Emily & Einstein (3 page)

I fell into a chair and kicked my feet up on the desk as we talked and laughed, excited over this new phase in my career. When I got off the phone, I tried my husband again, but his voice mail was still full.

I showered, then poured myself a glass of wine, found my iPod and cranked up a crazy mix as I danced through the apartment. “Wouldn’t It Be Nice” by the Beach Boys. Harry Nilsson’s “The Puppy Song.” Adam Lambert’s “No Boundaries.”

Then “Broken” by Lifehouse.

I didn’t remember downloading the song to my playlist. But I closed my eyes and sang to the century-old walls, twirling, arms wide open, head thrown back. My life felt full, my career soaring, a simple happiness wrapping around me as if there could be no stopping me.

An hour later, Sandy still hadn’t shown up. I told myself there was no reason to worry. He had been late before. But another hour passed, then two, and still Sandy hadn’t called.

At some level had I known? Had I remembered the premonition, had I thought of the song, but refused to assign meaning to it?

Maybe, maybe not. All I know is that I danced and sang in my bright yellow room while snow came down outside the window like thick white curtains that blocked out the view.

sandy

chapter two

I might have called out to my wife, but it wasn’t Emily who showed up next to me. All of a sudden I felt a touch of heat, the snow around me melting, one single feather drifting down from the sky. I watched it seesaw back and forth, and I had the distinct thought that I had a choice. Catch the feather—or not.

I hesitated, my mind cloudy with only half-realized thoughts, then just before the feather hit the ground I gasped and scooped it up. As soon as it hit my hand, the heat turned into a sizzle of what I can only call energy, then an old man appeared out of nowhere.

I stumbled back and he smiled at me, his longish white hair swept away from his forehead in a soft wave. He wore a double-breasted frock coat as if he had stepped out of Regency England, a loud, wide tie, and round tortoiseshell glasses. Everything about him seemed mismatched, as if his clothes and bearing had been collected over centuries.

He stepped closer. “I believe that’s mine,” he said, and plucked the feather from my fingers with the sort of kind, apologetic smile that wasn’t a staple in Manhattan. After shoving it in his pocket, he looked me up and down. “Are you all right?”

I scoffed. “Apparently not.” I was glad to see my dry wit was still intact even if my body was not.

He only chuckled. “It’s always a shock at first, especially when it’s an accident. It’s easier when the person has been sick for a long time, when the pain is unbearable, and they’re ready to move on. It’s not even all that hard with the young ones. They are more accepting, not yet so set in their ways. The hardest are the middle-aged. They realize time has run out on achieving their dreams. They don’t want to go. They want more time to live the life they have been too afraid or too weighed down by day-to-day existence to achieve. They’re the ones who fight every step of the way.”

“What are you talking about?”

Part of me knew exactly what he meant, but another part didn’t want to know. One of my more useful traits had always been my ability to live and work happily with a narrow-eyed vision that allowed me to assume that I was right and everyone else was wrong. In this case, I had no interest in absorbing that I was dead and he was some sort of angel sent to cart me off to heaven just as in some overly trite movie I never would have bothered to see while alive.

“It’s time to move on, Alexander.”

No one, not even my mother, called me Alexander.

He started down Seventy-sixth toward Columbus Avenue, brownstones and low-rise apartment buildings forming a narrow snowy canyon. He walked in the street, no footprints left behind in the slush and snow. “Are you coming?”

I realized I had no idea what else to do. Just stand there? It seemed to me that arriving at heaven’s gate should be easier than this. But I followed.

We walked the length of Seventy-sixth, crossing Columbus, eventually coming to Central Park. We entered the park on a footpath, taking the winding trail deeper into the snow-covered grounds, and turned south.

Hmmm. “Where are we going?”

“You’ll see.”

I panicked, the accident and my death finally sinking in.

“I can’t do this.”

I turned around and fled.

I hadn’t run in years, but I started out at a good pace despite my handmade leather shoes, despite the fine wool suit, suspenders, and overcoat. Nothing obstructed me, not the layers of clothes, not my leg, as I ran toward the clinic.

