Exposure (42 page)

“Twice.”

“In the Big Apple for the third time,” Jodi said. “He’s … let’s say he’s on vacation.”

“ ‘He’s on vacation,’ ” they all said at once, laughing.

“Oh, we are brilliant,” Jodi said. She continued her narration, “Now, Anthony wants to … You fill in the blank.”

“Have a good time tonight,” Anthony said.

“No, bigger,” Jodi said. “Try again. He wants to …”

“Find some food. Some really good food.”

Jodi cocked her head and scowled at him. “You don’t take direction very well, do you? Come on. Take three: he wants to …”

Amelia answered. “He wants to write a show for the Ambassador,” she said, seeing the historic theatre off to their right, on Forty-ninth. “The way Shakespeare once wrote for the Globe.”

“Yes, that’s more like it!” Jodi said, as Amelia leaned up against Anthony and kissed him. So they’d missed evaluations and couldn’t reschedule; so nothing they wanted was going according to plan; still, they were here, together. Amelia looked into his eyes and felt purely happy. She felt whole. She felt loved. She kissed him once more and told him, “I’m so glad to be here with you. Thank you. This is amazing, this is perfect.”

Jodi said, “Anthony the playwright, and his One True Love, Amelia Wilkes, future star of—what show do you want to star in?”

“Mamma Mia!”
she declared. Then, thinking further, “
Phantom
. Wait … 
Chicago
?” She laughed, then said, “Honestly, I just want to
be
here. After that, well, we’ll just have to see.”

“After that,” Jodi said, “your name will be in lights,” and she swung around to film the Ambassador’s marquee and lighted feature posters, and the red “Now Starring …!” banner on the under-hang. The banner was not itself lighted, but light shone on it, and Amelia could envision her name being the one displayed in tall black letters. She knew it was possible. If others could do it, why couldn’t she? That was what Anthony had been insisting all along this past year, and that was what she believed.

Anthony faced her and put his hands on her waist. He said, “It’s going to be amazing for you.”

“For us.”

Jodi, camera still filming, said to a couple passing by, “Take a good look, folks, you’ll be able to say you saw her in person.”

“Who?” the woman asked, turning to look at Amelia.

“Amelia Wilkes, star of Broadway.”

“Come on,” Amelia said, pulling Jodi away from the couple. “Never mind her,” she told them. “Too much crack cocaine.”

When they were clear, Anthony said, “Maybe don’t broadcast our names like that, huh?”

“Relax, would you? They’re going to see
Chicago
,” Jodi said, “not sitting around watching or reading the news about kids who are running off to
Mexico.
”

They played in Times Square like tourists, riding the Ferris wheel at Toys “R” Us, crowding in with the teens who waited in front of MTV’s studio for a glimpse of, someone claimed, Eminem. In Hershey’s, Jodi gaped at Amelia: “You don’t want any chocolate?” “I’m not really hungry,” Amelia replied, surprised herself. Then they bartered for Persian scarves on a nearby corner with a pair of men whose thick Caribbean accents made a wonderful incongruity against the crisp cold and against their cold-weather wares. Jodi filmed and narrated all the while. “For posterity,” she told them. “So that I can say I knew you when.”

“As long as you don’t post it publicly,” Anthony warned, as Amelia paid for her scarves.

Jodi nodded her agreement and dug money from her purse, saying, “At least not before you’ve been immortalized, so I can make the most of our connection.”

Amelia pushed Jodi’s hand so that the camera viewed its owner. “Broadway’s rising star, Jodi DeMarco!”

The vendors laughed and declared that Jodi and Amelia both had star quality. “Put those faces on da bus, everybody will ride and make da MTA rich!”

“Those guys ought to be selling time-shares for Antigua or someplace,” Jodi said as they left the stand, she and Amelia each now possessing three vividly colored scarves bought for four dollars apiece. “I dated a guy from there. Brilliant, great sense of humor. Amazing dancer. I should call him again.” She checked the camera’s battery. “Hm, I guess that’s a wrap.” She tucked it into her pocket and said, “Hey, so how about we get out of this cold and go for Japanese at Kodama—it’s not far. Fab sushi. You guys do sushi?”

