The Love of My (Other) Life Read Free Page B

medications, called the building super to fix the leaky faucet for Mr. Jelonek, and left messages for the respective doctors of Mrs. Altendorf, Mrs. Crane, Mr. King, and Mrs. O’Reilly. I’d tried to phone Mrs. Leibowitz, but there was no answer.
    What would they all do without me?
    “I have to help Reverend Pincek,” I said aloud.
    How to do that …
    “I can’t wait for someday when I’m America’s J.
    M. W. Turner. I’ll sell my paintings for millions of dollars and donate 50 percent of it to the programs here.” I could envision it so clearly: I’m at an elegant art opening. I’m the star artist, of course. Adoring art lovers swoon at my landscapes, which float, beatified, in a haze of golden light on the walls.
    It was so real to me—I could have been standing in the spotlight of that swanky gallery that even smelled, vetiver-like, of class and money. I’m wearing a black silk sheath gown. I’d better start running again so my ass is in shape. My ass is a whole size smaller. I love my imagination! Everyone loves me.
    I’ve finally left my past far behind; maybe it’s even a charming anecdote to tell my new husband, who wouldn’t leave when I screw up. No, he’d thoughtfully, compassionately, lovingly, help me right my career. I even pay my co-op bills. Great art redeems everything.
    Then the lusciousness of it all fractured around me. Someone had barreled into me and was saying my name.
    “Brian,” I spat. “What’s going on? Are you stalking me?”
    “Yes. No! I just want to explain.” He stepped too close again.
    Damned if I didn’t get a flash of a UFO whirling through the blue sky. “About your spaceship?” I asked, and it wasn’t my kindest tone of voice, though I do, as a sacred rule, try to be kind.
    “Decohering device,” Brian said, earnestly.
    “Listen, Brian, you have to take a hint. I don’t know you, and you have to leave me alone.”
    “The decohering device will return me to my universe,” Brian said, as if I hadn’t spoken. He grinned ruefully. “My molecular resonance isn’t synced to here. It’ll decay. It’ll dissolve into a pool of sub-molecular slime.”
    “Sub-molecular slime?” I slid away from him.
    Where did he get this stuff? “Are you on drugs?”
    That would explain a lot—though not my subliminal ease with him.
    “Drugs? Never!” He looked offended and then grimaced. “Well, there was that one time at a Blue Oyster Cult concert … ”
    “See ya,” I said and turned to hightail it.
    “Wait!” he grabbed my arm. “Don’t you have a faint sense, a vague feeling, that we’ve met before?”
    “Nope,” I lied, warily.
    “You must,” he said. “Because reality is non-local, and once two particles have interacted, they’re forever intimately connected in some way.”
    “I’m not a particle, and I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
    “I know, it all sounds very technical. I’m a physics professor.”
    Enough was enough. “Let me go, Professor!” I barked. I know, I’m a pansy, but I can drum up a really nasty voice when I need to. Brian kind of jumped. I fled and ran around the building.
    Brian was already waiting on the other side. Was he possibly in two places at once?
    No, he was just fleet of foot, faster than me!
    I skittered off at an angle. Picking up speed, I flew toward Broadway, threw myself into a crowd of pedestrians, and then descended into the 72nd Street subway station. A train was pulling up to the platform, and I just made it through the turnstile and into the train. I didn’t see him. Relief.

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6
Of Pablo Casals and the birthmark

    Cello music spilled forth from Brian’s beat-up boom box. Rajiv sat on Brian’s desk because the office was only large enough for a desk with its own chair and another chair beside it for visiting students.
    Brian crumpled up quiz papers and tossed them to Rajiv, who shot them toward the wastebasket.
    Despite the three foot distance, Rajiv missed every time.
    “Is