“Is he here?” she whispered.
“No. He’s on the road promoting his book.”
Her face fell in disappointment. “Well, you give him my best, dear.”
Allyson was glad when she was gone. The principal thanked the usual teachers and staff as well as the parents who helped, and the curtain opened to a large papier-mâché stone painted with the words
Plymouth Rock
. It was a few minutes into the play that Carson came out dressed as a pilgrim girl. She wore a pinafore and a bonnet, which unintentionally became the most memorable part of the production. Her bonnet fell off, and to the delight of the parents, she walked through her lines with one hand holding it to her head. Then it fell to the floor and a little boy dressed as an “Indian” slipped on it. He began crying and a teacher ran out on the stage and carried him off. Then Carson picked the bonnet up again and held it to her head as she delivered her main line, “We have much to be thankful for.”
Allyson slipped out of the auditorium before the lights came up and anyone else could stop her. She walked around to the back of the stage and found Carson in the center of a great commotion of children pulling off their costumes. When Carson spotted her mother, she ran to her. “Mommy, Mommy! Did you see me, Mommy?”
“Of course. You were great. I was so proud of you.”
“My hat fell off. But I put it back on after Tanner slipped on it.”
“Is he okay?”
“He’s crying.” She looked around. “Where’s Daddy?”
Allyson hid her frown. “His airplane broke in New York. But I videotaped everything for him, and when he comes back we can watch it. You know how much he likes to watch you.”
“Yeah, he doesn’t like to miss me.”
“No, honey. He hates to miss you. He loves you so much. Do you know what he’d say if he were here?”
Carson shook her head.
“He’d say ‘Let’s go get an ice cream cone to celebrate. ’ ”
She smiled. “Let’s go, Mommy.”
Chapter 48
A
rcadia closed early for the holiday, and every one I knew in New York had left the city. Maybe even Michael, since—with the exception of my daily computer reminders—I hadn’t heard from him either. I wondered if he’d find me in Utah. I doubted it. I flew back the day before Thanksgiving.
My flight home was uneventful, as I slept through most of it. I arrived shortly after seven—after dark—feeling as displaced as if I were still on book tour. The thought of going home was there; I missed my family, but the tension of seeing Allyson was just too much. There was no reason to expect anything to be different between us.
I had put a thousand dollars earnest money down on the new house, but the closing wouldn’t be until January 3. In light of Michael’s forecast, I actually wondered if I would ever occupy the house.
Shortly before I left New York, I reserved a room over the Internet at the Hotel Monaco in downtown Salt Lake City—the same hotel Camille had stayed in on her visit. I booked the room until January 1. As had become my habit, I reserved the room under an alias. Ernest Hemingway. I did so for privacy. These days I needed privacy about as much as a senior center needs an orthodontist.
It had snowed twice while I was in New York, leaving Salt Lake City as white and cold as a bowl of ice cream. There was an inversion trapping fog in the Salt Lake basin, and the air was gray as slate and had the musty, thick smell of the Great Salt Lake. The
Lake Effect
, they call it.
When I flew out to New York, I had left my car in the airport’s long-term parking lot, and I returned to find it covered with nearly six inches of crusted snow. It looked like an igloo with wheels. It took me nearly fifteen minutes to clear it all off. Then I drove into downtown Salt Lake.
I was exhausted from the flight and actually looked forward to a night of nothing but HBO and room service. As I completed checking into the hotel, the clerk handed me my key then said, “Mr. Hemingway, I think you have a message.”
“That’s odd. No one knows that I’m here.”
“Just a second and I’ll check.” She retrieved the note and handed it to me. “This came in about a half hour ago. It’s addressed to Ernest Hemingway aka Bob.”
I took the note from her.
Welcome home, Bob. We need to talk. I know you love the chocolate Cokes at Hires Drive-in on 400 South so I’ll meet you there at ten-fifteen. Your flight was on time, so that should still give you enough time to clear the snow off your car and check in. See you soon,
Michael
I looked up at the clerk. “I guess someone did know that I was here.” I took my luggage to my room and lay down on the bed for a moment. Then I drove about a mile to the drive-in. I felt naked. I wondered if there was anything Michael didn’t know about me.
