The Look of Love: A Novel (27 page)

I set the book aside and get up to make a cup of coffee, then return to my kitchen table. In three hours I’ll need to be at the hospital. I promised I’d hold Mary’s hand through labor. But first, I’ll finish this page. I look to the next line and write “Mania.” I remember Colette describing this type of love—obsessive love, filled with highs and lows—and pause only for a moment before writing the names Flynn and Celeste on the line below. I swallow hard before I begin to write their story.

1301 4th Avenue

Flynn wakes before sunrise, which is unusual for him, and especially unusual given that he drank good whiskey with friends last night, perhaps too much of it. But he wakes fortified with energy. Because he’s made a big decision. After months of admiration from afar, he’s decided to knock on Celeste’s door. He knows that when she opens the door and sees him, she will let him take her into his arms. And he knows she will feel as intensely about him as he does about her. It will be the beginning of a beautiful love story. Their love story.

As Flynn showers, he thinks about all the women he’s had. The ones who have sauntered in and out of his door, his bed, his life. Their faces are fuzzy, their names a blur. None have retained so much as a centimeter in his heart. And now, all he sees, all he knows, is Celeste, this woman he hasn’t uttered a single word to yet. As he shaves, he marvels at the absurdity of falling in love from afar. And he doesn’t even flinch at his word choice.
Love.
He knows it. He feels it. And he can see the way she looks at him through the windows. She feels it too.

As he dresses, he thinks about the way he’s watched her late at night chopping vegetables for salads in her bra. He recalls the way she looked up the other night, gazing into his apartment, knowing he was watching all the while, and smiling in his direction, that sad, beautiful smile, as she pranced by the window in her lacy black panties, tempting him, taunting him, making his feelings for her deepen with every step across her mahogany floors.

He walks into his living room and looks out across the street. The air is thick with fog. A low cloud hovers in the space between their apartment buildings, obscuring his view into her windows. But it doesn’t matter. Rain, snow, sleet, fog—none of it will stand in their way. Today is their day. Today he will declare his love for her. Today is the first day of the rest of their lives.

From his wine rack, he selects an expensive bottle. He knows she likes French wine, Bordeaux. His binoculars are high-powered enough that he could read the label on the bottle on her counter yesterday. He tucks it under his arm, reaches for the vase of orange roses he bought for her yesterday, then places his hand on the door. Just twelve paces to the elevator, then sixteen to the sidewalk, and then another seven off the elevator to Celeste’s apartment, or at least that’s how he imagined when he’d counted it all out in his head. He can hear only the beat of his heart. He’s so lost in his thoughts when he steps into the hallway, he doesn’t immediately notice the little white envelope lying by his door.

He bends down to pick it up. His name is written on the front of the envelope, and he tears the flap open hastily.

Dear Flynn,

I am so sorry that I left without saying good-bye, or even hello. But the circumstances in my life gave me no other option. Some things aren’t meant to be. And some love is ill-timed. And yet, I think I could have loved you. I think I did love you, even if it was only through two layers of glass.

I will always be yours, through the window,

Celeste

P.S. Look after Cezanne for me, please?

The wine and vase of flowers drop from Flynn’s grasp and fall to the floor, shattering in a mess of crimson-stained petals and jagged glass shards. Flynn doesn’t notice or hear, though. He begins running, down the hall, to the elevator, out the lobby to the street, and into Celeste’s building. He doesn’t even hear the doorman’s greeting. His lips simply move, and there is only the sound of his own beating heart. It pounds in his ears like a bass drum.
Boom. Boom. Boom.

The elevator deposits him on the eleventh floor, and he runs down the hallway to Celeste’s door, which is slightly ajar.

The space is completely empty. Flynn’s shoes clack on the hardwood floors and release a lonely echo in the air. The furniture is gone. The walls are bare. And he can feel it, that palpably empty feeling. Celeste is gone.

He falls to his knees then. Couldn’t she have waited? Just a few hours longer? He was coming, for her. He buries his face in his hands, just as he feels a soft nudge against the side of his knee.

A fluffy white cat purrs beside him.

“Cezanne,” he says, lifting the cat into his arms.

Flynn wipes away a tear, then nods. “Let’s go home.”

In his apartment, he sets the cat down, and she saunters to the couch, where she nestles beside a pillow in a way that seems as if she might have done it a thousand times before, and will a thousand times after.

The low clouds still hover outside, but they’re dissipating now, and Flynn walks to the window. With each moment, the view into Celeste’s empty apartment becomes clearer. And yet, Flynn wonders. Was she an illusion? Was she a figment of his imagination all along?

He closes his eyes and sees her again. Her beautiful nude body walking through her living room. That sad face looking over her shoulder at him from her kitchen.

Cezanne has leapt from the couch and now rubs her head against his leg. Flynn opens his eyes and places his hand on the glass once more.

Celeste was the very best illusion.

I wonder how Flynn’s doing today. He seemed on edge yesterday. I consider calling him but decide to finish the entries in the book. There isn’t much time left now. I move to the next line and write “Storge.” As I do I think about the way Colette smiled to herself when she described this type of love. Love born from friendship. And I smile too, when I write the names Mel and Vivian on the next line and sit back to write their story.

