After Hello (7 page)

Sam grinned and dropped the packets into his bag. “When have I ever let you down, Jess?” He withdrew a small, white envelope and handed it over.

Sara leaned forward, a line of curiosity wrinkling her forehead. “What is it?”

Jess caught her breath, holding the envelope in both hands as though it were made of gold and lined with diamonds. “You didn’t.”

“I did,” Sam said, leaning back. His grin was effortless.

“How in the world—” Jess shook her head. “No, I know better than to ask.”

Sara looked from Sam to Jess. “Open it!” she said as eagerly as a kid at Christmas.

Jess laughed and jerked her head toward Sara. “Where did you find this one?”

“She found me,” Sam said quietly. “But she’s right. You should open it.”

With slightly trembling fingers, Jess lifted the flap of the envelope and withdrew a slim, white rectangle. Her mouth opened, but no words came out, just a soft exhalation of joy.

“What is it?” Sara asked again, her voice reverent.

“A front-row ticket to
The Glass Menagerie.
There’s a revival of it on Broadway, but tickets have been sold out for months. It’s my favorite play.” She looked at Sam with tears in her eyes. “I can’t take this. It must have cost you a fortune.”

Sam shrugged. “Just the cost of a sugar packet, really.” He stood up and slung his bag over his shoulder. He leaned toward Jess and brushed a kiss to her cheek. “Check the envelope. I think you missed something.”

She looked down and withdrew a second ticket. Her gasp was loud in the small bistro. She threw her arms around Sam’s neck and pulled him close.

He gently untangled himself and stepped back. “I couldn’t send you to the play alone, could I? You should take Donovan.” Sam looked over at Sara. Her eyes were wide, a sparkle of light glinting beneath the green.

Jess brushed her wrist across her cheek and made a sound somewhere between a laugh and a cry. She grabbed the black box from the table and dumped the contents into Sam’s bag. “I hope you find something good,” she said with a smile.

“I always do,” Sam said.

Another customer waved for Jess’s attention, and she carefully stashed the tickets in her apron pocket, gave Sam one last hug, and then hurried back to her tables.

Sam held the door for Sara and they stepped back into the bustling flow of people. He took a deep breath, noting the layered scents he’d come to love: a deep undertone of exhaust, the light organic scent of people and sour trash, and the high acrid zing of electricity dancing along the top.

“Are you sure you want to do this? You can still walk away, you know. I’m sure Piper won’t care if I’m the one to bring her back what she wants. And, as you pointed out, if Paul gets the ax, so do I.” He flicked his lips upward in a smile. “And since I happen to like my job, I have way more at stake than you do.”

“I told you before—I’m not walking away.”

“Why not? This is so clearly not your problem.”

She looked down at her feet. “Maybe not, but I still feel responsible.” She swallowed. “I know I don’t have to do this for Piper, but if I don’t, then, on some level, I feel like she’ll be disappointed in me. And I hate that. I know that probably makes me sound crazy, but I just . . . I just don’t want it to be my fault. Especially when I could have done something to prevent it.” She shook her head, her hair shivering over her shoulders. “I don’t expect you to understand.”

A point of cold threaded its way through Sam’s belly, reaching up through his chest. He swallowed hard, forcing his thoughts to stay still even as his body continued to move forward.

“You don’t sound crazy,” he said, grateful that his voice didn’t break.

“Really? Because I kind of
feel
crazy.”

He shrugged, the cold fading deeper into his bones to the point where he could almost ignore it. “That’s New York for you. This city inspires its own kind of crazy.”

She laughed, light and clear. “I like it, though. So, do you think we can do this? Can we find what we need and save your job? Together?”

He smiled. “Count me in, partner.”

A matching smile appeared on her face as fast and as bright as lightning before she tucked it away. But the glow remained in her eyes. “In that case,
partner,
do you have a plan for how we can find whatever it is that will make Piper happy?” she asked.

“I don’t know of anything that will make Piper truly happy, but I think I know where we should start looking.”

“Where’s that?”

“St. John’s Cathedral.”