Chapter 49
A
s I expected, Michael was already there. He was seated at a table in the corner of the room, eating fries and reading the
Tribune
. His eyes followed me until I sat down at the table across from him.
“Welcome to Utah,” I said.
“I’ve been here. How was your flight?”
“I slept through it. How was yours?”
He smiled at the question. “I took the liberty of ordering you a turkey sandwich with cranberry sauce—being that it’s Thanksgiving tomorrow. And your favorite drink, a chocolate Diet Coke, which must be an oxymoron. I ordered one for myself to see what it tasted like.”
“How did you know I was staying at the Monaco?”
“Same way I know everything, Mr. Hemingway. So have you reached any conclusions?”
“About what?”
“About me, to begin with.”
“You tell me. You seem to know everything about me.”
“So it would seem. But I don’t know everything. There are things that you don’t know about yourself. That’s what makes this exciting.”
“This is exciting to you?”
“Sorry. Wrong word. By the way, Carson was great in her play last Monday. Her bonnet fell off, but it just added to the moment if you know what I mean.”
I shifted uncomfortably in my chair. “Listen, I’ve been thinking about everything and I have reached some conclusions.”
Michael laced his fingers together and leaned forward, his chin resting on his hands. “I’m so glad. Tell me.”
“I’ve concluded that this isn’t fair.”
At first he just looked at me. Then, to my dismay, he started laughing, first to himself then loud enough that even the people on the other side of the restaurant turned to look at us.
“I’m glad you found that amusing,” I said sarcastically.
“Bob,” he said, his mouth still bent in a grin. “You really don’t want to talk about fair. Children starving in Ethiopia isn’t fair. A little girl praying every night for her daddy to come home isn’t fair. If I were you, I don’t think I’d get all hung up on ‘fair,’ Bob, because that dog don’t hunt.” He pushed a little back from the table. “Bottom line, when it comes to the scales of justice, you’ve been found wanting.”
I sat back, cowed by his response. “So here we get to it. That’s what this is all about. I sinned, so God is going to kill me.”
Michael’s smile vanished. “It doesn’t work that way, Bob. That’s a human-drawn caricature—God striking people with lightning bolts like he’s a hit man. Think it through. If that’s the way it was, then prisons would be empty and good people wouldn’t die. Right?”
I half nodded. Just then the waitress, a pretty redhead with a name tag that read
Nancy
, arrived with our order. “Saved by the fries,” Michael said. He looked up at the waitress. “Hello, Nancy.”
“Hello.”
He pointed to me. “Do you happen to know who this man is?”
She looked at me then shook her head. “No.”
“This is Robert Mason Harlan, author of the number one book in America. You have a celebrity in your midst.”
I wanted to crawl under the table.
“It’s very nice to meet you,” she said.
“Likewise,” I replied, flushed with embarrassment.
“May I get either of you gentlemen anything else?”
“No, we’re fine,” Michael said. After she left us, Michael grinned. “Now, where were we? Oh yes, death. You have to stop thinking of death as a punishment. It’s not. At least no more than birth. They’re very similar experiences when you think about it—coming from darkness into light through a long, dark tunnel. They’re both portals. You humans just happen to be on
this side
of the portal, so you view birth as beautiful. You don’t know what’s on the other side of the portal, so you fear it. There’s nothing more frightening to humans than the unknown.” He stopped to take a drink of his chocolate Coke. “But it’s like this chocolate Coke. Sometimes the unknown isn’t bad.”
I rested my head in my hand. “So how do the
powers that be
decide when it’s your time?”
“The powers that be,” Michael laughed. “Actually you’re not far from the truth. But I can’t really answer your question. It’s quite a complex process. But I can tell you that it’s not like a lottery, where things just happen at random. You have to realize that this earth is just another stopping place on the game board.” He paused thoughtfully, looking at his drink. “No, not a game board. It’s actually more like basic training.” He looked back at me. “Your father was a military man, you understand that. Anyway, these decisions were made a long time ago. In fact, you had a part in deciding when and where you were going to enter and exit. You just don’t remember.”