342 Pine Street #4

The smoke alarm wakes Mel from his Christmas Day nap. He leaps to his feet and runs to the kitchen, where smoke billows out of the oven in a torrent. What was supposed to be a roast for his Christmas dinner is unrecognizable in its charred state. He turns on the kitchen fan and throws open the windows, immediately regretting his plan to cook when he might have been satisfied with sandwich fixings. Yes, Adele would have made dinner. It would have been perfect. Adele made everything perfect.

He extinguishes the smoldering roast in the sink with cold water, then retreats to the couch and stares down at his feet, and he thinks, as he does each Christmas:
How will I get through this day?

A half hour passes, and he opens a beer and turns on the television. There’s a can of chili somewhere in the cupboard. He’ll find it later, after this episode of
Seinfeld
.

And when a knock sounds at the door, he hardly hears it at first. But then he turns the volume down, silencing Newman. Probably the landlord, here to complain about the smoke. He braces himself as he opens the door. And there, standing in the hallway, is Vivian.

“Oh,” he says, stunned. “This is a surprise.”

“Thank you for the flowers,” she says. Her eyes look soft in a way he hasn’t seen before.

“How did you know they were from—”

Vivian says, pushing past him, “I figured you’d be no use in the kitchen today,” she says, waving her hand in front of her nose. “What did you burn? A duck?”

“I take it you could smell my disaster throughout the market?”

“Yes,” she says, setting a paper bag down on Mel’s dining room table, stacked high with books, newspapers, and boxes of this and that. “So I thought I’d share my Christmas dinner. It’s nothing much, just some pâté and crudités. But it has to be better than what your contingent plan entails.”

Mel smiles. “Canned chili,” he says, eyeing the plastic containers of food Vivian is setting on the table. “So, yes.”

He runs his hand through his sparse hair nervously. He wishes he’d put on a fresh shirt this morning and cleaned his living room. The dishes in the kitchen sink date back to three days before. “I’m afraid my apartment’s in a bit of disarray.”

“You do not live with a woman, nor have a housekeeper,” Vivian says with a knowing smile. “It’s a forgivable sin.”

He watches as she confidently navigates his apartment, first dropping her coat on the overstuffed chair by the fireplace. “Now,” she says, rolling up her sleeves. “We’ll just need two plates and a couple of wineglasses.”

He sheepishly fiddles with his watch. “The plates are all in the sink, and I’m afraid I don’t have any wineglasses. Or wine. Just beer, in the fridge.”

“Fine, then,” Vivian says without a moment’s hesitation. “You sit. I’ll just wash us a few plates.” A few moments later, she sets out a veritable feast on the coffee table: a plate of cheese, pâté, crackers, and sliced vegetables. Two cold cans of beer round out the spread. She cracks open one of them and smiles.

“You should be drinking champagne out of a crystal flute,” Mel says.

“I’ve done that all my life,” she says, staring into his eyes. “Believe it or not, it gets a little dull.”

He thinks of Adele. And he wonders if she can see him now. He wonders if she’d approve, but somewhere deep down, he already knows the answer. His heart feels full, and tears sting his eyes. “Why did you come, Vivian?”

She takes another sip of her beer, then sets it down daintily on the coffee table and folds her hands in her lap. “Because, for every reason I can think of not to like you, there are ten reasons why I do,” she says, slowly extending her hand to meet his. He takes it.

“I like you too,” he says.

“Besides, no one should be alone on Christmas. It’s criminal.”

“Indeed,” Mel agrees, returning her smile.

“The flowers are the most extraordinary range of greens,” she says. “I’ve never seen such an array.”

“That’s the work of Jane, the Flower Lady. I’ll have to introduce you, but not today.”

“What artistic vision she has. I look forward to meeting her.”

“I . . . I wanted to give them to you myself, but I saw you seated beside a man. I didn’t want to interfere.”

“My driver, you mean?” She smiles, and he smiles back. “You know something?” she says, turning to the fireplace, where a log crackles and hisses behind the grate. “I didn’t think I could feel this way again. After my husband died, I went through so much grief, some that I’m still sorting through. And I suppose that process may continue for the rest of my life. You see, when you know love once, you can feel as though you’ll never know it again. But then came you.”

“And then came you,” Mel says, eyes locked on hers. “It feels right, doesn’t it?”

“It does,” Vivian says.

“Merry Christmas,” he says, holding his beer up to hers.

“Merry Christmas,” she says. “To new beginnings.”

“To the most beautiful new beginnings.”

Just a few more now, and my journey will be complete. On the next line, I write “Eros.” I think about this form of passionate love. And I write Josh’s and Katie’s names in the book. I can almost feel their names pulse on the page. And yet, their story is raw and unfinished. I begin writing.

1112 Broadway E. #202

The real estate agent will be over tomorrow, and Katie knows she should tidy up. She feels a lump in her throat then, thinking about the first time she and Josh made love in this bedroom, on the bare hardwood floors.

Josh paid well above market price for the home, and she’s nervous she may not even break even on the sale. But instead of blitzing the windows with Windex and restacking the books on the coffee table in a neat row, Katie pulls up her laptop and rereads the e-mail she received from Josh, sent from God knows where.

Katie,

It’s better this way. Trust me. I had to leave. I’m sorry that we won’t have the future we planned. Someday I hope you’ll understand. But for now, the house must be sold. I want the very best for you. I can’t see you now, but have all the documents faxed to my office and my assistant will make sure I sign what I need to.