Time of My Life_ A Novel - Allison Winn Scotch [96]
I don’t answer, though I feel words spinning around my brain, lodged there, unable to come out. This is all happening much too quickly, the changes, the shifts; none of this is supposed to happen. I don’t want to be a partner at DMP! I don’t want to log in longer hours over tedious copy and bargain with clients who don’t know what they want in the first place! I physically twitch in my chair. Because, best I can remember, work is what I loved most from my former life, and now, that, too, is just a figment of memory, no more or less real than anything else about whom I thought I used to be.
“I’ll think about it,” I say to her, exactly what Jack had hoped to hear an hour back.
“You’d be great,” she says, smiling genuinely for the first time in our conversation.
Probably, I think. But it’s like Henry once said: risk or gain. What did I stand to lose more of, now that I was getting everything—the ring, the man, the job—that I ever wanted?
MEG IS MEETING me after work at Tiffany. Vivian has alerted me that her friends are simply not satisfied with my pitiful registry, and thus, has implored me to ask for more.
“Dear, they’re going to buy you something anyway. So please let them know what you’d like! It makes everyone feel better about the process,” she said in a voice message on my work line earlier in the day. Which is funny, I think, because that’s exactly how it worked out the last time, when Henry and I married. I didn’t miss the formal place settings or the sterling candlesticks until we moved to Westchester, when I swirled myself into a desperate housewife whose china patterns were as important as her manicures.
Jack has begged off the task tonight, citing an issue deadline, and truly, I don’t blame him so much. When we first registered, he gallivanted around Crate and Barrel, clutching the scanner like an armed robber, but after thirty minutes, he listlessly flopped in an oversized love seat, and I more or less did the same. Somehow acquiring these physical representations of our union seemed less appealing than either of us expected. Five minutes later, we left and instead went out for a drink.
Though just six o’clock, the sky is blackened with clouds, and the avenues are illuminated solely by the streetlights. The sidewalks have refrozen, thanks to arctic air that’s pushed in from the north, and I’m slowly shuffling toward the store, moving along cautiously, my arms slightly askew for balance.
Meg is on the corner of Fifty-seventh and Fifth, bundled with a furry hat and a full-length down coat that disguises what I assume is a blossoming bump underneath.
She waves when she spots me halfway down the block. Just as I’m about to reciprocate, I hear the sharp screech of car brakes, then the clamor of taxi horns and the sick crunching of metal, and finally, the shrill shriek of people all around me. Everything slows down in a way that I might have wished it to in my old life, and frames of frantic masses and a battered streetlamp flash before me. My legs are lead, my boots weighting me down like anchors, and as I push forward, I feel as if I’m swimming through the ticking seconds of time. I look for Meg, but she’s no longer there, and instead, a taxi is crushed into a mailbox on the corner, and a crowd has huddled around it.
Someone yells, “I’ve called 911,” and suddenly, my cells grant me freedom, and I rush forward, pushing my way through the huddle, forgetting about the slippery, treacherous pavement underneath.
Meg and two others are flat on the ground, each of them bleeding, none of them conscious. I emit a strangled, frantic cry, then kneel down to comfort her, but someone pulls me back.
“Don’t touch her,” the stranger says. “You could make the injury worse.”
The minutes spin, and finally, soon, too long—I have no idea—I hear the blare of sirens screaming down the avenue. Paramedics jump out and the circle of the crowd grows