Perfect Nightmare

excitement only grew. It may be the house.

I am almost sure it is the house!

A teenage girl lives there, and something inside me tells me she is perfect for me.

I know it. I know it!

I could tell from the first moment I saw the pictures of her room, but I had to be sure. But now I am sure, because I’ve gone over the photographs so many times that I have every detail memorized. Even as I write these words, I can see the room — her room — as clearly in my mind as if I were standing in it.

Touching it.

Smelling it.

Oh, yes — she is the one.

But I mustn’t be hasty, mustn’t let my hopes get too high. After all, I’ve had these thoughts before, and been so often disappointed.

This time, I won’t get ahead of myself.

No, this time I’ll hold some part of myself aloof, and force myself to wait. After all, the address won’t be posted until the house goes into the Multiple Listing Service, and I’ll just have to contain my excitement until then. But it’s so hard — I am so tempted to get into the car and drive around, and keep driving until I find the house.

The perfect house.

Her house.

I know the idea is ridiculous. I could drive for weeks and never run across it — never find her — yet the feeling is almost overwhelming.

It is as if the house itself — and the girl who lives in it — are drawing me like filings to a magnet.

Yet I have to be patient. After all, it will only be a few days.

In a few days, I shall get the address.

And in a few days, she will still be there…

Still, I’m not used to being patient.

I hate being patient.

But soon… soon I shall see her, and touch her, and smell her.

And she will know all the feelings I knew so long ago.

But this time it will be different.

This time all the feelings will go on forever.

Chapter Five

Manhattan is impossible, Kara thought. Traffic was unaccountably snarled, there were no places to park, and if there was a parking lot anywhere in this part of town, neither she nor Steve had seen it.

“Is something going on?” Lindsay asked from the backseat. “Why is everything so messed up?”

Kara could feel Steve’s nerves starting to fray as everywhere he turned the streets were barricaded and traffic hopelessly snarled. She turned on the radio, and Lindsay’s question was instantly answered.

“The vice president’s motorcade has the entire West Side gridlocked from Forty-second Street north to 125th,” a soothing voice intoned. “Motorists are advised to—”

Steve snapped it off. “Who asked the vice president to come to town today?” he grumbled. “I don’t recall his office calling to see if it was convenient for me.” He scowled, funneling his frayed nerves into a comically exaggerated mask of anger. “And if they had, I’d have told them to keep him in Washington! Who needs him? Especially on Sunday in Manhattan?”

“Bad luck,” Kara sighed. If the motorcade didn’t hurry up and get where it was going, they were never going to make their appointment with the agent who claimed she had the perfect apartment.

“We should have taken the train,” Steve said through clenched teeth, and Kara sighed again, knowing he was right.

And knowing it was her fault they hadn’t done it. After all, she was the one who’d thought a drive in the family car would be a better idea.

“I’m sorry,” she said, sighing again.

Steve’s thin-lipped expression didn’t change.

“This sucks,” Lindsay muttered from the backseat.

Kara sighed a third time, silently agreeing with her daughter, and checked her watch. Their appointment was in five minutes. The agent wouldn’t wait around for long if they were late.

Miraculously, a car pulled out of a parking space just in front of them, and Steve quickly slid their Toyota SUV into it, ignoring the blare of the horn from a Ford Focus whose driver seemed to think he was the rightful heir to the slot. “There is a God,” Steve muttered. “C'mon, we’ve got to hurry.”

Just in the nick of time, Kara thought, certain that if the parking space hadn’t seemingly dropped from heaven, Steve’s temper would have given way.

He locked the car and they hustled along the sidewalk, threading through the pedestrian traffic far faster than they’d been able to maneuver through the car-jammed streets. In less than five minutes they made the three short blocks uptown and the two long ones over and found themselves in front of a tall brownstone. Steve checked the address. “This is it,” he said, pressing the bell.

Kara eyed the building and decided it looked presentable, if not perfect. She checked her watch again when there was no response to Steve’s buzz. “We’re not late. She couldn’t have left, could she?”

Steve took a deep breath but said nothing, and Lindsay dropped onto the front step and put her chin in her hands.

“Ring again,” Kara said.

Silently, Steve pressed the buzzer a second time.

Still nothing.

Then Kara saw a tall, thin woman in a long black coat striding around the corner, a folio clutched tightly in one hand, a set of keys in the other. “Mr. and Mrs. Marshall?” she asked as she came abreast of the building.

Thank God, Kara thought. She smiled and nodded in response. “This is our daughter, Lindsay,” she said as Lindsay stood up.

“I’m Rita Goldman,” the agent said, her hand coming out to grasp first Kara's, then Lindsay's, and finally Steve’s hand. “I’m so sorry to be late. The traffic—”

“We know,” Steve said, his mood lightening as finally something seemed to be going right. “It almost made us late, too. In fact, we were afraid we might have missed you.”

The woman opened the front door and held it for them. The building seemed well-maintained, with a clean marble floor in the foyer and contemporary art on the walls. But the dark mahogany moldings and vaguely Victorian light fixtures made it seem older than it was. Still, the elevator moved smoothly and looked modern, with mirrors on the walls.

Kara began ticking items off her mental checklist. So far, so good.

She glanced at her reflection in the mirror, decided her makeup had survived the drive into the city, then noticed Lindsay’s unhappy face. Leaning over, she whispered, “Thai salad,” which made Lindsay smile.

The fourth floor hall was carpeted and nicely lit.

Two more check marks on her mental list.

The agent, chatting with Steve, walked them down to 409 and used three keys to open the door.

A black mark on the checklist.

Then the door opened, and suddenly Kara felt better. Light. Lots of light, let in by lots of windows.

And hardwood floors and nine-foot ceilings.

Things were looking up.

The living room windows looked down over Amsterdam Avenue, which was okay. Not Central Park, but there was no way they could afford that.