Sisterhood Everlasting - Ann Brashares [96]
“Okay. You’re right. Well, thanks.”
“Good luck to you,” Daisy said sincerely.
Carmen looked over her shoulder several times as she left the terminal. She found it strangely difficult to say goodbye to Daisy, and she wondered if maybe this meant she was lonely.
Lena walked along the river. Over the last few days, she’d taken many walks along the river. It was freezing, but she didn’t feel it. It might have been hailing. The river might have leapt out of its banks and taken her under and she might not have noticed it.
What would she do? What would he do? No, no, no. What would she do? (What would he do?)
Stop! That wasn’t what she got to decide. She only got to decide what she did. This was a version of the prisoner’s dilemma: a lover’s dilemma. She had to do what she was going to do regardless of what he was going to do. She had to do the right thing.
She thought back to something Effie had told her once long ago when it came to taking a risk on Kostos. You have to have some faith, Effie had said.
But Effie hadn’t meant faith in Kostos, Lena realized. Not faith that Kostos would be there to meet her and throw his arms around her and want her more than anyone else. Effie meant faith in herself. Faith that even if he didn’t come, she would be all right. She had to have faith not just in trying, but in failing. Was she strong enough to fail? Was she strong enough not to?
“I’ll give you a hundred bucks if you can make this phone work in the next ten minutes,” Carmen thundered at the pimply young man in the phone store two blocks from Penn Station.
“We close in five minutes, ma’am,” the pimply young man answered.
Carmen glared at him. Where was the ambition? Where was the greed? This country was going down the tubes if this kid was any indication. “I’ll give you a hundred bucks if you can make it work in the next five minutes,” she said slowly.
He looked scared of her. He was no Daisy. His Adam’s apple bobbed. “I could try.”
“Please try.” Was she going to have to tell him about being on TV? She didn’t want to, but that sometimes worked on guys like him.
He turned her phone on. He pushed a couple of buttons and then the home key. “I don’t see anything wrong with it,” he said.
“Are you serious?”
He pointed it at her. She snatched it from him.
“You don’t have to pay me the hundred bucks,” he said magnanimously.
“Thanks,” she snapped, walking out the door.
She managed to buy her train ticket on her credit card without incident. There were no roomettes available, she discovered, but there was a car called the dinette where she could eat.
She passed by the newsstand and looked at the fashion magazines. She didn’t need them. Her phone was working, she’d be fine. She could read the script, she could make calls. She could write emails and plan her wedding. She could play that game where you landed the airplanes. With a functioning phone in her hand she felt her confidence slowly returning.
She got on the train with time to spare. She put her head back and closed her eyes. It was hard to believe she’d had all these reversals without telling Jones about any of them. He was always the one she complained to first. He understood her bumbling and faltering. He seemed to expect it.
Carmen felt happy to have two seats to herself on the dark train. She was happy that there was no one in the seats directly across from her or behind her. If she could keep her phone charged then maybe this wouldn’t be so bad.
She dozed a little until Newark, when the train stopped and more people got on. She put her big purse on the seat next to her. She watched a trickle of people come down the aisle, most of them, thankfully, passing her by. Finally a small group straggled up next to her. It was a man with a small boy and a baby. He was eyeing the seats directly across the aisle from her. Please don’t sit there, she thought. She overheard the man talking in Spanish to his son.
Her heart sank as they settled in. She listened to the boy chirp excitedly to his father. Oh, God. How long before the baby woke up and started screaming?