Thief of Words (26 page)
She walked slowly past the Sands casino, oblivious to a crowd of teens watching a guy juggling butcher knives. Why couldn’t she let go?
She grappled with the question for a while but gave up. It didn’t seem as important as it used to. Maybe it wasn’t the right question anymore. She looked up and, for the first time that evening, noticed where she was. Ahead of her were the colored lights of Steel Pier.
Now it was filled with Tilt-a-Whirls and other amusement rides, but to Annie it would always be the place where she watched the diving horses. She closed her eyes and imagined what the riders of those horses must have felt right as they leapt from the platform down forty feet into a small pool of water. The fear, the adrenaline rush; how everything must have disappeared except the heart-stopping question: Will I land safely?
Will I land safely?
Those riders always did. And they were jumping horses off a platform. All she was trying for was a second chance. It was her turn on the platform now—behind her were all the trepidations of a life made miserable by one mistake. In front was Jack DePaul, the welcoming pool of water.
She ran back through the exuberant lights of the Boardwalk to Caesar’s and her hotel room. Her mother was asleep, or pretending to be. It didn’t matter. Without hesitation, she took the leap.
Subject: Diving horses
Jack,
If a red-haired woman comes up to you at 3:00 this Sunday afternoon at the corner of Boardwalk and Park Place in Atlantic City and says, “There are storm clouds over Lisbon,” don’t be alarmed. It’s her way of saying, “I’ve been a fool.”
Love,
Annie
J
ack walked to One World Café with the Sunday
New York Times
stuck under his left arm and the
Star-News
sports section rolled up in his right hand like a baton. It was the kind of bright June morning that indulged petunias in flower boxes and flattered Baltimore’s brick row houses. The kind of bright morning you might find in the lede of a feature story by J. R. Thelman.
Jack flicked the sports section back and forth as if he were conducting a sprightly march. He was feeling good. He made a mental checklist of his fifty-year-old self and found everything in working order. Lower back—check. Hamstrings—check. Career—check. Emotional state—well, he’d done everything he could. Jack made a backhand swing with the sports section. The ball was now in Annie Hollerman’s court.
He ended up sharing an outdoor table with a twenty-seven-year-old stock analyst who talked about his time-share in Cabo San Lucas. By the time he got back to the apartment it was after ten. He considered ignoring the e-mail possibilities that lurked inside his computer, but signed on anyway.
In less than fifteen minutes from the time he clicked on the message from ahollerman, he was in his car heading to Interstate 95 and Atlantic City. An overnight bag was tossed into the backseat, the windows were rolled down, and the radio was turned to the oldies station.
Jack gunned the Pathfinder up the on-ramp singing “Last Train to Clarksville” at the top of his lungs.
He arrived at the Boardwalk at 1:30. Plenty of time to fret about Annie’s message. It was an invitation, right?
The afternoon was lightly overcast and, as he walked along the dark gray planks, the bright gray background made the colors of the signs and storefronts pop out like neon. After an hour’s meandering, he headed to Park Place, where he found an empty place on a bench next to an old lady selling knitted cat figurines the size of small Christmas ornaments. A dozen of them were arranged on a blanket spread at her feet. Her face was tanned to leather.
The figurine lady didn’t make any sales. For starters, she had even fewer marbles than teeth, and her sales approach lacked finesse. When any tourist veered to within ten feet, she would dangle one of her items from a finger and shout, “Hey, look here!”
It took imagination to picture the Atlantic City that Annie had described to him. That place from her childhood was full of Eisenhower innocence. Sandcastles and saltwater taffy by day, mink stoles and spike heels by night. This modern-day Atlantic City had no Heinz Pier, no one giving out little samples of relish or pickles; there was no Planters Peanut store, let alone a Peanut Man tipping his hat to fine ladies in elegant dresses. Platform sandals and T-shirts with sequined dice represented current Boardwalk fashion.
Only a few things seemed to have survived the tide of slot machines and ninety-nine-cent sunglasses. The rolling chairs were still rolling, Fralinger’s was still selling saltwater taffy, and the Boardwalk fortune-tellers were still reading palms and looking into crystal balls.
