fell right asleep that night, Paula catnapped, keeping a watchful eye in case he got up to leave, determined to sneak out and follow him to see if he really was going uptown to Columbia. At one point he’d got up to go to the bathroom; she lay still, silent, holding her breath, listening for sounds of him preparing to leave. Instead he flopped back into bed, turned around and promptly fell asleep, snoring loudly. Reassured, she let herself surrender to sleep sometime after 2:00 am only to awaken and find him gone once again. “Shit, shit, shit.” She threw her bathrobe onto the floor, cursing herself for having dropped her guard.

  * * *

  The next evening they went to a movie and afterward Paula sat guzzling cups of restaurant coffee as their friends sipped aperitifs.

  “Careful, sweetie,” Roger cautioned. “You’ll be up all night.”

  Although her body was humming from the caffeine, she pretended to be asleep as Roger tossed and turned. He was having a restless night and she fully expected him to be up and out by midnight. She’d readied a pile of clothes—her clogs and purse were in the corner near her couch—primed for a quick exit. But Roger slept right through until morning.

  * * *

  She was up long before he was, a fresh pot of coffee sitting on the counter, the Times alongside it where Roger had taken to sitting in the morning.

  “Morning, sweetie.” He reached over to kiss her. Paula poured him a cup of coffee as he sat on the stool in front of the newspaper. She poured herself one and left it sitting on the counter.

  “So tell me where you go off to in the wee hours of the morn?” she asked again.

  He sipped the coffee, looking at the headline. “And why does this bear repeating?” he said without looking up. “It’s a security violation to work online, I told you. I can’t even gain access from home. So I go into the lab while the ideas are coming.”

  “Why not just jot them down on a notepad? Take it with you in the morning?”

  He picked up the main section of the newspaper in a way that said, Drop it.

  “Why not?”

  He didn’t answer and instead opened the first page, scanning the articles.

  “Is it so top secret that if terrorists break in you’d have to wad up the paper and swallow it?” she said sarcastically.

  He gave her a stop busting my balls look and turned the page, her cue that the conversation was over.

  “You take the subway all the way uptown to Columbia in the middle of the night?”

  “Cab.”

  “Must be tough to find a cab that time of night,” she said. Maybe he’d met someone overseas. There’d been no overt signs such as unexplained fragrance, lipstick and whatnot. His underwear was as dingy and depressing as ever—you’d have thought the “personal organizer” would have culled them along with everything else. It was easy to picture someone else in his arms. Nothing would surprise her, and the idea didn’t even elicit the usual scorch of jealousy.

  “Okay, what?” He lowered the newspaper.

  “What do you mean, ‘What?’” she asked, lifting her hand.

  “You have the strangest look on your face,” he said.

  “I was just wondering if you’re having an affair,” came flying out before she could squelch it.

  He dropped back his head and sighed with relieved disgust. “Why do women always think their husbands are cheating?”

>   “Because, darling, statistics show that ninety-nine percent of the time they are.”

  The paper rustled as he set it aside and patted his thigh, motioning for her to come over and sit. “Now why would I go and do that when I have you?” She let him take her in his arms as she straddled his thigh. “Paula, I love you.” He kissed her deeply and she responded. “There’s no one else; there’s never been.”

  She believed him about that but not much else. “I know.”

  “‘I know’?” he said, laughing. “That’s all you can say is ‘I know’?”

  She looked at him mysteriously; mysterioudis, they say in Greek.

  “Anything else you want to ask while you’re at it?” he asked in a sardonic way.

  “Yeah.” She paused and stood. “What happened to all of your stuff, Roger? Let’s face it: for ten years you wouldn’t let me throw out the garbage, much less allow ‘organizers’”—she used her fingers as quotation marks—“to come in to touch and throw out your stuff.”

  His face hardened.

  “Where is it? I’m curious,” she continued. “It’s like someone’s lifted up the brownstone, turned it over and shaken everything out.”

  He laughed darkly at her imagery.

  “It’s not funny,” she said.

  “You have this way of putting things.”

  She rose and stepped away. Folding her arms, she felt a torrent of anger that took her by surprise. “It would have taken an army of cleaners weeks to have gone through everything with you.” She fought to keep calm.

  “Is that all you care about?” he asked quietly.

  “You were in France until last weekend, Roger. Did you Skype with the personal organizer while underground in the collider?” She crossed her arms and studied his face like the eagle had studied hers that first day in the raptor ICU, and she could tell Roger didn’t like it.

  He squirmed under her scrutiny and stood. “What’s happened to you?” he asked in the condescending tone she hadn’t heard since she’d left. “You got what you wanted, you’re still not happy.”

  It was more emotion than she’d ever seen from him.

  “What more do you want from me?” he said, and left the room. She’d never seen him angry in such a naked, exposed way. But she didn’t go running after him blubbering an apology like she might have months ago.