Providence (5 page)

“Woke me to a dream. Nothing says ‘I love you’ like a hot breakfast,” I said and grabbed a strip of bacon.

“You are up late again last night?”

“Yes, writing again.”

“Oh, that’s good, and so you have an appetite this morning?”

“I’m starved,” I said, in the mood for some of Mrs. H’s homemade food.

She switched off the stove, scraped the eggs onto a plate, and picked up a few slices of bacon with her fingers, dropping them beside the eggs.

“Come, eat.”

I poured myself a cup of coffee and carried my plate to the table. The house was filled with an incredible wash of light, as if there were two suns, one shining from the heavens above and another from the snow below.

“Do you have time to sit down and have breakfast with me?”

“No, busy day. I’m finishing here. Then I’m cleaning Mrs. Delaman’s house. Do you know her?”

“No, can’t say I do.”

“Well, I hope to finish here and Mrs. Delaman’s this morning. Oh, I brought your mail in. It’s on the table.”

“Thank you, Mrs. H.”

She rinsed the pan in the sink and left for the other room. I put on my glasses, digging into the morning mail and my breakfast. Among the utility bills, junk mail, credit-card offers, and coupons was one piece of mail that sent chills through me: a picture postcard from London, England. On the front, a nighttime photo of London Bridge strung with colorful Christmas lights. On the back, this neatly written message:

Dear Jack,

Angela and I read your very fine book. You should be proud! We’ll be in Providence before Christmas and would love to see you! Keep up the good work!

The Lord is a rewarder of faithfulness.

Howard and Angela Cameron

Five sentences. Three exclamation points. Classic Howard Cameron. The card had been mailed weeks earlier.

I tossed the postcard back on the stack. Two decades had passed since I’d seen any member of the Cameron family, though their impact on my life remains to this day. Jenny’s parents were returning to Indiana after twenty years of missions work in London. Strange how we hadn’t seen each other in all these years, but the book had reached faraway places. It had found its way to nightstands around the globe. The postcard threw me off kilter. Everything that had happened since Sunday night left a trace of strangeness. My life had been dipped in liquid uncertainty, and I’d come up dripping with it.

One thought pushed to the forefront of my addled mind: Would Jenny be with them? The last I knew, she’d been working alongside her parents in London. I doubted they’d leave out such an important detail.

The Jenny of twenty years ago was somewhere in the memory box Arthur wanted me to crack open. Our story had begun in a euphoric corner of Eden—and had ended much as the original, with angels barring reentrance to paradise.

Mrs. Hernandez switched on the vacuum in the back hallway. I picked up the portable phone in the kitchen and took it into the living room to call Arthur. He always worked Tuesday mornings from his home in North Indy, part of his clock-wound routine. I knew he’d be interested in how the writing was coming along. And I wanted to know if he wanted the pages sent to ARP. Normally, I wouldn’t hand him a thing until the last period had been punched on the final sentence. Then I’d print two copies from the hard drive, bundle one in cardboard and string, and ship it overnight with CDs to Arthur and his editor, Judith Raines.

But this was different. I
wanted
Art to see what I was writing. There was an outside chance it would be so different from what he was expecting, he’d halt the project. A
very small
outside chance. I could probably write the book in haiku, and Arthur would still publish it. I dialed his number.

“Hello, Jack Clayton.” The wonders of caller ID.

“Hi, Arthur. I did some writing last night,” I said.

“What did I tell you, Jack? I knew you could do it.” Arthur’s voice shimmered like an oiled penny. “When can we expect to see a manuscript?”

“I can fax over early drafts later this week. By the way, what’s the due date for this history-making yarn? Six months?”

“How does July sound?” Arthur said, giving me my first break. The last thing in the world I wanted was to be rushed to meet a deadline.

“July sounds manageable. I think I can get it to you by summer.”

“Not finished—have it in stores,” he said. “We’ll need the completed first draft no later than March 31.”

I waited for Arthur’s laughter to rip through the receiver but realized it wasn’t coming. “You’re kidding, right?”

“Jack, you’ve got twelve weeks. All you need to do is remember and write. Judith will shape whatever you send. I’ve already told her what we’re up against, and she’s ready for anything. It’s top priority.”

“What makes you think I can write a book in three months when everything else I’ve written has taken ten?” I asked.

“We’re going to release excerpts by June to give readers a taste. And we’ll need full chapters for publicity and marketing, endorsements, and review copies, all of which have to happen by early spring if we want people happily reading your book while they tan at the beach over their summer vacations.”

“Why not wait until Christmas next year when they can enjoy it just as much in front of their fireplaces, sipping eggnog in their robes and slippers?”

“Jack, your book is red-hot
right now
. We’ve never seen interest like this before. It’s selling into
all
the big chains—Costco, Wal-Mart, Sam’s Club—and it’s selling into major retailers all over Europe who’ve been contacting
us
because of the rumors and early buzz. But this market’s fickle. We can’t expect the same level of interest twelve or eighteen months from now … which reminds me, we’ll need to shoot a cover photo of you. I’ll have Judith or Andrew call to schedule it. Are you able to come up to Indianapolis after the first of the year?”

“Art, don’t make promises for me to keep,” I said. “If the book doesn’t get finished, you’re going to be in deep water.”

“You’ll finish it, Jack. You’ll finish it.”

“Yesterday, I wasn’t sure I’d be writing it, and to be honest, I’m still having moments of doubt.”
I wasn’t even close to knowing how this would come off.

