The Department of Lost & Found (30 page)

“I think that’s giving me a little bit too much credit.” I grinned.

“But how does it make me feel? I suppose it makes me scared because, ultimately, I have no one to blame my failures on but myself.” I watched a pigeon land on her windowsill and wished that I’d could take back everything I’d said to Sally. “But I suppose that it also liberates me. I mean, just like I have to own my failures, I can also own my successes. And at least try to turn my failures around rather than try to outrun them.”

Janice smiled. “Well, no wonder you don’t want to see me each week. If all of my clients were as well adjusted as you, I’d be out of a job.”

“Trust me, Janice. I might be well adjusted now, but if you’d gotten your hands on me a year ago, I’d probably have provided
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enough sessions to buy your horses a new barn. Funny how cancer can do that to you—knock off your psychosis when, arguably, it should really make it much worse.”

“Sometimes it does,” she replied. “It’s all about how you choose to perceive it.”

When our hour wound down, she came out from behind her desk and gave me a hug. I smelled her perfume and felt the silk scarf that was draped around her neck, and I thanked her for helping me find my way.

“Good luck,” she said, as I was slinging my bag on my shoulder.

“It’s not about luck,” I said, as my four-leaf clover poked out of my crewneck sweater. “It’s about making your own good fortune.”

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n Wednesday, the day before Jake and I were set to leave Ofor Sally’s wedding, the senator was running late, which threw my schedule even further off-course than it already was. Blair dropped by my desk at 10:00 and said that the senator was in a chopper on the way back from Albany. She’d have to bump our meeting to noon. And would I mind terribly if it were more of a walking lunch? Dupris hadn’t shown her face in New York in three weeks, and Andrews’s public relations advisers wanted her to get out among the people. Hand-shaking, baby-kissing, and all of that.

Fine, I said. But I need thirty minutes.

You’ll have it, Blair said. I promise.

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Our noon meeting was pushed to 12:30, then 1:oo. Finally, at 1:15, the senator flew through the door with two briefcases on each arm.

“I’m famished,” she shouted. “Blair, can we get some lunch?”

“You’re due for a walk-through, Senator,” Blair replied. “Andrews wants you out among the people during lunch hour. It’s prime time for a photo shoot.”

“Christ, fine,” she said. “And I hear that Natalie needs to talk to me? Tell her to grab her stuff—we’re leaving in five. I’m about to devour my own hand. Make a reservation at The Four Seasons for 1:30.”

Shit,
I thought.
I needed thirty minutes, not an entire afternoon
. I still had to get Manny to the kennel and stop by the boutique on my corner for some beachy T-shirts and run to the drugstore for enough sun block to deflect even the hint of a ray touching my skin. And, of course, I need to get back to both Maureen at Senator McIntyre’s office and Brian at Senator Tompkins’s.
Shit,
I said out loud.

I grabbed my bag and yellow pad with my list of pro and con names and made a dash for the elevator, where I caught up with the senator just before the door clamped shut.

“Natalie, how are you feeling?” she said warmly. “I haven’t really had a chance to catch up with you since you went into remission. We’re so, so happy for you.”

“Thank you, Senator. Actually, I’m feeling great. Maybe even better than before.” I put on a grin to assure her that this was so.

“But really, I need to speak with you about a very pressing matter.”

“Of course,” she said, as the elevator touched the bottom floor and her cell phone rang. She held up her finger to me. “Just give me a second. Walk with me. We’re going to The Four Seasons. I hope you haven’t eaten.”

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I had, in fact, eaten. I’d gone down to Ben and Jerry’s for some mint chocolate chip about an hour before, but it didn’t really matter to the senator. Lunch, it was.

“Fine, I’ll look out for them,” I heard her say into her phone, as she snapped it shut. “Photographers. Andrews has tipped them off. He wants some shots in tomorrow’s paper. So smooth out that beautiful hair of yours, Natalie. So what were you saying? Oh yes, pressing matter. What is it?”

Unconsciously, I raised my free hand and ran it over my wig.