Throughout my life, when my back was against the wall, I had always been able to find a way to save myself. I would save myself again. Surely my injuries weren’t as catastrophic as the medics believed. It was probably a tough night; they hadn’t put their all into saving me. It couldn’t have been too long since the accident. Plus it was freezing cold, keeping my body temperature low. If I could get back into my body, I felt certain I could save myself once again.

I hit Seventy-sixth Street in minutes, arrived at the clinic seconds later. I had never moved so fast in all my life. It was amazing. I could do this. But when I got to the building, the odd old man was already there shaking his head. “You really can’t outrun me, Alexander.”

The sheer staggering force of it brought me to my knees, literally, my topcoat pooling around me in the frozen slush. “You can’t do this. I have so much left to do.”

“Technically, that isn’t true.” Yet again he looked apologetic.

My mind raced. “I have a wife. If I die it will kill her.”

“I can’t disagree with you there. That woman loves you. Really loves you. Too bad you didn’t think of that sooner.”

*   *   *

The evening I arrived in the lobby of Caldecote Press to pick up Emily that very first time, I expected her to choose some quaint restaurant on the Upper East Side. Someplace where her classically simple clothes wouldn’t stand out. We did end up on the east side, but not at any place that could be considered quaint. She took me to an out-of-the-way coffee shop where the crusty old waiter knew her by name.

As soon as we were seated, the waiter handed us plastic-covered menus.

“I give you a second,” the man said, his accent thick and nondescript.

To be perfectly honest, I had never been in a diner before, and the sheer number of choices was staggering, making me suspect the chef couldn’t have time or fresh enough ingredients to make a single dish exceptional. Surely, though, he did one item better than the others.

When the waiter returned, I asked, “What is the chef’s specialty?”

The man looked put out, scoffed as only a New York waiter could, then used his short, blunt-nosed pencil to point out a section of the menu.
CHEF’S SPECIALS
, it read.

“Can’ta you read?” the man demanded, then looked at Emily, his expression softening like a grandfather gazing at a beloved granddaughter. “He no good enough for you,
latria mou
.”

Emily ducked her head to hide her smile, her long hair swinging forward.

After I learned that he had said something about adoring her in Greek
,
I was half afraid to eat the roast beef dinner he banged down in front of me.

“So, you were going to dictate a list of all the reasons you’re amazing,” I said.

“No, I just said you didn’t know all the reasons.”

“True. So I made my own list to prove you wrong.” I surprised her when I reached into my suit pocket and pulled out a slip of paper. With ceremony, I read, “Emily Barlow is beautiful, smart, straightforward, not worried about what others think of her. And funny, despite the fact that she doesn’t realize it.”

“You actually made a list?” She gasped.

I turned the sheet toward her.

She laughed out loud when she saw that it was blank.

“Now,
your
turn to tell me about you,” I said.

“Fair enough.” But she didn’t tell me anything about herself, at least not directly. She was editing a manuscript about great men. Philosophers, scientists, athletes. Her New York–bred reserve evaporating completely, she leaned forward with the kind of enthusiasm the women I dated refused to show, and told me about the book.

“What I’d give for ten minutes with one of those guys,” she said.

Ah, a woman who was drawn to powerful men. I shouldn’t have been disappointed. I was strong, I had power. But for some reason I had thought she was different.

She laughed, those blue eyes of hers dancing. “Though my sympathies to any woman who falls for a guy like that. Just show me a glimpse of his brain, how it works, that’s what I want to see. Explain to me why one man is great and another isn’t. Is one man so hungry to be something more than ordinary that he does whatever it takes, and another won’t?”

Her question made a shiver run down my spine. “You want to know if you’re born with talent or whether you develop it.”

“Yes! If you hit a golf ball a hundred times and each time you shank, does that mean you’re not meant to play golf? Or is there a magic number for each person, like if you hit a hundred-and-one golf balls, or a hundred-and-ten golf balls, or even
two-hundred
-and-ten golf balls, it’s at
that
point that you’d start getting better? But you’ll never know because you gave up.”