Madame Chanel’s had caught Jack’s eye, with its white plastic chairs and purple paisley cushions and wind-up dogs yipping from a corner table in the souvenir shop next door. Madame Chanel, according to her sign, promised to “Solve all problems,” “Answer questions,” and “Reveal the future.”
He thought briefly about getting a reading—it was only $10— but Madame Chanel, who was filing her long fuscia fingernails, seemed to be more in touch with her inner manicurist than the spirits. He decided to pass on her vision of the future.
The minutes passed by, and so did the endless parade of pedestrians. In the next half hour Jack saw more old men with thin white mustaches than he had seen in his entire life. Eventually the figurine lady departed, to be supplanted by two middle-aged women in lilac pedal pushers, who were in turn replaced by two senior citizens eating cherry water ice.
Jack didn’t see her until she was only thirty paces away. It was as if she’d materialized out of the gray background. She was walking along the sea side of the Boardwalk, behind a family with four kids all under the age of ten, all wearing identical blue T-shirts. The ocean breeze riffled Annie’s hair and she combed it back with her fingers.
Jack stood up.
Years later, when Jack would tell this story, he would say that it felt like time nearly stopped at that moment. That the signs, the sunglasses, the fortune-tellers—the whole tawdry mosaic—disappeared from the Boardwalk, leaving only Jack and Annie and a sundappled, Irish Spring ending, where the happy couple floats toward each other in slow-motion joy and the world dissolves in a kiss.
But the real story was better.
Jack stood up. Annie saw him above the four fat, T-shirted kids. They walked toward each other and met by a plaque honoring Charles Darrow, the inventor of Monopoly. They both tried to keep from breaking into silly grins. They both said, “Hi, I’m sorry that …” at the same time. They laughed, started again, and stumbled over each other’s words again. Then Annie put her hand up and said, “Wait, stop. I’ve got to say something first.” Jack waited, the silly grin bubbling up despite his best intentions. Annie put a hand on his shoulder and said, “Are there storm clouds over Lisbon?”
Jack didn’t answer, he simply pulled her to him. And the world dissolved in a kiss.
T
hey sat with their backs to the surf and ate orange saltwater taffy from a two-pound box Annie had bought as Jack’s initiation to Atlantic City. They talked and kissed and kissed again. Once, Annie choked back some tears, and when Jack hugged her, his face was buried in her autumn-colored hair. As the sun began to drop, Annie took Jack’s hand and led him through the casino maze at Caesar’s to find her mother.
“Your hair is grayer than I expected,” said Joan Hollerman Silver with a smile. She was playing video poker.
“You’re much younger-looking than Annie told me,” Jack said and hugged her. Then the three of them huddled around a single machine, playing until they lost another $75.
“Enough of this,” Jack said. “Joan, come on, let me teach you to play craps. We’ll turn what little we have left into millions.”
Annie caught Jack in her arms. “Craps?” she said. “You’re going to teach my mother how to play craps? Don’t encourage her. She’ll wind up broke, living in a cardboard box. Anyhow, you promised me a rolling chair ride the entire length of the Boardwalk.”
Jack looked at Annie’s mother. “It’ll cost a hundred dollars, but she’s worth it,” he said.
The three walked outside and Annie hailed the first empty rolling chair she saw. The chair pusher, a young man who spoke with a thick Eastern European accent, slapped a rag across the faded blue cushion and Jack and Annie climbed aboard. But before they embarked, Joan Hollerman Silver leaned in and touched her daughter on the shoulder.
“So, I have to ask, what was it in Jack’s e-mail that made you change your mind?”
“Let’s just say it was persuasive,” said Annie.
“Let her read it,” said Jack.
“Yeah, let her read it,” said her mother, looking at Annie.
J
oan Hollerman Silver watched the rolling chair man weave his way down the Boardwalk. She waited until he and his cargo disappeared, swallowed up by the obstacle course of tourists and tired gamblers.
