The lady who was running the tea stand came out to collect dishes and I ordered a crumpet for my dear little Max.
The lady brought Max his treat and said, “I’m going to close up now, if you don’t need anything else?”
I looked at her and realized she looked exhausted, and also, of course, I knew exactly what she needed.
She needed to feel like everyone else in the park tonight, as if life could have some happy bits in it, and things to look forward to, not just be a sea of endless drudgery.
“Here,” I told her. “I don’t have any need for this.”
I gave her my ticket for the Carlene concert.
Jessica said, “If you’ve got a friend who can come on short notice, you can have mine, too.”
And then Daisy chimed in, and the waitress was suddenly holding three tickets to Carlene. The weariness evaporated from her face and she stared at the tickets as if they had fallen straight from heaven.
“My kids were dying to go. We live close. They can be here in a blink. These tickets are impossible to get,” she breathed.
“Nothing is impossible,” I told her sternly. She looked hopeful, as the evidence of that very thing was resting in her hand.
Daisy was smiling at me. “I like that. Nothing is impossible.”
“But you could still have gone! I don’t need all three of you to miss the concert!” I told her, but she was watching that waitress, and I could tell she would not have traded anything for the look on that woman’s face. In a world where “self” seems to reign, how had I been lucky enough to run into these three women?
A golf cart came careening down the path, Aubrey in the front with a young man who had on a first aid attendant uniform.
He grabbed a bag, and peeled off my sock and shoe, and poked and prodded at my ankle.
“I think it might be broken,” he said. He took a radio off his belt and, ignoring my protests, ordered an ambulance to meet us at one of the exits.
Even when I insisted, my angels, bless their hearts, refused to leave me, even Aubrey, who still had her ticket.
“What will happen to Max at the emergency room?” Daisy asked, practically. “No, we’ll come and take turns staying outside with him until you’re released.”
And so, we all ended up in the golf cart, though it hilariously overloaded it.
Aubrey said, “I feel as if I’m in a carload of clowns heading for the center ring,” and we all laughed, and despite my ankle throbbing, that golf cart ride through Faelledparken felt very spontaneous and joyous. There was an ambulance waiting at the exit, manned by two swoonworthy Danish men. Jessica came in the ambulance with me, and Aubrey and Daisy followed with Max in a cab.
Hours later, outside the hospital, with my ankle bandaged—thankfully just severely bruised, not broken—we exchanged hugs. We were beaming at each other as if we had known one another forever, the most delicious little bond between us, the kind that only a closely averted catastrophe can create.
Finally, I was able to look at the young women who had put their own agendas so selflessly aside to help me.
Really look at them.
I’ve had this unusual gift since I was a child.
My mother was appalled by it and called me fey. She went as far as to discourage my use of it by saying she thought maybe I wasn’t a real Ascot, after all, but an Irish traveler baby, fallen off the caravan.
I’m afraid the thought of really being an Irish traveler, instead of a member of a very stuffy aristocratic family, bound by rules and customs and most especially by what will people think, gave me many fantastic hours of make-believe and much needed respite from my mother.
I certainly wasn’t fey in the way most people would think of that. I was unable to speak to dead people, an enviable talent that has become so popular there are now entire television programs about it.
It was just that I could look at people and sense what they needed.
In my younger years, it had been quite overwhelming, especially in a crowd. People’s needs, both large and small, swarmed around me like restless bees, buzzing...
She needs to see a doctor...he needs a long walk in the forest...he needs glasses...she needs a new life...he needs a new wife...
As I had gotten older I’d learned to keep my observations mostly to myself. People didn’t really appreciate a complete stranger approaching them with life advice. I’d also gotten better at shutting off some of it, and had learned that knowing what someone needed—even when sometimes they did not know themselves—gave me quite a sharp advantage in business.
Looking at my rescuers right now, I knew with startling clarity exactly what each of them needed.
Still, you didn’t attain the incredible successes in business that I had, by relying on your instincts alone.
“I have ordered a car for Max and me. I’ll make my way back to my hotel.” Jessica was going to protest, but she had done enough for me, so I held up my hand. “But I would so love to keep in touch. I’m brand-new to social media. Would you mind if...”
Of course they saw me as entirely adorable, and wrote their full names and all their social media contact information—Facebook and Twitter and Instagram—on a scrap of paper I provided. They had already exchanged information with each other, but they had put that directly into their phones. No scraps of paper for their generation.
Having all that information meant I could spy on their private lives shamelessly—young people were so oblivious to who was watching what they revealed online—to confirm if what I thought they needed really was what they needed.
And then, I was in the unique position of being able to give
