“It’s interesting,” I said.
He raised an eyebrow and returned his gaze to the painting. “Heaven is a place, a place where nothing, nothing ever happens. David Byrne.”
Don’t say cool.
“Cool,” I said.
“Namaste.” He gave me a slight bow, then walked off, trailed by a breeze of patchouli and pretense.
Rose returned and joined me. “What did that guy say?”
“That nothing ever happens in heaven. Then I think he said something in Spanish.”
“Huh. So I say we bail on the Ugly Babies and Naked People Wing.”
“Agreed.”
We roamed into a long, wide room with display cases of terra-cotta heads, clay pots, and jewelry from Southeast Asia, most of them hundreds if not thousands of years old. Rose loved the Buddhas in particular and told me how her dad had promised to take her to the Philippines someday.
“Of course, that was before he got remarried in May and became insta-dad to three new stepkids,” she said with a rueful smile.
“I suppose you’ll be wanting me to take you to the Philippines now. How many Sundays are left this summer?”
Rose laughed, a sound I loved more than music. “Are you going to ride me there on your bike?”
“Have you seen what these legs can do?” I said, gesturing to my skinny legs as if they were the limbs of Adonis.
Rose shook her head. “Yeah, we wouldn’t get far with those bean poles. Maybe we could hitch a ride on a whale.”
“Good idea. I could hold on to the blowhole, and you could ride bazooka on the dorsal fin.” I shook my head at our exchange. “You know, we have very strange conversations, you and I.”
“I know,” Rose replied. “That’s why I like you.”
As we reached the staircase leading down to the lobby, Rose checked her phone for the time and made a pouty face. “We should probably get back to the bus, huh?”
“You’re right, we should cruise. Letty’s probably behind home plate right now flashing her boobs at the pitcher.”
Rose bit back a smile. “It’s her ninetieth birthday in a few weeks. She gave me a list of songs to play at her party.”
“For what, the male strippers?” I joked.
“Stop!” she said, snorting. “But seriously, we should learn a song to play together.”
I chuckled. “Yeah, right.”
“Come on, it’ll be fun!”
I stopped walking and looked at her. “I’m not that great, Rose. You’ve heard me play.” Obviously, the idea of playing a song with her sounded incredible, but also a bit terrifying. I wasn’t sure I could keep up.
“I’ll teach you something then. Tom Jones, or Frank Sinatra, or Dean Martin, or whatever Letty wants.”
“All right, if you insist. I’m warning you though, I’m very average.”
“No, you aren’t. You’re quite above average.” Rose grabbed my hand and interlaced our fingers. “In fact, you’re one of the most above-average people I know.”
How did she always know the right thing to say? “You’re pretty above average yourself, Rose.”
We walked down the marble stairs into the lobby, where our path once again crossed with hipster dude’s. He walked out of the gift shop carrying a medieval helmet replica under his arm, looking right past me to Rose.
“M’lady,” he said, smiling and genuflecting. Then he turned his eyes to me. “Good day, sir,” he clipped, in a way that felt insulting. As he turned on his heel to walk away, I almost shook my fist and shouted, “May all your hens lay rotten eggs!”
Instead, I just stood there.
“I think I’ll dye my hair blue,” I said to Rose.
Rose brushed the hair from my forehead, as if consoling a small child. “Aw, you should. It would match your eyes.”
We walked back out to the sunshine. I’d forgotten how alive the city felt; it almost had a pulse, almost breathed. Suddenly, it felt good to be back, if only just for an afternoon. I was glad I got to share it with Rose.
I thought back to the painting. “So do you believe in heaven?” I asked her as we descended the stairs to the sidewalk.
Rose paused. “Honestly, I don’t know. The idea of spending eternity in the clouds where everything is perfect kind of horrifies me. I mean, wouldn’t you get sick of it? How would you even know what perfect is if every day was exactly the same?”
“True,” I replied. “What is a perfect day? And compared to what? The perfect yesterday? The perfect tomorrow?”
We walked half a block before either of us spoke again.
“So what would your heaven include if you could choose?” I asked.
Rose thought about it for a minute before answering. “Playing Chopin on piano. Lying on a blanket outside, staring at the stars. My grandmother’s hands. Sleeping in on the weekend. The ocean. Poetry. Art. Your mom’s brownies,” she said with a grin. “What about you? What’s your heaven?”
I put my arm around her and pulled her close. “Here. This. Now.”
You, I thought.
Eventually we hailed a taxi and made it back to the bus on time. Rose slept on my shoulder the entire ride home. I didn’t sleep though.
I couldn’t.
Sometimes when a day is perfect, it needs to last just a little while longer.
TWENTY-SIX
SO MUCH HAPPENED OVER THE NEXT FEW WEEKS THE DAYS BLURRED together. Monday after the Art Institute, as if his ears were burning, Rose’s dad asked her to join him on a last-minute trip to Saint Thomas in the Virgin Islands. Sounds great, right? Well, yes and no. First of all, it’d be Rose’s introduction to her new stepfamily, which didn’t thrill her. Second—and possibly more important—it meant a whole week of us apart. In the end, she decided that accepting the invitation was the right thing to do and left a few days later.
We decided we’d talk on the phone every night, and reminded each other it was only seven days. But the night they arrived at the resort, her dad won an extra three nights for attending some time-share presentation. They rescheduled their flights, and seven days became ten days. Then we found out international calling costs an arm, a leg, and a couple fingers, limiting us to a single, five-minute conversation. Our connection was poor, but I’ll try to summarize: (1) Saint Thomas was the most beautiful place in the galaxy; (2) amazing didn’t begin to describe the great time Rose was having; and (3) apparently my “as long as Rose is happy, I’m happy” feeling only applied when we were in the same country.
She was having fun without me and it sucked.
I swallowed my jealousy like a bad case of acid reflux.
On the home front, things weren’t much better. Some lady at the grocery store had glared at Grub while he was undertaking his usual reconnaissance in the dairy aisle, and then—adding insult to injury—she’d mumbled something about “kids being out of control these days.”
Mom, predictably, took it like an enraged she bear.
“The nerve of that woman!” she ranted while doing dishes that night.
“Well, it couldn’t hurt for Grub to behave a little more normally, at least in public,” I said, drying the plate she handed me.