She walked back through Caesar’s, making up a song with Annie’s password in it, so she wouldn’t forget. “Worms, worms … I’m gonna go eat worms,” she hummed to herself. She thought of Annie, age eight, digging in the front yard collecting earthworms for the earthworm zoo she made out of a shoebox.
In the room, she turned on Annie’s laptop and called up Annie’s e-mail directory. She clicked on the message entitled “Proposal.”
From:
[email protected]
Subject: Proposal
Dear Ms. Hollerman,
I’m looking for an agent. Laura Goodbread suggested I contact you to represent my book. She says you understand journalists.
I’ve been in the newspaper business for 30 years and I am Laura’s editor at the Baltimore Star-News.
My book, “Thief of Words,” is about second chances and the malleable nature of memory. But mostly, it’s about the possibility of happy endings. I know they’re old-fashioned, but I think we’re all looking for one, don’t you?
The story goes like this: A middle-aged couple meets over lunch. Both are divorced; both work in writing and publishing; both are willing to take another chance at love. They seem like a perfect match. But it’s hard to start over, especially because the woman is troubled by secrets from her past.
Inadvertently, the man stumbles onto something that may save them. In a series of e-mails, he rewrites the woman’s past, this time starring the two of them together. With each of these new memories the bond between them pulls tighter.
But the bond may not be strong enough. Someone from the man’s past comes back to haunt them both, just as the woman’s secret closes in on her. And the woman refuses to believe the man doesn’t care what happened 20 years ago, that he loves her for who she is now.
I don’t have any special qualifications to write this book. I’m just a guy working in a comma factory. And I don’t know if it’s a salable story, but it’s honest and true and from the heart.
I realize most writers send you the first chapter of their books. But what follows is the last chapter. It’s highly unusual, I know, but I think you’ll be particularly interested in how the book ends—or could end if you take me on as a client.
I look forward to hearing from you,
Jack DePaul
(final chapter) byJack DePaul
T
he curtains were slightly parted, letting the morning sun paint a bright median strip across the bed. Annie lay there, on her side, with Jack spooned against her. She could feel the rhythmic rise and fall of his chest.
Annie looked over at the clock. It was 9:35
A.M.
She slid out from under the covers, walked to the window, and pulled the curtains wider apart.
“I like the view,” said Jack. “And I don’t mean outside the window.”
Annie turned to see Jack awake, head propped up on one elbow. “I love your body,” he said.
She pulled the gauzy inner curtain over her nakedness, with exaggerated coyness.
“Come back to bed,” he said.
The next time Annie noticed the clock it was 10:35.
“I’m starving,” said Annie, running an index finger down Jack’s thigh. “If I don’t get something to eat soon, I’ll start chomping on your arm.”
Jack leaned over and kissed her on the nose. “Food later,” he said. “First, I’ve got a little job for us. Where’d you stash your laptop?”
Annie pointed to the closet. “Next to your shoes,” she said. Jack got up and returned with the computer. He put it on Annie’s lap and snuggled in beside her.
She looked at him curiously and before she had a chance to ask, he said, “Annie, I’ve been talking about the power of words for thirty years. But it wasn’t until I started writing you these e-mails that I really felt it.” He put his hand over his heart as if he were giving the pledge of allegiance. “It’s like we’ve been together since we tumbled down the face of that sand dune. But now it’s time for the most important rewrite of Annie Hollerman’s life. You type. It starts like this:
“If you like rooting for the underdog, Annie Hollerman would have been a fine choice…”
They debated a couple of the details—Princeton belt or Yale? Toyota or Honda?—and soon they were deep into Annie’s new past and racing to the future.
“…‘Wow, great hair,’ was Jack DePaul’s opening line. He blurted it out as Annie Hollerman walked past his desk on her second day in the newsroom. It had been a long time since Annie had heard anything that inept, but she didn’t mind, this was Jack DePaul, the brash young features editor the paper had hired away from the
San Diego Tribune.
Her hair had stunned him into an incomplete sentence.
The next afternoon, he came over, sat on the corner of her desk, and suggested she go after a story about a chicken farm inspector. Nobody on his staff would touch it, but he was sure it was a great yarn. In the right hands, he said, it could read like a detective story.