“Are you saying we’re going to need a miracle?” she said, a hint of teasing in her voice. “Divine intervention?”

“Not exactly.” He grinned. “Though it couldn’t hurt. C’mon. It’s not far.”

They paused at the corner as a large red double-decker bus barreled past, the tourists on the top deck snapping pictures right and left. Sam shook his head. The pictures would probably all turn out blurry, but that was tourists for you. Too busy to stop and actually
see
the sights.

Sara reached for her camera and aimed it after the departing bus.

“What?” she said, a little defensively. “I liked the color.”

“I didn’t say anything.” Sam held up his hands.

After they had crossed the street, Sara stashed her camera back in her shoulder bag. “So that thing with Jess—what was that all about?”

“It’s what I do,” he said, lifting one shoulder and one side of his mouth.

She shook her head. “You help strangers with impossible tasks?”

“I help friends with adventures.”

“Semantics.”

“Truth.”

She hesitated, looking back toward the front façade of 24 Frames. “Am I in an adventure, then?” she asked. She ran her fingers through her hair, pulling the strands into a smooth column and then brushing the entire thing over her shoulder. He wondered if she knew what that did to the line of her neck.

“At the risk of sounding like a motivational poster,
life
is an adventure.”

“And the price of an adventure is a sugar packet? What’s the story behind that?”

Sam’s half smile grew. “A few months ago, I told Jess I could get anything I wanted, and usually for less than the marked price. She didn’t believe me, so I explained that it was all about trading.”

“Trading? Like how you wanted to trade stories with me?”

“A little. It’s more like you give up something small that someone needs for something better that someone else wants. If you keep things circulating, eventually you’ll get what you want. Take and trade. Trade and transfer.” He turned left at the corner, and Sara stayed in step with him.

“And that’s how you get what you want?”

A muscle moved in his jaw. “You’ve got to keep moving. Stagnation kills.”

“Profound,” Sara said with a raised eyebrow.

“Truth,” he said again. He stepped around a man with a briefcase and fell back into step with Sara. “We made a bet—me and Jess. She bet me that I couldn’t bring back her heart’s desire if all I could use to trade was a sugar packet.”

“And you knew the tickets were her heart’s desire.”

“I knew
Donovan
was her heart’s desire. The tickets were just an excuse to get them together.”

Sara tilted her head. “But you could have done anything, then. Movie tickets would have been just as good. It didn’t have to be front-row seats to her favorite play.”

“You’re right—it didn’t
have
to be,” he agreed lightly.

Her green eyes filled with light—and admiration. “Show me.”

“What?”

She tilted her head the other direction. “Show me how you trade. Jess gave you all those sugar packets. Trade one for me.”

A smile hovered around Sam’s mouth. “Okay. What do you want?”

Sara started to shrug, but Sam held up his hand.

“Don’t say you don’t know.”

“I wasn’t—” she started.

Sam ignored the lie he saw on her face. “I can’t trade without knowing what’s at stake.”

“I thought the important thing was to keep things moving.” Sara waved her hands in small circles in front of her as though stirring the air into action.

Sam shook his head. “If you don’t know what you want, you’ll never get it. What’s more, if you don’t know what you want, you’ll never know when you
do
get it.” He reached into his bag and withdrew a packet. He offered it to her on the palm of his hand. “So, Sara without an
h,
tell me—what do you want?”

Sara looked from Sam’s hand to his eyes and back again. Then she carefully took the sugar packet, turning the small square over and over in her fingers. She was quiet for a few steps. A bike messenger zipped past in the narrow space between sidewalk and street, his bell chiming a shrill warning. A few high clouds skidded across the sun, casting dappled shadows over the trees. Sam and Sara walked past the open door of a German deli, the distinct scent of mustard and bratwurst billowing out in a cloud around them.

“There are lots of things that I want.” Her eyes stayed focused on the packet, and her voice sounded softer than he’d expected.

He looked at her sharply; he hadn’t meant to strike a nerve—at least not one so clearly close to the heart.

He brushed his hand against her wrist. When she looked up at him, he said gently, “Well, then, pick just one, and let’s see where it takes us.”