“Sounds great,” Anthony said. He looked at Amelia expectantly.

“Yeah,” she said, nodding. “I’m still not very hungry, though, so whatever you guys want is fine.”

Jodi smiled sympathetically. “No more lox for you, got it?”

“I’m fine. Distracted by all the wonderfulness is all.”

“Yeah,” Jodi said, pretending to primp her hat-covered hair, “people tell me that all the time.”

For two fairy-tale days, this—the city, the camaraderie—was Amelia’s reality. They saw the sights, they goofed around, they went to cafés and restaurants where the food was cheap and the company was inspiring. They met actors and dancers and poets, people who intended to design the next great fashion trend or write the next great novel or build the next great skyscraper or cook the most perfect omelets the world had yet seen. They went to Radio City for the Rockettes’ holiday show. Late each night, she and Anthony climbed under the covers together, and Wednesday he serenaded her with the Beach Boys’ “Wouldn’t It Be Nice” before making love to her, with her, so tenderly that afterward she cried, happy, grateful tears. It would be nice. It would be.

Amelia avoided eating more lox, and ate little else, and the pains troubled her only once more during their stay—on Thursday afternoon, Thanksgiving, before they were to leave Jodi’s and move on with the plan she and Anthony had begun to develop while sitting, bundled, in the sun at Washington Square Park the day before.

The plan they’d come up with was to leave not only New York the city but New York the state, and find an unpatrolled crossing into Canada. Anthony had lived in upstate New York for half of his life, and was pretty sure there were still back roads—not to mention fields—where they could get over the border without being seen, let alone asked to produce passports and IDs. The irony of their making this plan at that park—the center of NYU’s campus—wasn’t lost on either of them.

“It’ll be here, waiting,” Anthony had said, gazing at the buildings around the park.

Amelia nodded, saying nothing. For the first time since they’d arrived, she felt the weight of their situation bearing down on her. It wasn’t that she’d forgotten there were people looking for them, or that if they were found they’d be arrested and jailed—no bail this time—until their cases were resolved. She knew, as Anthony did, that “resolved” would be no resolution, really, because there was no way they were getting out of this unscathed. As he’d said, “Fact is, we did everything they charged us with, if you look at it dispassionately—which is what the judge supposedly does. Since Liles won’t let up, we have to face trial to even have a chance at avoiding prison time. Maybe a jury, if there were enough intelligent people on it, would let us off easy, but they can’t exactly disregard the law.”

The other part, which didn’t need to be discussed, was her father, and his relentless insistence on demonizing Anthony. By the time Anthony had his trial, he’d be more likely than ever—and far more likely than she—to be convicted. Thirty years’ sex-offender registration required for the felony counts. Prison time might be
un
likely, but even Mariana Davis hadn’t been able to say it wouldn’t happen. Going back now offered no hope for either of them. They would have to take their chances in Canada.

He said, “We’ll get fake IDs—even if it’s not a hundred percent foolproof, it’ll be close enough for us to make a new start. I’m thinking Montreal. It isn’t New York, but it’s a great city, you’ll like it—they have a big theatre scene. We get jobs there, work our way up, and eventually come back to New York under our new identities.”

“Without being recognized?”

“By who? Besides, you’ll be that amazing Canadian actress who, if anyone ever put a picture of that older you alongside one of your current ones, would have a striking resemblance to the girl who’d disappeared into Mexico, and wouldn’t that be interesting? But by then we’ll have rock-solid creds. It can be done.”

“Solid creds, but the same fingerprints.”

“Then we better avoid run-ins with the law.”

“Somebody would make the connection. Our parents would.”

“By then, the whole thing will be ancient history. They wouldn’t rat us out.”

