The Department of Lost & Found (17 page)

“Oh, you can be angry,” Mrs. Seidel said, as she retreated behind the counter to retrieve my bag. “There were many times when our people were angry. But they didn’t stop believing, no matter how often they threw their hands up and raged. They had faith that this was part of His plan.”

“I guess I don’t have that sort of faith,” I said. “I guess none of this seems fair. I guess God hasn’t quite clearly explained to me why the hell this happened, and each time I think, okay, I might just make it, I get slapped down with something else.”

Mrs. Seidel clasped my hand in her chubby, wrinkled fingers, so even if I wanted to bolt, I couldn’t. I was her captive. “If you choose not to believe, that is okay.” She smiled. “So the question becomes, not why hasn’t God brought you good fortune, but how can you bring good fortune upon yourself?”

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Dear Diary,

I haven’t spoken to Zach since I last wrote, nearly two weeks
ago. He e-mailed me a few days ago to make sure that I was doing okay and to see if I needed more “stuff,” that’s how he put
it because I suppose that he couldn’t very wel write “pot” in his
work e-mail, but I wrote him back and told him that I was okay.

I’ve figured out how many hits I need to stimulate my appetite
without getting ridiculously high, so I haven’t burned through
(literally! ha!) the whole bag yet.

Even though he didn’t mention it, I know that Lila cal ed
him. As soon as she got back into town after New Year’s. (Which,
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Diary, I should note, I spent curled up with Manny on the couch
watching Ryan Seacrest host numerous lip-synching tweeny pop
stars. It wasn’t a personal best.) I don’t think she really suspected
that anything happened between Zach and me, but I guess seeing him happy and normal and well-adjusted with other women
sent her into a spiral, so I think she’s presently in the midst of
concocting a plan to win him back. I know that he told me that he
wouldn’t take her, but Sal y mentioned that he and Lila were
getting drinks last weekend, so I don’t know. Maybe I misinter-preted that whole thing between us.

So, Diary, after having brought you up to speed on that situation, I guess the reason that I’m writing is because I did manage to catch up with Dylan. You know: law school assistant
professor who went totally amuck? Yeah, wel , who knew that he
was right here in the city? It’s a small miracle that in day-to-day
life, I haven’t run into him because he’s actually working at Cra-vath right around the corner from the senator’s office. I know
that I’m questioning my faith in God right now, but I would like
to say a short prayer of thanks for steering me in the opposite direction of Dylan in the city. It’s almost fate that our paths haven’t
yet crossed. Or was almost fate, I should say, since I took it upon
myself—you know, in my efforts to retrace the past—to pretty
much change all of that.

I found him in Yale’s alumni directory, and when I cal ed
him up, his secretary asked me to repeat my name three times,
then unceremoniously put me on hold for six minutes. “He’s in a
meeting,” she said, when she came back on the line. “In a real
meeting meeting?” I asked. “Or a fake meeting because he doesn’t
want to talk to me?” “A real meeting,” she responded curtly and
asked if I wanted to be put into his voice mail. Before I had a
chance to reply, she dumped me in.

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I left a fairly idiotic message, stumbling, stuttering, repeating my phone number twice, which in hindsight might have
made me sound a lit le desperate. As if, just in case he missed it
the first time, here it is again! Cal me. Cal me! Oh wel . I’ d
done it, and I really didn’t expect him to cal anyway. Dylan really was the type who faked meetings and illnesses and all sorts
of things just to get out of whatever he didn’t want to do. I saw
him master his skills when he was in the midst of a divorce (he
married young) at Yale and screwing around with me.

But I digress. I was just about to take Manny out for a walk
when the phone rang. Frankly, I figured it was Kyle. He and I
had been e-mailing about how to appease the senator’s constituents who felt like she might back off some of her tax reduction
promises, and it was getting a little too complicated to keep writing. He wanted PR spin; I thought, and this was a new tactic for
me, that we should just tell them the truth: that in order to fund
Homeland Security measures and keep the garbagemen happy
with their pay, tax cuts simply weren’t on the agenda for the
year.

Anyway, so when the phone rang, I answered it with a run-on sentence, something about coming clean with the voters because ultimately, they had to trust the senator’s overall vision.

When he cleared his throat, I immediately recognized the deep
baritone—think Barry White, but on a handsome yet pale blond
guy—and knew that it wasn’t Kyle.

“Mil er,” he said, cal ing me by my last name like he always
did. “I never expected to hear from you again. What gives?

Does your senator need someone to bail her out of hot water?” I
felt dirty, and sort of like I wanted to vomit, but I resisted the
urge and didn’t take his taunting bait. That was our thing, or at
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least it used to be. Our banter was never playful: It was pushy, it
was in-your-face, it was borderline hostile but not enough so that
we ever stepped back to question what the hel we were doing.

Dylan, in essence, was the quintessential alpha dog, really, Diary, perhaps the male version of me, and during my second year
in law school, when he led a lecture in Professor Randolph’s absence, I was mesmerized, no, maybe infatuated is a better word,
with the way that he took command of the class. Yale students
were notoriously diligent; we paid attention to most lectures regardless. But when Dylan spoke it was different—he wasn’t the
teacher and we weren’t his students. Rather, he was the star and
we were his mere audience. He posted office hours at the end of
class, and I went. I had to have him.