Chapter 11

Sara

I couldn’t pick just one.

The moment I’d touched the sugar packet, a thousand thoughts cascaded through my mind.

I want to go shopping in Times Square.

I want to go to the top of the Empire State Building.

I want Dad to finish his meetings and come see the city with me.

I want to travel to Paris.

I want to fall in love so hard it makes me cry.

I want . . .

I shook my head. Sam didn’t know what he was asking. How could this small pink square of processed sugar be transformed into my heart’s desire?

I want Mom to come home.

But I couldn’t tell him that. I couldn’t tell anyone that. Because it wasn’t true, I told my heart. That wasn’t what I wanted. Mom had left. She had made her choice, and she hadn’t looked back.

Now that I’d thought about it, though, I couldn’t
not
remember. The late-night fights, followed by mornings of frosty silence. Then, one night, anger filled the kitchen like buzzing flies circling a corpse.

I was only eight, so I didn’t understand everything Mom and Dad had said to each other; I didn’t understand the significance of the suitcase by the door. Even when she crouched down to where I sat hidden beneath the kitchen table, my stuffed dog clutched to my chest, and said, “I’ll talk to you soon, sweetie, okay?” I didn’t really understand what was happening.

It wasn’t until she was at the door, her suitcase in hand, that I finally understood.

It wasn’t until she said good-bye that I started to cry.

I closed my hand in a fist around the sugar packet. No. Not today.

“I want to see the Giants play,” I said, blurting out the first thing I could think of. My chin jutted out in a challenge.

Sam blinked. “The Giants?”

“They’re famous, right? And they play in New York. We’re in New York. So let’s go see them play.”

“It’s not that easy—”

“Why not? I thought you could get anything you wanted.”

Sam scratched the underside of his jaw. “I can, it’s just—”

“What? It’s just—what?” A hard knot of emotion lodged in my throat. I tried to swallow around it. I didn’t want to be so aggressively unlikable. I could hear my dad’s voice in my head:
Now, Sara, be nice.
I
was
a nice person—most of the time. I hated that the mere thought of my mom could make me feel like this.

And Sam had been nothing but nice to me today even when he didn’t have to be. I knew I shouldn’t be taking it out on him, but I couldn’t seem to stop myself.

He looked at me with those dark brown eyes, surprisingly serene—and perhaps a little sympathetic—and hooked his thumb beneath the strap of his messenger bag that crossed his chest. “Somehow I don’t think going to a football game is what you really want.”

“You don’t know that. I could be a big football fan,” I snapped back.

“That’s true. But if so, then you’d know that the Giants aren’t playing right now. It’s May. Preseason games don’t start until August.” He hesitated, then added, “And, technically the Giants don’t play in New York; their stadium is in New Jersey.”

“Oh.” I felt as though a trapdoor had opened up beneath my feet. All my hot anger fell through, leaving behind a blush of embarrassment.

Sam was kind enough not to laugh.

“But that doesn’t mean we can’t still try to see them play,” he said.

“How?”

“I don’t know. But I know how to start.” He stopped walking in the middle of the sidewalk and reached for my hand that was still curled around the sugar packet. “Step one: trade this for something better.”

Opening my hand, I saw that the paper had been crinkled and creased from the force of my fist. “Who’s going to want a slightly sweaty sugar packet?”

“Are you kidding? Who
wouldn’t?
” Sam grinned, and I couldn’t help but feel a smile coming on.

“Gotta keep things moving, right? Stagnation kills.”

His grin tightened a little on his face. He closed my fingers around the packet again. “You hold on to this. Never know when it’ll be time for a trade.”

I stashed the sugar packet in my bag next to my camera. Another red double-decker bus rumbled past us, spewing exhaust. Without warning, I remembered seeing my mom’s shoes turn away from me. They had been the same dark-red color as the bus. There had been a small scuff on the left heel. And the sound they had made—a crisp snap, like a twig breaking in two. I shuddered.

No.

I took a deep breath and brushed my hair away from my face. I had promised myself I wasn’t going to let my mom ruin my day. I closed the door on those memories and forced myself back to the present.