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A copy of Dostoevsky's The Idiot had been placed, apparently carelessly, on the corner table where she always sat. It was the kind of ill-cared-for paperback that seemed like it might have been thoughtlessly discarded, or left behind and never retrieved. She forced herself to believe it was a mere peculiarity—like seeing a dark-haired stranger disappear around a corner and thinking he was someone you knew.
She sat down at the table, purposefully ignoring the book. She bought coffee every morning before work at the same coffee house. (Not Starbucks, but the type of snooty knock-off coffee place for people who reviled Starbucks.) She sat at the same table and read the New York Times. Today she had to force herself to drink exactly half of her non-fat latte, slow slurps of cooling coffee as she skimmed the headlines.
Finally, she put down her coffee and picked up the book. She let her gaze wander around the coffee house, as if she weren't concentrating on any one thing; she exhaled loudly and tossed her hair in apparent boredom. As she flicked through the novel, her heart leapt at the writing, in blue biro, that filled almost every margin. Closer inspection, however, revealed that it was the crabbed, fastidious handwriting of a student or pretentious bookworm. Long, pointless musings to be used in long, pointless discussions with friends you were trying to impress—or undermine—or both. Feeling disappointed and relieved in unequal measure, she flipped more slowly through the last pages of the book. Her eyes were drawn to a note written on the last page. It was not the uncouth biro scrawl that filled the margins, but a loose, spidery cursive in pencil. On the line beneath finis was written:
Meet me in the park. By the ducks.
Abandoning the rest of her coffee, Christine stood up abruptly. She hesitated, and then tucked the book inside her bag. As she walked the three blocks to Central Park, she briefly considered—and then dismissed—calling in sick for work. The conversation played maniacally inside her head:
"I'm sorry, but I won't be able to make it in today. Something came up."
"What's going on?"
"I think the guy I almost committed treason for just left me a cryptic message to meet him."
"Well, okay then."
The weather in New York had taken a turn for the worse in the last few days, and she shivered uneasily as she walked. Now she could look back and realize that there was something strangely comforting about facing the same vista of all-encompassing grey across the Thames every morning. To the Brits, nature was staid and non-threatening; it was not the flighty, belligerent creature of American weather. Summers in New York were a smothering blanket of heat without reprieve. Winter, in turn, was so cold that it made you forget what true warmth felt like. Fall was just baited breath; the calm before the storm. Today the sky spat rain onto the sidewalk. It was far from a mere autumnal shower; it was the threat of winter, like icy lightning rods thrown down from on high by a spiteful god.
She thought she knew the part of the park that Tom meant. In one of the many stupid, pointless conversations that had formed a characteristic of their stupid, pointless relationship, she had expressed a fondness for The Catcher In The Rye, which Tom had predictably derided. They'd had so many conversations of this ilk that she didn't know why she had bothered to commit it to memory. They'd discussed the arts often—exactly the kind of high-flown cultural discussion that she'd dreamed of having with smart European men when she was in high school. Except, neither she nor Tom had the time to visit museums, go to the theatre or take in a concerto. Which left them with books, mostly. "We're just filling in the gaps between the sex," she'd commented once, aggravated and worn out by yet another argument about Dickens. Tom had, of course, been affronted at such a simplistic view of their relationship. It was always True Love or bust with Tom Quinn.
She found him seated on a bench, looking absurdly relaxed. Nothing was out of place in Manhattan, she reminded herself—least of all ghosts you thought you had exorcised.
"What are you doing here?" She crossed her arms, and then uncrossed them, squaring herself into Catholic school-perfect posture.
"It's a free country," he said.
There was a pause, and then they both began to laugh.