In a Heartbeat Read Free Page B

going to be a long night.
    Which was just what Ed Vincent was thinking. In fact, he was thinking this might be the longest night of his life. Perhaps, like a drowning man, his life should be passing before his eyes. Isn’t that what was supposed to happen when you were dying? God, it was ironic how all the old sayings and myths just flew into his brain, when the truth was that nobody really knew what happened, because nobody who had died had ever lived to tell the tale.
    Zelda,
he thought, agonized.
Ah, Zelda, you
crazy, pixie-faced golden girl.
    He’d never met anyone like her. Extroverted, ditsy, outspoken. With Zelda, every entrance was an Entrance. Every meal a Feast. Every meeting a Rendezvous. She had the happy knack of making an Event out of the most ordinary occasion. He figured even brushing her teeth must be a scene from a movie.
    “Where’s the real you?” he’d asked her once, bewildered and laughing.
    “I wish I knew,” she’d replied serenely. “I’m out there somewhere.”
    She certainly was.
    She had popped into his life “out of the blue,” you might say. He’d thought she was nuts, then. Still did in a way, but it was her nuttiness that he loved. He loved her seven-year-old daughter, Riley. He even liked that ratty little terrier of hers that bit his ankles every time it saw him.
    Zelda was unique. Though of course “Zelda” was not her real name. Only
he
called her that, because of her Georgia-peach accent and her southern charm. “You’re straight out of Fitzgerald,” he had said, laughing. “They should have called you Zelda.”
    She had laughed with him, and from then on it had become his name for her. Only she knew that name. Only he knew what it meant. And she called him “honey.” He had been surprised when, at their first meeting, she addressed him as “Mr. Vincent, honey.” Until she’d apologized and told him not to mind her, she was from the south and called everybody honey, that’s just the way she was.
    Oh, what he would give to hear her call him honey one more time. Even “hon” would do.
    She lived at 139 Ascot Street, Santa Monica, California, in an old craftsman-style Victorian cottage on a leafy side street, a place so small that when he first saw it, it had reminded him of his own birthplace, a two-room cabin in the foothills of the Great Smokies.
    “Hi, Zel,” he would say on the phone from New York. “How’s my girl today?”
    “Busy,” she might snap. “It’s suppertime here, and I’m just giving Riley her grits.”
    He laughed, imagining her with the phone tucked into her shoulder as she juggled pots and pans on the stove. Of course, she wasn’t fixing grits. And a cook Zelda was not. Nevertheless, she insisted on giving Riley a home-cooked meal, including fresh vegetables, every night.
    And she kept Sundays free only for Riley. Even he had not been included. Riley’s day was Riley’s, to do whatever she wanted. Which usually meant homemade buttermilk pancakes for breakfast while still in their PJs, then rollerblading on the Venice boardwalk, afterward catching a bite of lunch and maybe a movie. Then supper somewhere later, to which he had been privileged to be invited several times by Riley herself.
    What a kid she was. Had he ever been lucky enough to have one of his own, he would have wanted her to be like Riley, with her mop of copper-red curls, her big brown eyes just like her mom’s, and that engaging gap-toothed smile. He’d even mentioned to her that it might be a mistake to grow new teeth, it was so cute just the way it was.
    “Thanks a lot,” she had replied, whistling slightly through the gap as she spoke, “but I don’t think I’d be a very good kisser without my front teeth.”
    “Kissing? What kissing?”
Zelda had been so outraged at the idea, Ed and Riley had laughed at her.
    Good times,
he thought. Those were such
good
times. What a pity he hadn’t written them down. Then he thought,
Listen, buddy, make
the most of this