Seeing Julia (23 page)

After another ten minutes, where I indulge in the absolution of incredible silence and reflect upon Evan uninterrupted, I start the mental rundown of all the things I have to do today. There’s the team meeting to go over the week’s assignments and client updates. I need to talk to Kimberley. I have to check email. I should call Jake and apologize. Check email. I can’t put it off any longer. I have to check email. Talk to Kimberley. I should call Jake and apologize.

If I say these things often enough, will I actually do any of them? Besides, talk to Kimberley? Probably not, but this last wayward thought is enough to compel me to get out of the car, propel me into the garage elevator up to the lobby and onto the floor elevator that whisks me up to the top floor of
Liaison’s
Paris office.

I’m a living miracle and I’m almost smiling. I greet all the staff with “Bonjour” and make my way to one of the corner offices. Vice President Client Relations is handwritten on a post-it note in Kimberley’s familiar script. The note, this sticky reminder on the glass door to my office, welcomes me. I guess Kimberley has made that decision for me and I breathe a sigh of relief for having one less decision to make.

It’s Monday, the day after Sunday, the day after the latest fireworks with Jake. I struggle to put one foot in front of the other and contrive a look of happiness for the team. Monday. There is a new list of complications that arrive with this day. Jake is the very first one. He invades my mind every five minutes. I stare at my computer and contemplate the inbox logo of unopened email and watch the number tick higher. My hand hovers over the mouse, it wants to click and open correspondence, but my mind doesn’t. I just gaze out the window at Paris, without really seeing it. Just when I think I’ve begun to conquer the grief and achieve some semblance of equilibrium and find balance, things change again, like a kaleidoscope. I wonder, once again, how does everything go from being almost perfect
to
this? Evan. Where are you?

≈ ≈

My mother loved to do origami. From the time I was four-years-old, we would sit together with these amazing colorful squares of paper between us and form intricate figurines: cranes, swans, dragons, and flowers of all kinds. The last origami crane I made with her was during the fateful trip to Athens and it’s in a box at the beach house in Amagansett along with all the other mementos of a magical time long gone. Today, I think about the origami crane and my mother. The ancient Japanese legend goes that if one makes a thousand origami cranes, a person’s wish will be granted. In Japan’s culture, cranes are considered to be mystical or holy creatures representing good luck and the birds are believed to live for a thousand years. I’m guessing Mr. Jacob Winston has never even seen an origami crane. I decide this might be the best way for me to apologize.

After meeting with my team, where I pretend to lead, and more or less agree with everything, and make no real decisions, I slip out to the gift store a couple of blocks down from our office in search of unique paper for this secret project. I also buy a small silver box with a key, some place he can store all those notes of mine he’s said he’s saved. My fervor for starting this is unexplainable. My mother used to say origami freed her mind, allowed her to think through a story line that wasn’t working and come up with the answers, all with just the simple act of creating something beautiful and giving herself permission to think things through.

I’m not sure what is driving me to do this for Jake, but my mind could certainly use some answers. It takes the better part of a half hour to fold the crane into the intricate folds because I’m so out of practice, but I finally succeed. I think my mother would be proud of my efforts and my reasons for doing it. And, just as she once promised, the answers come to me as I work with the intricacies of folding this beautiful paper, allowing my mind to let go.

I regret saying so many things I shouldn’t have said to Jake and I have to make this right with him. Making one crane leads to the next one. I end up making nine cranes out of this black and white lacy wrapping paper and the last one out of bright red velum. Then, I suspend them using fine clear thread with the red one hanging from the center.

Then, I handwrite a note on white vellum paper:

Dear Jake,

Sometimes, we see our world in black and white and sometimes we just see red. All the while, we miss the beauty suspended right before our very eyes. I’m sorry. Friends?

Julia

I’m holding up the mobile to the light by the window, admiring my creation, when Kimberley comes through my office door. She has this haunted look as she sidles by me toward the largest window that frames a perfect view of the Eiffel Tower. She seems off-kilter just by what she’s wearing alone, dressed in a conservative navy blue outfit that is so not her. The only standout in what she wears is a bright yellow scarf tied loosely around her neck. But none of this portrays Kimberley’s normally edgy signature style.

“Do I even want to know what you’re doing?” Kimberley asks. She looks weary.
Weary?
Kimberley is never weary, tired, or undone and she exhibits all three of these attributes this Monday. She plops down in my desk chair and begins turning it in circles.

“Don’t ask if you don’t want to know,” I say.

“Why not? It’ll be entertaining in an otherwise pretty fucked-up day,” she says with a heavy sigh.

“Okay, you have my attention. Go ahead. What’s happened?”

