Sundays at Tiffany's - James Patterson [41]
While we walked, we talked nonstop about everything and nothing, the past and the present — but not the future. Maybe talking with Michael was the best part of this, or of any, friendship or love affair. Although, God knows, I wanted to grab him and kiss him, and, honestly, do a lot more than that. He was a hunk in a way that an eight-year-old just couldn’t appreciate.
“Jane! Want to go in there? For old time’s sake?”
Michael was pointing across Madison Avenue to a familiar little shop of horrors called the Muffin Man. We had gone there on many a guilty morning twenty-some years ago and, to be perfectly honest, I had kept up the tradition.
“Once a sucker for muffins, always a sucker for muffins,” I said. “Lead on.”
As we waited on line in the shop, Michael said, “As I remember, the Apple-Cinnamon-Walnut was your muffin of choice.”
“Still is.” Among others. I’m not that picky, muffin-wise.
We each had a muffin, though I found that I wasn’t really that hungry, which was odd but fine with me. Michael had a coffee frappe, I had a decaf. What struck me most about me and Michael together was how little Hugh and I had ever talked about, or even had in common, really.
Once we were back on the street, and about a block from the office, the skies opened and it poured, coming down in buckets of icy rain.
“We can wait it out under that canopy, or we can make a run for it,” Michael said.
“Run, obviously.” Which was what I felt like doing, running and yelling out loud.
So we raced through the rain, through puddles up to our ankles, around people who were smart enough to have brought umbrellas. I wisely decided to keep the shouts of abandon to myself.
We practically fell through the doors of my building, drenched to the skin but laughing like a couple of kids, or at least challenged adults. Smiling goofily at each other, we naturally leaned closer, closer . . . Oh God, I wanted this . . . to happen . . . so much.
But.
“I’ll see you later,” Michael said, pulling back, losing his smile. He frowned. “Is that all right? Am I . . . bothering you?”
Oh yeah, you’re bothering me, all right, I thought hungrily. But this time I wasn’t going to let him dash off.
So I grabbed his arm, keeping him in place, then kissed him — on the cheek. The kiss was wet from the rain, but warm from my feelings.
“I’ll see you later. I always want to see you,” I said, and then I just had to add, “I miss you already.”
That was me: taking chances, living large. Booorn to be wi-iild . . .
Michael gave me a last, affectionate look. Then I got into the crowded elevator and punched my button.
I couldn’t help singing again, “Booorn to be wi-iild.” I had no problem with letting my freak flag fly.
God, I was happy.
Forty-seven
MICHAEL WAS ACTUALLY really happy, in a tortured kind of way.
So he got together with a few of his best friends and told them about Jane, about how they’d met again, that she had bizarrely remembered everything about him. “The hot fudge sundaes, our walks to school, the terrible, terrible day I left her, everything!” The group was supportive but astonished. None of them had ever experienced anything like it. “Just be careful, Michael,” said Blythe, whom he was probably closest to among them. “For your sake, and for Jane’s. They’re supposed to forget us. That’s how it works. That’s how it’s always worked. Something strange is happening here.”
“Oh, you think?” said Michael.
AT 5:45, he showed up at Jane’s office, as he’d promised he would, and said good evening to his new friend, Elsie the receptionist.
“I don’t think Jane’s expecting me,” he said.
“Think again,” said Elsie. “She’s expecting you. She’s been expecting you for most of the day.”
Elsie buzzed Jane, and a moment later she appeared, looking fresh and rosy-cheeked. Was she blushing?
“I told you I was bothering you,” Michael said.
“He really is annoying,” Jane confided to Elsie.
“Please. Annoy me,” said Elsie,