THREE
Paul walked across Connecticut Avenue, struggling to pull the District of Columbia’s thick, sodden night air into his lungs. You needed gills for this sort of weather. The pink neon sign for Donovan’s Books sprouted from the side of a building half a block in front of him, and he quickened his pace.
Once inside the store he stood by the door for a moment, mopping his forehead with his handkerchief and drinking in the unmitigated splendor of his favorite bookstore in all the world. Olivia’s favorite as well. He missed living here, and he was beginning to miss Olivia.
Nine-thirty at night and the store was packed.
He walked slowly through the store, touching books with his fingertips. He’d had poetry readings here on a fairly regular basis. Sunday afternoons, Tuesday evenings. The crowd was always eclectic, always appreciative. Always on his side.
He reached for the stairs in the rear of the store and climbed up to the loft, where he ordered mineral water and a slice of cheesecake from the man at the service counter. Then, carrying his tray, he searched among the small, crowded tables for an empty seat. Two men were just vacating a table near the railing. They offered it to Paul, and he sat down, realizing as he surveyed the store below him that this was the table where he and Olivia had always tried to sit. For the first two years of their marriage, they had lived in an apartment directly across the street. Even after they’d bought the house in Kensington, they’d meet a few times a week at this table, spending hours over mineral water and avocado sandwiches as they worked together on
He’d been at Washington General to cover the illness of a senator when he got word of the train plunging into the Potomac. He was the first reporter to reach the emergency room, and in the chaos of that moment, and during the hours that followed, no one seemed to notice him or monitor his actions.
He saw Olivia for the first time when she was meeting a stretcher-borne victim of the train wreck at the automatic doors to the ER. She was grabbing her long brown hair up into a sloppy, off-center ponytail, slipping a rubber band from her wrist to her hair to hold it in place. Then she and the paramedics whisked the elderly woman past Paul on their way to the trauma room, Olivia pressing a piece of bloody gauze to the wound in the woman’s side, talking calmly to her all the while. Dozens of doctors and nurses worked hard in that ER over the next few days, but Paul could not shift his focus from Olivia. He watched her tell families that their loved ones would either live or die. He watched her softly touch their arms, or hold them when they needed to be held. By the end of those few frightening days, her hair hung limply down her back and her bangs were swept by sweat and grime off her forehead. Her green scrubs were streaked with blood, and dark circles ringed the delicate alabaster skin around her eyes. He thought she was entirely beautiful.
He wished he’d been drawn to Olivia because he was finally ready for someone new, but he knew it was her utterly selfless compassion in the ER that had seduced him, because it reminded him of Annie. The comparison was ridiculous. Annie, with her disregard for time and her totally chaotic approach to life, would have created havoc in an emergency room. It was Olivia’s cool, clinical efficiency that made her so good. It took him a while to realize she was not at all like Annie, but by then he had genuinely fallen in love with her.
Some evenings he and Olivia would sit at this table and page through books she’d plucked from the shelves on her way through the store. She usually selected books on nature, or medicine. Early in their relationship, she went through a phase of reading every book she could find on sex. Having denied any sexual thoughts or feelings for much of her life, she was unstoppable once she’d been set free. Sex with Olivia had been like teaching a child a new game—at first she’d been uncertain of her ability, but once the rules were mastered, she wanted to play it continually. And she’d played it very well indeed.
During the last few years of their marriage, though, the books she’d bring to the table were filled with the sobering, sometimes hopeful, sometimes disheartening information on infertility.
Paul ate the last bite of his cheesecake, letting it melt in his mouth as he studied the gold band on his finger. He had put it on just that morning, and although he had not worn it in many months, it comforted him to see it on his hand. He and Olivia would not have drifted away from each other if they’d been able to have a family. He’d felt cheated when he learned she was incapable of conceiving. He struggled not to let his feelings show. It was not in any way her fault, and her own disappointment was keen. He was nearing the point of pulling himself together from that blow when she announced she had received the job offer in the Outer Banks.
He was incredulous. He knew Annie lived in the Outer Banks with her husband and two children, and he was filled with an odd mixture of excitement and terror. He tried to talk Olivia out of taking the offer, but she returned from her interview raving about the uniqueness of the area and the quiet challenge of the position being offered to her. It’s too isolated, he said. Too far from his family and their friends. He knew in retrospect his argument had been weakly offered, that in truth, he was electrified by the idea of being close to Annie. As his fantasies grew of what it would be like, how he might see her, might just bump into her at the grocery store or on the beach, he withdrew further and further from Olivia. When he spoke to her at all it was with a sharp edge to his voice. He was angry with her for putting him in this situation.
Once the move was complete, he managed to wait all of a week before looking up O’Neill in the phone book. She was listed both at her home address and at her studio. He waited another day before driving past the studio, and one more before going in.
She’d been alone, adjusting a photograph on the far wall, and the look on her face when she turned to see him could not have been more horror-filled if he had walked in sporting two heads.
“Don’t panic,” he said quickly, holding up a hand to ward off anything she might say. “I’m not here to cause you any trouble. I’m married too. Happily. My wife is a physician at the emergency room in Kill Devil Hills.” He rambled on about Olivia, partly to fill the silence, partly to convince her he had no intention of being a threat to her or her marriage.
She flattened herself against the wall of photographs as she listened to him, her arms folded protectively across her chest. Her hands hugged her elbows so tightly that he could see the whiteness of her knuckles from where he stood on the other side of the room.
She looked extraordinary. A little heavier than the last time he’d seen her. Not overweight, but she had a woman’s body now. Still the same hair, though not quite so wild, and the red was softened by those occasional strands of silver. Her skin was as dewy and fair as it had been when he first met her.
When he finally paused for breath, she spoke. “You’ll have to tell her you can’t stay here,” she said. “It won’t work, Paul. Please. It would be impossible for you to live here without us constantly bumping into each other.”
Her words only served to encourage his fantasy. Why would she care where he lived if she didn’t fear being tempted by him?