“That’s hard to believe.”
“Most spiritual things are hard for mortals to believe. That’s why they act so stupid in the flesh—putting immense value on things that don’t last. There are people on this earth who spend their lives chasing gold, but in heaven it’s used as asphalt for roads.
“Or take fame for instance. For one brief moment a man finds himself on a throne. And for a while he believes himself special—a little bit better than everyone else. But then he discovers that his throne is just another seat in an ongoing game of musical chairs and eventually he’s going to lose his place. Sometimes he spends the rest of his life trying to get back to the chair.
“You know what I’m talking about. Sports stars who retire then find the void too much, so they return, playing way past their prime. The beautiful trying to hold on to the glory of their youth, so they resort to plastic surgery until their faces are tight as snare drums. Rock stars who go on reunion tours, and on it goes.
“But they have it all wrong. The simple truth is that we don’t come to earth to make a name for ourselves just so time can erase it. That’s not what it’s about.”
“Then what is it about?”
Michael smiled. “Finally you’re asking the right question. But you already know the answer. You’ve always known.” He looked into my eyes and his gaze pierced me.
“It’s about learning how to love.”
As if to punctuate the revelation, he abruptly stood, dropping a twenty on the table. “Think about it.”
“Wait. How do I get ahold of you?”
He just smiled. “I’m around.”
I sat there with my sandwich and fries and no appetite. I just sucked on my Coke and thought. Michael was long gone when the waitress stopped again at the table. “Your friend left you.”
“He usually does.”
“Is everything okay with your food?”
“It’s great. I guess I’m really not that hungry.”
“I’ll put it in a container for you. Would you mind signing your napkin for me?”
In my state of mind the request seemed ridiculous to me. I wouldn’t have wanted my signature if it were attached to a blank check. “I’d be happy to,” I said. “May I borrow your pen?”
“Of course.” She handed me her pen and I signed the napkin. She folded it in half and tucked it into her apron pocket. “Thank you. May I get you a refill on your chocolate Coke?”
“Sure. You only live once.”
She smiled and walked away with my cup.
Chapter 50
I
n spite of the hour I wasn’t the least bit tired. Even though I had slept on the plane, I knew my wakefulness was more likely due to my meeting with Michael than any sleep I’d stolen. His words stung me. I felt as if I had come to take an exam, only to find that I had been studying for the wrong test.
I drove past my hotel and took the interstate twenty minutes south to South Jordan, where my home was. It was still lightly snowing, and even though the powder did not stick to the streets, the roads of our little neighborhood were void of traffic. The fog was particularly dense at this end of the valley, and visibility was limited. I drove slowly in front of the house then stopped and turned off the car.
Our home’s lights were off except for those in our bedroom. I wondered what Allyson was doing. Nancy’s car was in the driveway, which was no surprise, as she always spent Thanksgiving with us. To say I felt homesick would be like comparing an aneurism to a sinus headache. As I sat there in silence, my cell phone rang. The prefix was a 310 number—the Beverly Hills area code. I shut off my phone without answering it and stowed it back in my pocket. I just sat there in silence looking at the house. Only twenty yards, yet a world away. What would it take to go back? The sad truth was, more than I had to give. A half hour later I drove back to my hotel alone.
I slept in the next day until noon. I ordered a turkey and mashed potato dinner from room service, which is pretty pathetic when you think about it. I was glad when the day was over.
To my surprise I didn’t hear from Michael the rest of that week or the next, though the countdown on my laptop continued. The week was relatively quiet for media. I averaged three to five call-in radio station interviews a day.
I wished that I were on the road again. Not that I cared anymore about the book, but because anything would beat sitting around in the same hotel room in downtown Salt Lake City. I must have watched every in-room movie there was. Perhaps most telling of my frame of mind was that I didn’t even bother to check on the best-seller lists anymore. Instead I found myself checking my cell phone several times a day hoping that Michael had called, only to see Darren’s messages piling up. On Friday I received a local call from a number I didn’t recognize. I answered, hoping it was Michael.