Traveling Light Read Free Page B

played out so bizarrely that she couldn’t have explained it with a gun held to her head. One can only explain what they understand. It had been an out-of-the-blue-freak-thing-that-she’d-never-in-a-million-years-seen-coming. But what bride gets married thinking a cardboard box filled with two hundred can openers (saved just in case the one in the kitchen drawer breaks) would be more important than her?
    Even after all these years she’d still bump into people who’d swear, “God, Paula, that wedding of yours was the most lovely, heartfelt one I’ve ever been to.” Then her heart would rush with hope. Their words were sincere enough, but chilling. As if the wicked fairy of Sleeping Beauty had been in attendance; perhaps Paula had pricked her finger on the spinning wheel. But she hadn’t felt a thing that afternoon and instead marveled at how she could be so lucky and that finally, finally, her time had come.
    But like the fairy tale, it didn’t take long for Paula to sink into a silent sleep.
    *   *   *
    The cell phone buzzed in her black leather purse. “Fuck.” Paula turned away from the window, cigarette burned clear down to her knuckles. What now? She’d just started to unwind after Christoff’s warning. She looked back out the window, resting her forehead in her hand. Ignore it. Maybe it was Roger calling about the NSF grant. Even so, he wouldn’t call. He was too calculatingly cheap about wasting cell-phone minutes. “What’s the fuss? I’ll see you later,” he’d dismiss. “Go ahead; waste your minutes.” They’d always kept their money separate.
    Thank God the phone finally stopped. She sighed and watched as birds gathered, chased each other, and then flew off. Did they ever lose their way? She watched one flapping its wings in a puddle next to the bench. Were they ever afraid of getting lost? Did they make friends? If they did, how did they ever find each other again in the vastness of the sky?
    A voice from down on the sidewalk made her look. A middle-aged blond woman chatted and strolled arm in arm with a much taller man who was smiling shyly. How she liked men with shy smiles. Roger’s smile had been like that. The woman sported a yellow plastic tote bag she swung seemingly without a care in the world. What must their lives be like, the stuff nobody sees? Who would suspect how she and Roger lived?
    Without thinking, she shoved up the double-hung window farther and switched elbows. Thick air collided with the bone-dry air-conditioned room. The din of street noise was calming, horns from everywhere blended into one long complaint. Bus exhaust and urine, aromas of week-old garbage in alleys across the street, rushed in like a humid belch.
    Her desk phone rang and it startled her. No one ever called.
    “Shit.” Maybe it was Christoff again, newly baptized as Mr. Micromanager.
    Mashing the cigarette butt, she waved away the smell and shut the window. Her tight black cotton skirt bunched up around her hips; it was roomier a month ago in the fitting room at Bloomingdale’s. She yanked it back down to the tops of her knees. Her underwear felt like a girdle; a new roll of fat hung over the top elastic.
    Paula picked up. “Queens County DHSS.” It was Celeste.
    “Who died?” Paula’s pitch lowered on the last word.
    “No one yet,” Celeste mimicked.
    Paula’s best friend was nicknamed Heavenly by fifth-grade boys after a science class on astronomy, as she was the only girl with fully developed breasts—heavenly bodies. The name stuck, even with her parents and eventually Tony, her husband, too.
    “You busy?” Heavenly asked.
    Paula gave a nasty laugh. She glanced at the seventy unopened e-mails on the computer screen. “I should be.”
    “Hey—take a long lunch,” Celeste coaxed. “I’m at the hospital. Sounds like you need a break anyway.”
    Paula snorted. “Yeah, something like that.”
    “They just brought in an elderly man speaking Greek,” Heavenly said. “Looks