She’d been about to answer
You don’t know my father
, but instead she decided that this time Anthony might be right. Her father would, by then, surely have learned his lesson and wouldn’t make trouble anymore.

They knew the plan wasn’t perfect. There were holes, possibly deep enough for them to disappear into with no hope of rescue. What the plan gave them, though, was a chance. It gave them hope. And most important, they would be together and not rotting in jail, alone, for the most part out of contact with each other, while the lawyers siphoned more and more money away, looking for strategies to win an unwinnable war. They would be together and not going off to prison, where the closest they’d be to each other or to the theatre world was in their memories and imaginations.

The stomach pain came when they were lounging in the apartment in the afternoon while Jodi got ready to leave for dinner with her father in Stamford. It came on quickly, as it had before, and this time hung around awhile. Anthony, who was online checking the status of “the manhunt” and researching all the things they’d need to know for their trip, didn’t see her wince as the pain began. She waited for it to ebb, then went to stand behind him.

Oddly, he had Jodi’s Facebook page displayed—and then she saw that he was having an instant-message conversation with Cameron. He glanced over his shoulder and said, “Jodi friended her for us—I asked her to this morning. I wanted an untrackable way to get a message to my mom.”

Homesickness jolted Amelia, or rather Cameron-sickness did. “Tell Cam I miss her.”

He typed her message. Cameron replied with a grimace emoticon and,
Same here. I love you, A!!!! So glad u guys r ok, and I will def get ur message to ur mom. What about A’s parents?

Anthony said, “Do you want her to pass a message to them?”

“I … I do, but I don’t. If they find out she was in touch with us, they’ll never leave her alone.” She wasn’t worried about his mother revealing anything to the police, but her parents, her
father
, had proven they couldn’t count on him. “Tell her no. I want to wait until we’re out of the country.”

“I agree,” he said, and typed her answer.

He finished the conversation and logged off the computer, then turned and pulled her onto his lap.

She said, “So what’s the travel plan looking like?”

“Interstate 87 is the direct route—meaning most traveled. Let’s go 95 and then up 91 until we’re near the border, then we’ll branch off to the rural areas using county roads. Eighty-one might be even less traveled, but it’s only bridges into Canada that way, so that’s out—I’m thinking out loud, aren’t I?”

“Yes, but you’re cute, doing it.”

“The weather is looking pretty iffy—they’re saying freezing rain turning to snow starting after midnight. How do you feel about leaving pretty soon?”

She didn’t want to leave at all. The frustration that she’d been able to suppress these past few days surged again, and she took a deep breath to help push it down. Wishes were filmy, insubstantial things that had no value and no purpose. Action was the only way to make something happen. She said, “Fine by me. No one will be driving at dinnertime.”

“All right, then. Let’s get in gear.”

29

NTHONY HUGGED
J
ODI AND THANKED HER AGAIN FOR HER
hospitality. “We’re eternally grateful.”

“You’re eternally welcome,” Jodi said. “I mean that. If you make it back here—that is,
when
you make it back here, I expect you to stay here for as long as you need to. And if I happen to have hooked up with my own exceptionally fabulous someone by then, he will welcome you, too.”

Amelia’s eyes looked forlorn behind her smile. “We hate to leave. But thank you
so
much. It’s been the best. You’re so wonderful for risking your neck for us.”

Jodi waved off the gratitude. “Please. What risk? It’s New York. There are way more important criminals here than you two.”

Anthony reached for the doorknob. “We’ll let you know when we get there.”

“I’ll look for the Facebook friend requests from—who will you be? Marie and Luc?”

“Beau and Belle,” Anthony joked.

Amelia said, “I like her suggestions better.”

“Go on, lovebirds. You can debate it in the car.” Jodi kissed them both, then Anthony led Amelia outside, where they walked in silence down the block to the parking garage. The weight of what they were doing made him feel sluggish, made every step feel like he was walking in mud-caked boots. His stomach was queasy and he walked slowly, as if anticipating that a precipice lay ahead of them after darkness fell, and he might not see it in time.