“It’s the stem cell bill. The one you asked me to babysit until we were sure that we had enough signatures to push it through . . .”

She and I were now weaving our way through midtown lunch-time pedestrian traffic. A taxi just to our right was leaning on his horn and my voice drifted away under its clamor.

“I’m sorry, what? I couldn’t hear you.”

But before I could repeat myself, we were encircled by a mob of people. As she always does, the senator pulled out her dimpled smile and professionally whitened teeth, shook hands, and murmured how kind they all were for their support. Eventually, the crowd parted much like I imagined that the Red Sea once did, and we made our way past.

“I was saying that there’s a snag in the stem cell bill,” I told her once we were in the clear.

“Which is what?”

“Well, there are two snags actually,” I replied and thought of the
New York Times
exposé. Maureen had sent me an e-mail saying that the Mississippi contingent started leaking Sally all of the dirt in their “folder of secrets.” I’d worked for Dupris long enough to know that, undoubtedly, her secrets were best kept that way. I cleared my throat. “The first issue is Senator Tompkins. He’s the last signature that we need. But he wants to go in for a deal.”

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“Of course.” She sighed. “Harry always plays hard to get.

What is it?”

“He wants you to back off your education push. He doesn’t think that it’s going to be effective, and his voters aren’t loving it.

In exchange, he’ll support the research.”

“No way,” she said, as we crossed Fifty-seventh Street. “Find someone else to give us that last vote.”

“There is no one else, Senator.” I pulled out my pad from underneath the crook in my elbow. “Maureen and I have spent every waking second talking to lobbyists, aides, even assistants to aides.

Tompkins is it. No one else is moving from their position, and he’s the only one who is flexible.”

“I’m not letting him put me in a position to have to choose,” she said. “It’s like
Sophie’s Choice
—how can he ask me to drop one for the other?”

“Because this is how it’s done.” I sighed at her melodrama.

“You know that.” I hated it when she pretended to be so pious as to not recognize the negotiation tactics that played themselves out on the Hill every day. And it’s not like she hadn’t done this very thing before herself. In fact, she’d had me orchestrate this very thing before.

“Well, I won’t back off education. In fact, I’m going to bolster my campaign for it. You tell him that.”

A wave of nausea overtook me, and I had to pause to regain my breath. “Senator, with all due respect, the stem cell bill can make a difference, a tangible difference in voters’ lives. By backing this, you could conceivably save hundreds of thousands of people. What could be more worthy than that?”

She flipped her hand to the side. “Education is where I’m at, Natalie. Andrews wants it; I want it.” A bus blew by us with an ad for Susanna’s not-for-profit on the side, complete with her picture.

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Dupris watched it pass. “Isn’t that Councilman Taylor’s wife?”

She snorted. “I can’t believe she showed her face in the town again.

I wonder what happened to her?”

“What happened to her is that you made me apologize to her at the Christmas party. Or have you forgotten?” I muttered. “And what further happened to her is that she turned out to be a decent person. A
good
one, in fact. Who’s trying to make a difference.”

“Oh, Natalie.” Dupris’s heels clicked on the sidewalk as she started walking again. “Don’t take things so personally. I was just asking! No offense was intended.”

I felt my pulse quicken and clamped down my jaw. No offense was ever meant by the senator unless she’d sent one of her minions to do the offending and thus fall on their swords for her. Like I might have done with my best friend.

“Anyway, where were we?” she continued. “Oh yes, the stem cell bill. Sorry, my hands are tied.”

I stopped in the middle of the street, which forced her to turn and look back at me.

“Well, I guess that brings us to the second thing,” I said in a tone I used to reserve for my mother. “And that’s an enormous exposé that’s coming out about the machinations of politics. A cover story, in fact. The
New York Times Magazine
. Oh, and it’s taking its cues from the stem cell bill. Why certain people are voting one way, why others are voting another.” I smiled sarcasti-cally. “You know, just a nice little piece on how pure all of our intentions are.” I saw her eyes widen. “And it just so happens that I’ve spent the past month trying to keep your nose out of it, trying desperately to protect your image from being smeared, when it seems to me that you’re doing a fine job of smearing it all on your own.”

