Trish crosses her arms, taps the toe of her open-toed flats against the floor. The color of her shoes matches her crushed-raspberry camisole. “You married me, James. You vowed to love, honor, and cherish me. Don’t you remember? Don’t you remember the sacred vows you made to me?”
I kiss her on the forehead and touch her chin. “I’ll always love, honor, and cherish you, darling. Why do you think I come home to you each night? Even if, you know, you no longer want me living here with you, I’ll always cherish you. Why do you think I wrap my arms around you and kiss you as often as I can?”
Trish’s cheeks redden until they match the color of her camisole and flats. She starts to cry. I haven’t seen her cry since the time two years ago when an eminent doctor sat us down in an office decorated with potted ferns and advised us that, after two unsuccessful rounds of in vitro procedures, “you ought to embrace your childless future.”
“I love you,” Trish says.
“I love you too. You’re right, honey. Maybe I ought to stop seeing Laurel,” I say, testing the idea out aloud. Sooner or later, I’m going to have to do something. Not that I’m in a position to do something immediately.
Trish looks up at me, startled.
“I need to be smart about this. As you might imagine, I’m in an exposed position. Give me time. I need to figure how to get myself out of this.”
Trish takes in this information, a needy sponge gladly absorbing a raindrop of hope. She brightens, and for a moment, I fear she’ll press me for details, commitments, a precise schedule for when I intend to tell Laurel I’m dropping her. Behind every plan A is a top-notch plan B, but for now my plan B is to wrangle more time for myself so I can devise an even better plan C. Thankfully, one of my cell phones goes off. It’s almost eight o’clock, the hour at which clients seek out my insights about European and Asian overnight trading activity, a topic that today, I’m ill prepared to answer. But when I grab my phone, I discover it’s not one of my clients calling. Instead, it’s my credit card company asking for payment for the amount I’ve overdrawn my account. It’s the third such call this month. All my available cash went into the rent for Laurel’s apartment.
“What’s wrong?” Trish asks after I put down my phone.
“Wrong? Nothing’s wrong. What could possibly be wrong when I’m at home with such a beautiful, lovely wife?”
No smile materializes on Trish’s lips; no joy lights her face. It’s as if, because of the heartbreak I’ve put her through over the past day, my compliments no longer have an effect on her. She looks glum faced and tired. “James? Why don’t you call in sick today? We could go back to bed for a little bit, and then, after you’re feeling better, we could bundle up and drive out to Rock Creek Park for a walk.”
Rock Creek Park. This is her improbable peace offering to me. It’s our favorite place in the city, a forested two-thousand-acre park in Northwest DC where people flock in the summertime for Shakespeare performances and tennis tournaments. We walked there often, roaming the grounds under cotton-clouded skies, the forest’s layer of dried leaves crunching beneath our feet, our lungs filled with the woodsy air. In the dead of winter, meandering off and beyond the hiking trails, one feels totally alone on the isolated leaf-strewn woody slopes. In this city of marble monuments, obstructionism, and brutal egos, it’s the one place you can feel kidlike, alone with nature. In 2002, the park came to national attention when the skeletal remains of a young woman thought to have been the mistress of an influential congressman were found on a remote bluff under heavy foliage. The body had gone undiscovered for more than a year, which didn’t surprise me, since there are so many desolate and isolated pockets within the park.
“So what do you say? Do we have a date for Rock Creek Park?”
“Er . . . emmm,” I say, sneaking a peek at my watch. Although I’m open to the temptation to shirk business and work responsibilities, running off with Trish on a nature hike doesn’t feel right. The smile that had been on Trish’s face wanes as I hesitate. I shake my head, tell her I shouldn’t traipse off and have fun when I have obligations at my office—“Responsibilities are responsibilities, you know”—but we both know the real reason I can’t go with her.
To my surprise though, Trish reaches over and kisses me again, her lips lingering on mine for precious moments. Although I’d never admit it to Laurel, Trish is a far better kisser. She takes my hand, cups it in both of her hands, and looks up at me. “James. I’m not prepared to give up on you.”
And this is when I know I’ve got her right where I want her. She’s not prepared to give up on me, which gives me time to figure out what to do about Laurel.
Chapter Seven
TRISH
James’s touch is like no other. Because he’s conflicted and confused, I must push harder on him to stay with me. If I were pregnant, none of this would’ve happened. We may have our differences, but the bond between us is unbreakable. Drunk as he was, he returned home last night rather than going to the hospital for the special celebration Laurel planned with him. If his desire was to straight-out abandon me, he would’ve done so already. Instead, he needs time and my encouragement to end his fling with Laurel.
We first met on the scariest day in history. People were frantic, pouring out of their DC office buildings at ten o’clock in the morning. Hijacked airliners had slammed into New York’s World Trade Center towers, while here in DC, across the river, the Pentagon was in flames. Buildings throughout the city were evacuated, the federal government on emergency shutdown. With traffic at a standstill and the streets congested, hailing a cab to get home to Savory Mew was out of the question. Never had I felt so unsafe. I stared into the brilliant blue sky expecting it to be filled with hijacked aircraft. Sirens blared from every conceivable direction. My father was attending a shareholders’ meeting in New York, and as I crossed an intersection on K Street, panic seized me. My father, I realized, might be dead. My mother had been dead for five years, and my sister had died earlier in the year. People teemed around me, everyone fleeing their office buildings, but I feared I was all alone, an orphan with no one left in my life to care for. Cell phone networks were down. None of my calls went through. People crowded shoulder to shoulder on the sidewalks. No one felt safe going down into the metro. Rumors that would later prove false peppered the conversations around me. Someone said a truck bomb had exploded outside the State Department. The breeze was heavy with the charred smell from the Pentagon fire a mile or two away. I started to cry, thinking about my father.
A man next to me in the crowd reached into the breast pocket of his navy-blue suit jacket and handed me a soft white handkerchief to dry my tears. He had light-brown hair and dark, comforting eyes that brought out my immediate trust. Until that moment, lost in my thoughts, I hadn’t realized we’d been walking apace for several blocks. In tears, distraught, I told him I feared my father was dead. He drew a breath, put his hand on my shoulder, and, touching my chin, implored me to think positive thoughts. The man said I owed it to my father to visualize him happy and healthy, that if by chance my father was struggling to free himself from under tons of rubble, my “positive psychic projections” would energize him. I’ll never forget it. Under James’s persuasive gaze, I willed myself to believe my father was still alive.
“In order to be lucky, you’ve got to think lucky. Subconsciously, we feed off the energy others give off to us. Karma,” James said, tapping his heart. “It’s what we live by.”
I stared into James’s eyes, and he did not flinch from my gaze. We were in the nation’s capital, in the middle of a national emergency, people running every which way, sirens wailing, and yet I had his entire attention. As if by magic, my phone beeped. My father’s number lit up on the screen. Somehow, he had gotten through to me; somehow, he was alive. My father, never one to text before, sent the briefest of messages: Im OK U?