Sundays at Tiffany's - James Patterson [39]
When I finally got Michael to open up and talk about himself, he was charmingly modest, but also very discreet. He told me just a little about a few of his favorite assignments over the years. Twin boys in North Carolina, a woman senator’s daughter in Oregon, a few appalling stories about a precocious child actor in L.A., someone I actually had heard of.
“I have a lot of questions about this ‘friend’ thing,” I told him.
“Unfortunately, I don’t have a lot of answers. I wish I did, Jane. You have no idea.”
It wasn’t a satisfying answer, but it was probably the only one I was going to get. Then I asked Michael something even more personal that I was dying to know. “Were you ever involved with anyone? Romantically?”
He shifted in his seat and shrugged. “I meet people,” he said, not answering my question. “I like people, Jane. All kinds of people.”
“And I’ll bet they like you.”
Michael didn’t seem uncomfortable. He just seemed, well . . . reserved. And mysterious, of course.
“Let’s go do something,” Michael said, taking my hand. “Doesn’t matter what.” And he snapped his fingers for a cab.
Forty-four
IT DIDN’T MATTER what we did that day. We could have been digging ditches, and I would have been thrilled.
But we did something much better than digging ditches: We Rollerbladed over the hills of northern Central Park, where the blacktop was smooth and the traffic was sparse. We flew like angels on cement, barely avoiding runners, bicycle riders, dog walkers and their raucous packs of barking dogs. And all the while, I was delighting in his company and thinking, What is happening here? Surely it’s never happened before to anybody else. There has to be some logical explanation. Yet I might have to accept that there isn’t.
I hadn’t been on Rollerblades since I was ten years old. I remembered that my mother called me a “clum,” that is, a person with no natural grace. I did not seem to have improved much with age. At 96th Street, I was practically touching the ground as I tried to make it to the top of one of the steepest hills in the park. My calves and thighs ached. And then suddenly we were at the tip-top of the hill, flying downhill fast, fast, completely out of control. “Michael!” I screamed.
He grabbed my hand. “Trust me!” he yelled back.
So I did. And amazingly, we didn’t crash, didn’t wipe out. Michael was taking care of me again, as he always did.
Safe and sound at the bottom of the hill, we flung ourselves onto the thick grass, panting, a few feet away from an old woman in a wheelchair. She was there with a nurse-companion in a starched white uniform.
“I thought you had a two o’clock meeting,” Michael said suddenly, looking at his watch.
“I did. I missed it.” I felt a singular lack of concern. It was interesting.
The old woman was watching us, smiling now. Her companion fixed a shawl around her and began pushing the wheelchair away.
The woman turned and called, “Good luck to you two. You make a lovely couple.”
I agreed. I looked at Michael, but his face gave nothing away. “Are we a couple?” I asked Michael, holding my breath at his answer.
He laughed lightly. “A couple of nutjobs maybe,” he said.
Not what I wanted to hear, but I dropped it.
For dinner we had hot dogs in the park, hot, spicy, and doused with mustard and relish. We walked and talked and eventually we were at my apartment building again.
“Well, here we are,” I said, with crackling wit.
We stood outside the entrance to my building, and Martin the doorman discreetly moved away from us. Yes, I would ask Michael to come up to my apartment now. Of course I would. And Martin would approve.
But as the fateful words were about to come tumbling out of my mouth, Michael leaned in close. Yes, I thought. Oh yes, please. His face was only an inch or so from mine, and my breath caught. I’d never seen him so close, his smooth skin, his green eyes.
Then he suddenly pulled away, almost as if he were afraid of something.
“Good night, Jane,” he said. “It was a perfect day, but I think I’d better go now.”
He turned and walked