The Metropolis Case_ A Novel - Matthew Gallaway [153]
She heard the clock strike four; it was beyond time to go. She yelled good-bye to the domestic, double-checked her handbag for keys, and—most important—picked up the brown string-tie folder with the Tristan manuscript inside. As she waited for the elevator, she assessed her chronic health problems—tendonitis in the left ankle, arthritic knee, leaky bladder—and was happy that they all seemed to be in check, if not remission, this particular afternoon. In the lobby she smiled at the doorman, a ruddy-cheeked Irishman who jumped up from his desk to hold the door, and once outside allowed herself a few seconds to adjust to the blast of hot, muggy air she knew would be her companion outside. As she put on her sunglasses, a large white frame of two oblong ovals she had worn well before Jackie made them famous, Charlie asked if she wanted him to call her a cab, but she waved him off, explaining she would get one on Columbus.
She stepped out from under the portico and turned right, where she noted a distant honk and a car speeding by—as usual, much too fast—and then the murmured conversation, first distant and then close, of a pair of women headed in the opposite direction. Her thoughts were interrupted by a squeal of tires and the sound of a something heavy thumping over the curb, and before she could even turn it was upon her. She instinctively jumped to the side, an impressive leap that showcased her strength and agility even at eighty-two, but Death, who clearly enjoyed this kind of spectacle—and was very comfortable in the heat—had already arranged for the taxi to buck up and down like a mechanical bull, so that it caught Anna at just the right angle under the fender and catapulted her backward into the air.
She began her flight, a long and—she could only hope—not ungraceful arc, an almost horizontal dive, during which her feet traveled up behind her ears and back down again, as her arms—having released her handbag and folder, the latter of which sailed directly toward a man who, as far as she could tell, had caused this calamity, for he stood dumbstruck in the middle of the street—fell freely to her sides and provided the axis to the spinning wheel of her body. Anna allowed her eyes to take in the sculpted frieze of a Beaux Arts building she had always admired, and with the hazy sky beyond, she couldn’t help but note with a certain reverence how the city never ceased to be full of surprises.
BECAUSE SHE HAD long prided herself on a forthright ability to confront even the most unpleasant of truths—particularly when it came to her students, whose years of hard work could never obscure the fact that, as much as she loved them, only the smallest percentage would be able to enjoy a real career—she did not try to pretend that this accident could lead to anything but her death. While she permitted herself some sadness at the thought and even allowed for an instinctive fear of the unknown, she felt more reflective than alarmed. As she thought of her life as a whole, she was thankful to have been graced with such good fortune while others had suffered, not that there weren’t a few things she would have done differently. She sighed, a breath that mingled with the heavy air flowing past her, and was again amazed at how in the desert of life, happiness, satisfaction, well-being—whatever she might call it—seemed like an oasis at which she was always pleased to arrive but where the water, no matter how deep, always ran through her fingers when raised up to drink.
She thought of the dead friends and relatives she hoped to see in the afterlife (though in limited doses, of course, and with certain subjects still off-limits). And her twins! Perhaps, wherever she was headed, she would find out what had happened to the boy; as for the girl, well, nothing had ever happened to lessen her conviction that it was Maria. Though Anna had never anticipated that one of her children might someday—and not just in a daydream—come back