When I first saw her, saw the way she blew into the conference room, I was taken by her presence. When she talked about greats like da Vinci as easily as she discussed Tiger Woods and the problems that had come his way, I experienced the same feeling that with her at my side I could do anything. Sitting in a cracked vinyl booth in an ancient diner, Emily Barlow eased the aching need that flowed through me like blood, the hunger I had never been able to satisfy.

When we finished dinner I was surprised at how much time had passed, how the restlessness had quieted. Emily proved to be a key to a lock on a door I had never been able to pass through. In her I found a foreign combination of desire and peace. And as soon as I put her in a cab and watched her fade away, I knew I would see her again.

*   *   *

The old man or angel or whatever he was shook his head at me.

I might have cringed. The fact was, nearly four years after we ate at that diner, I had been pulling away from Emily. Not that she understood this, especially since for more than two years we had been insanely happy. But in the last few months everything had changed. The hunger had taken me by surprise when it returned, like a thief jumping me in a dark alleyway, stealing something essential.

I had become short-tempered and impatient, at times shaking with frustration. Everything set me on edge. The palliative effect of Emily had worn off like a drug dissipating, leaving me in withdrawal for a fix I wanted but could no longer reach.

The fact was I had gone to the animal clinic so I could take Emily to dinner and tell her I wanted a divorce. And the way I saw it, it was Emily’s fault.

The old man gave me a look as if he could hear every word I was thinking. “Denial. Selfish denial,” he clarified. “No wonder I was sent here.”

Which is when I, me, Sandy Portman, friend to a select few, charmer of many, began to understand that this wasn’t going to go well.

“Please,” I managed, my clothes a mess, my hair wild. “Don’t do this to me.”

He shook his head, then lifted his hands as if he was going to do something. Conjure up hell and damnation, make me disappear. I had no idea what exactly, but I knew it couldn’t be good.

“Please, no!”

The old man hesitated.

“This is a mistake. You’ve got to believe me.”

I was begging, I know, but pride has a way of flying out the window when you’re faced with your sudden demise.

“Give me another chance!”

He dropped his arms and narrowed his eyes. “So you do understand.”

The words surprised me. I had been babbling. But this tack appeared to be working. “Yes, yes, I understand.”

I sort of panted the words and he looked at me hard, seeming to debate.

“No, you don’t,” he said. “But maybe that’s okay.”

I could tell he was thinking about something, as if running through a mental pros and cons list, and I knew my fate lay in his hands.

“I’ll tell you what,” he said. “I’ll give you a second chance. But I’ve got to warn you, you’re not going to like the terms.”

I most definitely didn’t like the sound of that, and old habits die hard—all those long established neural pathways sending jolts of ingrained behavior through me, like Pavlov ringing his damned bell.

“Now listen here, old man—”

“Fine, then. It’s over.”

He lifted his hands.

“Wait!”

He didn’t stop.

“All right,” I said, my voice both brave and resigned. “All right.”

“You’re sure you want this?”

I gave him a look. “If it’s your way or it’s over, I’ll take your way.”

“Okay. Here you go.”

Then the world went black.

chapter three

I had gotten myself into more than a few jams over the years, which perhaps explained why when I came to and heard the howling I wasn’t all that concerned. Irritated at the noise, yes, but not overly alarmed. Granted, confusion wracked my usually agile brain, making me undeniably slow on the uptake.

What I did know was that I hadn’t a clue where I was, the sensation beneath my eyelids swollen and grainy. I couldn’t open my eyes, but it seemed more a refusal to see than an inability to do so. I felt drugged, my heart fluttering. I sensed that my body hadn’t the physical strength to filter drugs or alcohol or whatever was making me weak like it once had. First my leg, now the slow recovery rate of encroaching middle age. I groaned. I was thirty-eight, not fifty-eight. But the sound that hit my ears didn’t sound like any groan I had ever experienced.

What was wrong with me?

Thankfully the howling had abated, making it easier to think. I began to see light coming through the thin cracks between my eyelids. Then came the stench, an earthy smell that made my stomach roil.