Now I'll Tell You Everything (Alice) (22 page)

Patrick grew quiet, but his eyes were still fixed on mine. “When I was in Madagascar . . . whenever I visited the capital . . . I checked Facebook, and the last I read, you were engaged.” He glanced at my left hand and back again.

“I called it off at Thanksgiving,” I said. “We’re not seeing each other anymore.”

“Oh.” He stopped eating—stopped smiling—and looked at me intently. Those eyes . . . God, I’d missed his eyes! “I’m . . . sorry?” he said. “No, actually, that’s a lie. That’s about the best news I ever got.”

I felt my heart leap inside me. It actually thumped against the wall of my chest.

Patrick reached across the table and squeezed my hand. “You don’t know how great it is to see you again. There were times in Madagascar I wondered if I ever would.”

I smiled. “Then how do you know I’m not an illusion? Maybe you’re so tired, you’re hallucinating.”

“That’s what worries me,” he said, and his thumb caressed mine. “You feel real. Let’s see if you can pass the reality test. Who was your sixth-grade teacher?”

I laughed. “Mrs. Plotkin.”

“What was the name of our high school newspaper?”

“The Edge.”

“What did I promise to do on your twenty-first birthday?” Those eyes again. He had stopped smiling now, and his face was more serious.

“You were going to call and make a date for New Year’s
Eve.” I guess I’d stopped smiling too, but he was still holding my hand, his thumb still caressing.

“Providing you weren’t taken by then,” he said. “But according to Facebook, you were in a relationship, and I didn’t want to interfere.”

“I wish you had.”

“Do you mean that, Alice? We’ve been apart a long time. Met other people . . .”

“I know.”

“Then maybe
I’m
an illusion,” he said, grinning. “No, here, feel my cheek.” He pulled my hand over so I was rubbing his stubbly skin.

“It’s real, all right,” I said.

We had each finished our food. I had, anyway. Patrick rested his head in his hand, and his eyes were half closed. “Dessert?” he murmured. “I need one of those fried apple pies.” His head began to nod, and he jerked upright.

“Another few minutes and your head will be in your plate,” I laughed.

“Then maybe I’ll just take some to go.” But he made no move to get up. “Do you really have to catch that plane?” he asked.

“Well, I . . . I could ask about the next flight.” Now he was leaning forward, arms on the table, both hands holding mine. “Or . . . tomorrow, maybe?” I said. “Or . . . the day after?”

If my head was doing rapid recalculations, my heart had already decided for me. As soon as we were on our feet, I was in his arms again and we were kissing right there in the burger
place. It seemed as though his lips were my lips, his breathing my breath. And when at last he let me go, everyone around us was smiling, and a couple of sailors gave us the thumbs-up.

When Patrick stopped at the counter on our way out and asked for the fried pies, the man handed them to him and said, “It’s on us.”

*  *  *

I can’t even remember how we got to the hotel—the airport shuttle, maybe?

As soon as we were in the room, Patrick turned to me, his face serious, and kissed me, a long, intense kiss, his hands running through my hair, pulling me close to him, and when he stopped once to look in my eyes, he kissed me again.

“I’m going to lie down for a quick catnap,” he said. “You can crawl in beside me. I just need fifteen minutes or so.”

“Sure,” I said, and Patrick took off his shoes. We stacked the decorative pillows on the desk and folded back the heavy duvet. Patrick lay down, fully clothed, and promptly fell into a deep sleep, lying on his back, his mouth half open, his hands turned palms up beside him. I gently covered him with the sheet and two blankets, and his breathing became slow and deep. I sat on the edge of the bed, my hand caressing his forehead, brushing the red hair I loved so much back away from his eyes.

Was I just setting myself up to be hurt again? He had already broken up with me twice, but then, I was the one who almost married someone else.

I’m not sure how long I sat there just watching him breathe,
sleep. He didn’t wake in fifteen minutes, of course, and I didn’t try to raise him. How was this possible that we had met this afternoon? If I had gotten to the airport five minutes later . . . If he had not detoured after coming through customs to find a Big Mac . . . If I had stayed at Aunt Sally’s another hour . . .

We probably would have contacted each other eventually. Once Patrick was back in the States, someone would post the news on Facebook, whether he did or not. But to meet him here . . . to have had the time, both of us, to spend with each other . . . Maybe I believed in magic after all, and I couldn’t stop smiling.