Now, when I heard his voice, my mind flashed with tu-mult. And I instantly felt foolish for calling. I didn’t need to
pick apart why this relationship dissolved. I already knew: We
were too similar—in our quest for the top, in our desire for
control, in pushing someone away when they’ d rather move
closer. But I asked him anyway, Diary. I figured, why not?

And besides, he’ d definitely think I was a huge ass for cal ing
with nothing to say.

So I said to him, “Why were we so combustible? Why did
we settle for a half-warm relationship when I think we both
knew that it would never get hotter?” And he said, “Miller, is
that really how you see it? Six years later, that’s what you
think? Because I thought we had a pretty damn good time.”

Fair enough, I agreed. We certainly didn’t have a bad time. In
fact, the sex might have been the best ever (needless to say,
Diary, I did not tel him that), but still, wasn’t there something
that was lacking? I mean, together for two years, we were. And
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never once did we say, “I love you.” Never once did we talk
about our future. I graduated and moved on. Left him in New
Haven. And he never tried to stop me, so I assumed that he
never wanted to.

“You’re missing the point, Miller,” he said. “You’re analyz-ing this like a lawyer would, not like someone who was in our
position at the time would. At the time, we held our own pret y
wel —it wasn’t a fairy tale, but it was great for what it was.

And I was just coming out of a divorce; I didn’t want to fal in
love. And you? You were tough as nails, so you weren’t looking
to be loved in the first place.”

I held the phone to my ear and stared at the picture frames
that littered my desk. A col ege formal, law school graduation,
my folks and me in Philly on our back deck. Who ever said anything about not being loved? I finally caught my breath and
asked him why he thought that, why he thought that anyone
would possibly choose not to be loved, because certainly, that
wasn’t my intention.

He thought about it. I heard him crushing some ice in his
teeth and realized he was really thinking about it. And then he
said, “I don’t know, Miller. I always had the impression that for
you, other things came first, mattered more. I was just someone
who was a warm body for you to mark time with, nothing more,
nothing less. And I thought that’s all we wanted from each other,
even while we were having a grand go of it.” He grew quiet before something else came to mind. “I guess I always figured that
you were a hard enough nut that you didn’t want to be cracked.

And that somewhere along the line, you figured that love came
second. The rest of your life came first.”

I stood for a long time after talking to Dylan, staring out my
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living room window. My apartment was quiet; I couldn’t even
hear the street noise below. All I could hear was Mrs. Seidel’s
gentle but firm voice as she handed me my wig. “So the question
becomes, not why hasn’t God brought you good fortune, but how
can you bring good fortune upon yourself?” How can I indeed?

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t w e l v e

e’re going to run some tests,” Dr. Chin said. “Similar Wto what you first got when we diagnosed you. We’d like to see how well you’re responding to the chemo.”

I nodded and tried to go numb. I knew that this was coming; they’d warned me at my last appointment. After the fourth round of chemo, they like to gauge how well it’s working, whether or not the chemicals they shoot into me every three weeks are killing more than just my hair follicles and my spirit. If the tumors are reduced, they continue. Or they might even operate. If the tumors are still thriving, we’d need to rethink our efforts. Effectively, these were the tests that would tell me which side of the 50/50 odds of beating Stage III I’d fall into.

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It was hard to believe that I was halfway done. Time does a funny thing to you. Sometimes, it goes so slowly, like in your senior year in high school when all you want to do is press the fast-forward button and get out, that it’s almost excruciating. And sometimes, like when Jake and I were resting in bed, listening to each other’s heartbeats, it was as if gravity had taken hold and no matter how hard you tried to hang on, it roared past; you’d do anything to get it back.

Sally had come with me. My father was receiving an award in Australia for a bridge his company designed and my mother was with him. The plans had been made long before my diagnosis, so Sally was my next best option.

“This is such a big honor,” Mom had explained on the phone when I mentioned that Australia seemed like an awfully long way away from Sloan-Kettering. “You dad would be terribly disappointed.”

I snorted and wondered if my dad had any say in the matter to begin with. “Mom, I just . . . what if something goes wrong?

You’ll be halfway around the world.” I paused. “I’d like to know that you’re here if I need you.”

“Oh honey.” She sighed. “We’re always here if you need us.

We’ll just be a bit farther away.”

Today, while I sat in my flimsy flowered paper robe in the stark examination room, waiting for the nurse to wheel in the ultrasound machine, Sally casually brought up Lila. And Zach.

“Do you want to know what’s going on?” she asked, as she pressed her palms into her thighs.

“Why wouldn’t I?” I asked.

“Because every time his name comes up, you get this sour look on your face, so I’m pretty sure that you either want to know so
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badly that it’s eating you up inside or else you truly don’t want to know, and thus, I won’t tell you.”

“Unfortunately, no, that’s not what’s eating me up inside. If that were the only thing that was eating me up inside, I certainly wouldn’t need an ultrasound to tell me how to treat it.” I sighed.

“Fine. Yes, tell me what’s going on.”

“Did something happen with you two? That night at his apartment? Because why all the bitterness?”

“No, Sally, nothing happened. Need I remind you? I have cancer.” I focused on the pale green wallpaper and tried to avoid meeting her eyes.

“Yes, that’s clear,” she said. “But I’m not sure why it’s rele-vant.”

“Because I have cancer.”

“Uh-huh. Again, clear.”

“How can I possibly be attractive to someone right now?”