In sixty seconds, I had an address for the driver.
Park was waiting in the cool green shade of an elm outside his building. He took my bags as I paid the fare.
“You’ll be all right,” the driver said.
I laughed, sniffling. “Yeah. I will.”
Park led me upstairs without a word. He had a condo a few floors up, pristine cherry hardwood and sleek modern furniture, tracklights, art on raw canvases, everything in shades of gray and touches of chrome. A view of the Arch through enormous windows.
“This way,” he said, still carrying my bags.
He showed me to a bathroom. It was so white I squinted, hard lights hitting the mirrors. It looked like a place where androids slept. I scrubbed my face, brushed my hair, tried to tease out some vestige of my humanity, instead of looking like a decomposing waif.
When I came out Park was at the granite kitchen counter, sipping a beer. “Drink?”
“Water, please. I’m really sorry to show up like this.”
He made a quick, dismissive gesture, handed me a glass, and looked at me with muted curiosity. Men, I thought. They’ll never ask, even if they’re dying to know.
Fifteen years. Was that really what it came down to? I’d been with Evan for the better part of the past year, so why was age a problem now? Because he’d be committing himself to something, I guess. Uprooting his life, leaving his friends, the easy jobs and low cost of living, all for a city full of broken dreams and a screwed-up eighteen-year-old who’d already left him twice.
I took a deep breath and drank. When I thought of it like that, I couldn’t blame him.
“The first time I met you,” I said, “you thought it was happening again, didn’t you? What happened with the other girl.”
Park’s eyes narrowed. He took a moment to answer, sipping his beer first. “She came to me, crying and begging. I thought she needed help. It was all an act. Eric—” He caught himself. “—E felt so guilty, he refused to see what she was doing. I told him, ‘You were wrong, but so is torturing someone for a mistake.’ I was moving to St. Louis for a job and offered him a chance to start over.”
“How long have you known him?”
“Since college. We were roommates.”
“Why was that girl torturing him?”
Park spun his bottle on the counter. “She thought she was in love.”
But she wasn’t. She was just a hurt, f**ked-up, obsessed little girl. Maybe that was how Evan saw me.
“You know,” Park said, peering into his beer, “I’ve known E half my life. He’s family. Even my mother loves him, and she is impossible to impress. Like, doesn’t carry the gene.” He grinned at me, let it slowly fade. “He has changed so much since he met you. He talks about getting back into acting. Helping you launch a movie career. I haven’t heard him talk so much about the future since college. He’s finally looking forward, not backward.”
I swallowed. I was a mess inside, part of me lifting at this, reaching for any shred of hope, but the greater part knowing it was just that, just talk. We were past that stage. No more dialogue. Action beats only.
“He can talk about the future all he wants, but it’s not going to wait for him to start.”
Park gave a quick laugh. “You sound like my mother. She would like you, too.”
He went to shower, and I stared out the windows at the Arch looping over the shining blue thread of the Mississippi, like a silver shoelace. I couldn’t imagine getting through the next two days. Not in this haunted city, not with the laughing ghost of a girl who thought she was getting away with some grand secret. Funny, how easy happiness had been when it was us against the world. Guess that was the trick after all.
I took out my phone.
When Park came back, I said, “I rescheduled my flight. I’m leaving tonight. Can you drive me?”
“Of course,” he said, but apprehension flickered in his eyes.
I checked and rechecked my bags, texted Wesley that I’d be arriving early, watched TV with Park on his absurdly large screen. My new departure time was nine P.M. It was a long drive.
“I guess we should go,” I said when the sky began to turn lavender.
Park paused with my bags at the door. “You sure about this? Maybe you should wait, sleep on it.”
“I’ve been waiting for months,” I said, but what I thought was, I’ve been waiting my whole life. I was so sure this was different, the kind of love story they made movies and books about, but in the end it was just a summer to a summer, a dizzying breath of honeysuckle and whiskey and candle smoke, inhaled, held, let go.
Park told me funny bar stories on the way to the airport, trying to take my mind off things, and I laughed but I felt outside myself, an observer. The camera watching the girl. He walked me inside the terminal all the way to the TSA checkpoint, because he said no one should go to an airport alone. That almost made cry. He said he’d tell Evan I got here safely. I hugged him goodbye, and he winked.
Lambert International was cold and bright as a hospital, everything sterile white. I was freezing but I walked slowly to my gate, wanting to prolong it all, listening to the voices on the PA talking about gate changes and delays with an intense reverence. Lives changed here, stories beginning and ending. Somewhere lovers met for the first time after talking online, touching each other’s faces with amazement. An Afghanistan vet with sand in her boots hugged her husband and kid. And a girl headed west, chasing the setting sun, without the man she loved. It was so surreal. It was going to end in an airport after all, just like Ilsa. I stared at the signs, the names of cities, but I was lost inside myself. Regrets Only Beyond This Point.
I checked in and sat watching the planes glinting in the sunset, sleek painted steel against the fire in the sky. I listened to Sophie Barker’s cover of “Leaving on a Jet Plane” until I thought I was as sad as I could get, then switched to “Maps” and found out I could get sadder, and started laughing at myself, ridiculously, and then they called us for boarding.
Okay, I thought, walking down the gangway. This is it.
Goodbye, Rick. Goodbye, Captain Renault.
Goodbye, Eric Evan Wilke.
God, get to your seat without crying, Maise O’Malley.
I was in the first row of coach, window seat. When I buckled my belt I thought suddenly of getting in the front car of Deathsnake and my eyes went blurry. I turned to the window, forcing myself to focus through my reflection. In the deepening twilight, the runway lights looked like the carnival fireflies that night in August, distance making them beautiful. Wish you were here. Someone took the seat next to me and I tried to school my face. God, the last thing I needed was people thinking I was crying because I had a bomb strapped to my chest. In a few minutes, I’d be getting the world’s best view of the only place I’d ever lived or loved, but I’d be seeing it all by myself.
I could still smell Evan on my clothes, my skin, as if he was right here. I should have f**king changed.
The captain got on the PA, announcing our flight like a movie. Tonight’s feature is the Rest of Your Sorry Life. I couldn’t tear my eyes from the window, wanting to drink in as much of St. Louis as I could, knowing somewhere out there, one of those infinitesimally small lights was him. I wondered if he’d look up and see the planes crossing the sky like shooting stars, knowing one of those lights was me.
“You’re pretty brave,” the guy beside me said, “sitting up front by yourself.”
The floor fell out of the universe. I was in freefall.
I turned.
All I saw was blurred gold, and a small, hopeful smile, and the haze of city lights through the window across the aisle, twinkling. I couldn’t speak. I could only contain the heart and lungs that were beating inside me, that filled my whole body until I was nothing but breath and blood.
The camera zooms in on the shine of an eye, the tremulous quiver of a lip. He’s smiling but his eyes are wet. She’s crying but her heart is infinitely light. Background noise recedes. Music fades in, swelling.
Spontaneously and simultaneously, they reach for each other’s hands.