I got up finally and went over to the desk. Taking out my cell phone, I called my airline first and changed my reservation—not to the next day, but the day after—then I tried Elizabeth’s number. No telling where anyone was since it was winter break for everybody but Pamela, and she was probably on a job. The phone rang six times, and then Liz picked up.

“Alice!” she said. “How’s Oklahoma City? How’s them broad-shouldered, bowlegged, terbaccy-smokin’ cowboys?”

“I don’t know,” I told her. “I didn’t go. I’m in a hotel room in Chicago.”

“Oh, my God! What happened?” And I heard her say to someone, “She’s in Chicago!” Then to me, “You won’t believe this, but Gwen and Pamela are here at my house, and we’re having a blast. What happened to your plane?”

“Nothing. I missed it. You won’t believe this, either, but I met someone.”

A shriek from the other end as she relayed my message.
“. . . a hotel room with somebody. . . .” A fumbling sound, then Pamela had the phone.

“Okay, who are you with? Male or female?”

“Twenty questions. Male.”

“Twenty questions, my foot.
Who?
”

“Patrick.”

“Patrick!” she screamed at the others, and then I heard Gwen and Liz screaming too.

Now it was Gwen’s turn. “Alice, tell us: Did you plan this all along?”

I told her about meeting up with Patrick at the airport.

“Is he there now?”

“Here in the room.”

“Let me talk to him. My God, this is wonderful! He’s back!”

“He’s asleep, and I wouldn’t wake him for the world. He hasn’t slept for forty-eight hours, and I’m just watching him breathe, as happy as I can be.”

Then I told them about how he’d planned to surprise his parents and how I wouldn’t be going to Oklahoma for two more days. We talked until the connection got lousy and my battery ran low.

“Sweet dreams, girlfriend,” Gwen told me. “You deserve them.”

“Kiss him for me, Alice,” said Pamela.

“This is the second most wonderful thing that’s happened this week,” said Liz.

“What was the first?” I asked.

“Mo and I set the date for our wedding. A year from now, right after Christmas.”

“That’s wonderful, Liz,” I told her.

I had to call Valerie and tell her what happened, and she was as excited as I was. I said I would let her know when I was coming, and her final words were, “Take your time.”

*  *  *

Patrick moved only once in the next two hours, and that was to turn on his side, but his breathing scarcely changed—deep and slow.

Now what?
I asked myself. In all my fantasies of making love with Patrick for the first time, none of them went like this. Patrick zonked. Me with my clothes still on. Sleet coming down again outside and hitting the window. Here on the tenth floor, I could hear the whistle of wind through the air ducts. And me, happy as a clam.

I got the charger from my suitcase and plugged in my cell phone. Around eight o’clock I ate one of the fried apple pies. Then I went in the bathroom and took a hot, steamy shower to warm up. There was a silly nightshirt in my suitcase with a terrapin on the front that I slipped on. I brushed my teeth and took my pill. I’d been good about taking my birth control pills, knowing it was part of my life now. Then I turned out the light and crawled into bed with Patrick.

My feet were freezing. I’d turned the thermostat up, but I think it was probably there for decoration, because it didn’t seem to make any difference. Then, carefully, I inched myself over
until I was spoon shaped in Patrick’s arms. Both of us lay on our sides with our knees bent, and I gently lifted Patrick’s arm and pulled it forward across my body. He simply took a deeper breath and went on sleeping, and after a while I slept too.

I woke sometime in the night—I wasn’t sure when—and I could tell by the way Patrick readjusted his arm around me that he had wakened too. “Alice?” he whispered behind me.

“Yeah?” I didn’t want to turn around, because I’ll bet my breath was horrible.

“Just wanted to make sure it was really you,” he said, and pulled my body even closer to his. And then, “What do you have on?”

“My terrapin nightshirt,” I said, laughing.

“I’m still drained.”

“I know.”

“Do you care if we wait till tomorrow?”

“No, I’d rather.”

“Let’s make it a date. I’ll shave, brush my teeth . . .” And then his voice trailed off, and he was gone again.