“You’re making way too much of this, Jack. Just scribe us a book. Two hundred pages; that’s just two pages a day,” Arthur said, sounding like a third-rate used-car salesman shining up the deal. He didn’t seem to care what I gave him. He just needed my life printed, packaged, and shrink-wrapped in quickie-mart time.

After our conversation I was agitated. Each event in this saga seemed to take more control out of my hands. I went back into the kitchen to refill my coffee mug and felt like a man adrift in an ocean of sharks. Arthur had no idea what was going on inside the mind of his million-dollar author. He didn’t have the first clue about the anxiety prickling under my skin.

My life was beginning to implode. For the next twelve weeks, I’d wade into mysterious waters and submerge into the wreckage of a shipwrecked past. And I’d stay there, grappling with emotions that, like shark fins, were only now beginning to surface.

~
F
IVE
~

Bermuda, Bahama, come on pretty mama.

—The Beach Boys

“Kokomo”

It was eleven thirty when I emerged from my office Tuesday night. The inside of the house had taken on the quietness of an empty church. Outside I could hear the muted sounds of fireworks popping in the night sky, signaling that Christmas break was close at hand. It was a welcome nuisance.

I walked the long hallway downstairs, stretching every aching muscle, breaking my body free from the mad hours spent working in the same seated position.

Ten
mad hours of writing. I’d done this before, lived it while working on my last three books. But that writing was part-time, absent the pressure of a twelve-week deadline.

Being single all these years, I’d gotten used to long stretches of flying solo. Somewhere in my thirties, I’d finally recognized that my singleness wasn’t just a phase I’d outgrow. I’d had dreams once of being married. I certainly never imagined living alone year after year. Yet here I was, a forty-year-old man who’d learned to take the love he had for one woman and break it into a thousand pieces to give away to the poor.

I switched on the stereo with the remote and pushed the shuffle button. A moment later Chris Eaton was singing “Wonderful World.”

I have shouldered the blame for too long, I have hidden my light under a cloud…

Two of Mrs. Hernandez’s Christmas burritos wrapped in green cellophane caught my eye on the top shelf of the fridge. I stuck them in the microwave and grabbed a cold can of Coke.

It was snowing again, the graceful snow of angels. The hypnotically slow rhythm of white flakes falling through the black sky. I remembered the weatherman saying something about accumulation. Had it been today or the day before? I carried my plate to the living-room sofa. My eyelids grew heavy, and I was too tired to eat. Another song came on. A Taylor Dayne love song from the eighties.

Love will lead you back

Someday I just know that

Love will lead you back to my arms

It won’t be long

One of these days

Our love will lead you back

I fell asleep with the lights on, drifting off and wondering what it would feel like being brought back by love. Thoughts and words melted together beneath the firm press of unconsciousness. “The Lord did it,” I whispered. “Led me back by love.”

Early the next morning, I dressed in two layers of sweats and jogged through five inches of fresh snowfall. Covered in the fresh powder, the Providence campus looked brand new, untouched by traffic and footprints.

Twenty minutes later I pulled open the heavy glass door of Liberty Deli, a greasy spoon a block off South Campus. It was one of the first restaurants Mitch and I had claimed as our own when we’d gotten to Providence. The place is run by three Middle Eastern brothers named Quaddi, and it’s loved in Providence for its unique … character. Orange-cushioned booths, a Formica counter with red swivel chairs, and cartoonlike paintings of food depicted in a mural on the wall. A long hot griddle ran the length of the counter where the Quaddi brothers cooked and shouted at each other. It’s the kind of restaurant where the waitresses are rude, the floors are filthy, and the food is perfect.

Liberty Deli was half-empty due to the snow and the early hour. I sat in a booth along the wall.

Debbie Holms shouted from behind the counter, “What’ll it be, Jack? The usual?” and I gestured back.

A few moments later, Debbie brought me a plate of eggs and sausage and a cup of joe. “Didn’t think we’d see you in here this morning,” she said, making friendly talk.

“I’m out of my normal routine,” I told her, “but better late than never.”

I gave Debbie a friendly smile. She was pretty. I’d always liked her because she worked hard, though she had little to show for it. She was smart, too. Not college smart.
People
smart. No one could fool her. She was a thirty-one-year-old unmarried mother of a preschooler. A girl. I wondered how she got by on the money she made serving college kids and the downtown crowd.

“I guess even superstars have to eat,” she said.

Her comment seemed out of character. Or out of time. My book had been out for three years, and we’d already done the “Hey, aren’t you that guy?” bit.

“Yes, Debbie, even we superstars need a little grease in our works.” I returned her gaze, not sure where this was going. We’d joked enough mornings to be at ease with each other. This seemed different. “Are you looking for an autograph or something?”

“I may be.” Debbie held out a magazine she’d hidden behind her back, then tossed it on the table. It was the most recent issue of
Time
magazine
,
and I was on the cover. The headline read: Person of the Year.

“You’ve got to be kidding.”

“’Fraid not. You’re an actual big shot now, Jack,” Debbie took a step closer as we stared at a black-and-white photograph of my face. “You’ve seen this, right?”

I picked up the magazine and held it in front of me. “Can’t say that I have.”

Did Arthur know this was in the works?

“I’ll take that autograph now.” Debbie pulled a pen out from her work apron and laid it down by my coffee cup. “You can make it out to Jessica, my daughter. Even she knows what
Time
magazine is.”

I signed my name and asked if I could keep the copy awhile. I promised to return it before I left.

“No problem,” she said. “Just don’t get anything on it, okay?”

She walked back to the grill, and one of the Quaddi brothers smiled at me, waving his greasy spatula in the air.