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took a step toward me and for an instant, I was certain that she was going to slap me. But she lowered her voice, grabbed me by the elbow, and said, “Why didn’t you tell me about this ages ago.”

“Because, Senator, you prefer the don’t ask, don’t tell policy.

You know that you do.” She looked at me and clenched her jaw. “I was trying to keep you above it,” I said.

We walked the block in silence.

“I have to think about this, Natalie,” she said finally, just as we approached the steps of The Four Seasons. “Sit down and talk it over with Andrews and figure out how I’ll do the least damage.”

“Of course,” I replied dryly, stopping at the stairs.

“You’re not joining me for lunch?”

“No, Senator,” I said, just before I spun on my heels. “I’m pretty certain that I just lost my appetite. Besides, I’m headed for sunnier skies.”

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here were no skies more sunny than those off the coast of TSan Juan. Jake loaded our suitcases into the back of the cab while I pulled on my oversized, Jackie-O glasses and read the driver the address. Sally had told me that the hotel was smack on the beach, just a literal stone’s throw from the airport, so when we pulled into the resort’s driveway, with its skyscraping palm trees and mammoth lion sculptures, I’d barely even had time to check my voice mail; the ride was less than five minutes. I was just about to key in my password when I saw Sally standing at the imposing marble entrance. I’d left her a message the night before, hat in hand, tearfully explaining that nothing mattered more to me than her forgiveness. And saying that if she’d still have me, there was nothing I’d be more proud to do than stand up beside her at her wedding.

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“Hey,” she said shyly. “You’re here to watch me become an honest woman?”

“Sally, you’re long past an honest woman. Sorry, there’s nothing I can do about that.”

“Sshh,” she mock whispered. “Don’t tell Drew.” I pulled her into a tight hug, as Jake paid the driver and went to check in.

“Sal, I’m so sorry.” I choked on my words. “I can’t . . . I mean, I just didn’t . . . I’m sorry. I should never have asked you to do what I did.” She shook her head on my shoulder telling me to stop, but I wanted to finish. “You have been nothing but an incredible friend to me. And I’m sorry that I can’t say the same. I’ll make it up to you.”

“Hey.” She pulled back and wiped away her mascara. “We don’t keep score. There will be no making up. Only moving on.”

“Fine.” I smiled. “To moving on.” I raised my hand in a mock toast.

“Oh, you said it, sister. There is waaaaay too much of that going on already.” She nodded toward my fake cocktail. “So here’s the dealio,” she continued, as she readjusted her ponytail and linked her arm in mine, as if our friendship had never taken a plunge from which it might not have recovered. “I have, like, a zillion things to do before people get here. Honestly, when I planned this, why didn’t it ever occur to me that throwing a wedding where 150 people show up for three days and expect a nonstop party would be totally exhausting? Anyway, I digress. I have a zillion things to do, but you, my dear, should make your way down to the beach with that rock star boyfriend of yours, order some rum punch, and show off your size zero body and perky breasts.”

“Size two and counting. I’ve been eating like a cow. No, correction, I’ve
eaten
about ten cows. I can’t stop.”

“Okay, so go get your size
two
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etate. I have to have dinner with our families tonight—please shoot me or else I might shoot Drew’s mother first—but I’ll try to swing by your room later. And if not, we’re doing manicures in the morning. And hair and makeup for Saturday is at noon.”

“Don’t worry about me,” I said. “Jake’s promised to show me how to windsurf.”

“If I didn’t have my own wedding to attend,” Sally said, raising her right hand to her forehead and pretending to faint, “I’d drop dead. Because the day that Natalie Miller cuts loose in a bikini, turns off her BlackBerry, and hits the waves to surf a big one is a day that hell just about froze over.”

“This just might be that day,” I said before I kissed her on the cheek and went to find Jake at the front desk.

w i n d s u r f i n g, i t t u r n e d out, was not so much my thing.

Jake had been helpful enough, but my postchemo arms didn’t have the strength to keep the sail aloft, so, more or less, I went nowhere.