*  *  *

I was awake and dressed before he got up the next morning. I think he’d slept eleven hours straight. When the housekeeper knocked on the door, I told her we didn’t need anything, and she disappeared.

Patrick lay with his arms behind his head, smiling at me from his pillow.

“Ah! The man awakes,” I said. “Should I order room service?”

“Why not?”

I found a menu in the drawer and kissed him. “What do you want? Rice cakes? Rice pudding? Chicken soup with rice?”

Patrick ordered pancakes with scrambled eggs and sausage, and dared me to kiss him again with fifty-nine-hour-no-brush breath. I agreed it was horrible, but kissed him anyway, and then he got up, went in the bathroom, and showered.

When he came out at last, sweet breath and body, a clean shirt with a pair of wrinkled trousers, we couldn’t seem to stop kissing, and then we settled down at the little table the room-service guy had wheeled in for us and talked.

I told him about Dave—what a really nice guy he was, but I simply didn’t feel that we had enough in common.

Patrick just listened and nodded.

“So tell me about Jessica,” I said when I finished.

Patrick buttered another piece of toast, then set it aside and sipped his coffee. “I did like her a lot at first. We’d both joined the Peace Corps at the same time, and she was in a neighboring village, but . . . I don’t know. When we met at the capital, all of us together, and had our meetings, she just seemed to have a different attitude—approach, maybe—to the Madagascan people, a bit too paternalistic, I guess you’d say. Not the way I saw them at all. And then, even more of a deal breaker, she fell for another volunteer. Which made the breakup easier—a lot easier.”

“I’m glad.”

“About . . . ?”

“That you fell out of love with her.”

“Before that there was Amanda. . . .”

“Oh.”

“I fell for her when I was still in Barcelona. That’s when I e-mailed you about other women in my life. We had something going for several months, and then, just as suddenly, it was over. I never quite figured it out. Something she said, something I said, it never got untangled, and after a while we just didn’t care, so I figured it was a good thing it was over.”

“Somehow I got the idea you might be staying on after your Peace Corps commitment was up,” I told him.

“Yeah, I was thinking I might volunteer for one of the nongovernmental organizations, Population Services International or something, and I did for a few months. But the more I thought about it, the more I wanted to come back. I missed home, and I decided that I’d better straighten things out with the university, see how much credit they’d give me, and work on my degree. That I could probably do more with my life if I had more credentials. What about you?”

I told him I wanted to have my master’s by a year from June. Start my counseling career.

“Where did you have in mind?”

“I don’t know yet. I was off to explore the world when I ran into you,” I said, smiling, and ran my toes over his stocking feet under the table.

“Any reason you couldn’t explore it with another person?” he asked.

“None that I know of.”

We wheeled our table and dirty dishes back out into the hall, and Patrick put the Do Not Disturb sign on the door handle. Then he pulled the shades on another gray January day and found some music on the clock radio. We danced slowly around the room, my head on his shoulder, my arms around his neck, until after a while we weren’t dancing at all, just holding each other close, closer than we’d ever been before, and then we moved toward the bed. Patrick helped me take off my clothes, and I helped him take off his.

It was mysterious and wonderful, having known each other all these years, that this was the first time we had seen each other completely nude—the red hairs on Patrick’s body, the blond hairs on mine. Patrick’s frame was more muscular than I’d remembered it, but he was gentle.

“I don’t have condoms,” he told me.

“I’m on the pill,” I said, but, just to be completely safe, I found the pack Planned Parenthood had given me, tucked down in one corner of my travel kit. Dave had always used his own.

Then I slid into bed and into his arms. We explored each other—slowly, lovingly, taking our time—something we had imagined doing for a long, long time. I loved the tender way our hands touched and stroked and our mouths searched each other’s out. . . .

“I love you, Alice,” Patrick said.

“I’ve always loved you,” I told him.

When he entered me at last, in the same loving way, I didn’t care that he came almost immediately because I knew there would be another time, and another, and another.

We didn’t go outside until late afternoon, and then it was just to the drugstore to get some acid pills. Patrick wasn’t used to the gigantic breakfast he’d eaten and knew he’d have to go easy at dinner. We ate in the hotel dining room, but we disappointed the waiter by ordering only soup and salad. And then we were in our room again, in the bed again, and after we made love, we talked until late into the night about past and future and now and everything.