“No, you start,” she says. I study her face for a moment, but then she spins away in my chair toward the window. I shrug and hand her the handwritten note for Jake as she comes around again. She reads it and then looks at the mobile of cranes I’m holding.

“Wow, that’s so amazingly beautiful.” She gets up and examines it closer. “It’s exquisite.” She gets this sad look and moves over to the window away from me. I watch her gaze at the fine view that is Paris. “So what happened?”

“What didn’t?” I say. “Jake Winston was at Christian and Stephanie’s this weekend and I spent the better part of it avoiding him because…”

“Because?” Kimberley asks, turning from the window.

“Well as you know, he has this way of making me feel completely undone. I can’t explain it. I’m devastated about Evan, but Jake stirs up all these emotions. I’m roiling inside with this … unbelievable…” I make an effort to wrap the mobile in white tissue and place it inside the silver box with the key and seal it in a larger cardboard box for mailing. I stall in answering her question, but she knows it.

“What?
Say it
, Julia,” she says, exasperated. “Just say it.”

“I can’t. It’s too soon. I can’t say it.”

“I’ll say it, then,” she says, nodding. “He makes you crazy. He makes you feel outside of yourself. There’s an invisible line between the two of you, this tethering, an electrical connection.” She looks elated. “Yes, kinetic energy. That’s what it is. And it makes you feel alive and bound to him from the very first moment.”

“Is this my story or yours?” I ask in surprise.

Kimberley gets this funny look. “Did I just use the word
bound
in a sentence describing my connection to a guy?”

“Yes, you did,” I say. And, thank you for that analogy because that’s it exactly. I feel, electrically connected, bound all at the same time. I mean, what the hell is that, Kimmy?”

“I don’t know.” She looks miserable and happy all at once as if she’s discovered how to make lightning, but isn’t sure of its purpose.

“He makes me feel like I’m going to implode, burst or something even worse,” I say. “What would it be though?” I begin to pace. “God. We’re in the hallway at Steph’s and he says the most amazing things and he takes my hand and kisses it.
My hand.
He brushes it with his lips. That’s it, just my hand. I feel like I would walk across fire for him. What is that all about? I can’t get him out of my mind, how he makes me feel. He’s haunts me in a good way and a bad way. I
loved
Evan and I feel guilty having all these feelings for someone else.”

“Guilt is the worst,” Kimberley says. She has this grim expression. I stop and look at her more closely. “Go on,” she says with a wave of her hand.

“But it’s what he
doesn’t
say about Savannah Bennett, that really puts me over the edge. All he said was: things are complicated right now. And then, he doesn’t explain any of it.” I tape and label the box with the address for the New York offices of Hamilton Equities.

“Things are complicated. What things?”

“That’s just
it
. He doesn’t tell me what those things are. And, I’m just furious with him half the time. What’s
wrong
with me?” I start pacing again and carry the package in my hands as I go. “We had this huge fight,
colossal
, and said some things we shouldn’t have said.” I hold up the box. “This should be there by the end of the week and then, maybe he’ll be ready to forgive me by then.”

“What did he say exactly?”

I shake my head trying to remember everything Jake said. “He wants me to pay more attention to Evan’s company. Be the chairman. Make decisions. Move back to New York.

“You should go,” she says in this quiet voice.

“What? No. I told him there’s nothing for me there.”

“You said that to him?”

“Yes.” I catch my lower lip between my teeth remembering his anger after I said it.

“God, Julia if you said that to him. How do you think that makes him feel? If he’s in New York now; and you’re saying there’s nothing there for you?”

“It’s not like that.” I make the Blackjack
stand down
sign,
but she doesn’t see it because she’s back to looking out the window again, apparently, for answers of her own. “We’re friends. That’s it.”

“Friends,” Kimberley says with derision. She turns toward me. She has this bleak expression, very un-Kimmy-like. “I don’t think men and women can be friends with each other.”

“You don’t really believe that, do you? I
have
to be friends with Jake. He’s my attorney, he’s taking care of Hamilton Equities, and the settling of Evan’s estate; he, basically, works for me. That set him off too, when I brought it up.” I slide down onto the sofa. “We have to be friends.” Silence. “Kimmy, are you even listening to me?”

“I’m listening,” she says in a faraway voice. She has her back to me, again, but I see her reach up and wipe at the side of her face.

“Are you
crying
?”

“No.” She shakes her head emphatically. “But Jules,” she says in this choked-up voice. “I need you to tell me everything is going to be okay.”

Oh shit.

“Well, I hate to lie on a Monday,” I say.

She tries to laugh, but it comes out as this strangled cry. Her face is streaked with black mascara.

“What’s going on?” I ask, suddenly uneasy.

“Want to get out of here?” Kimberley asks.

≈ ≈

Kimberley settles into the passenger seat of my car and looks over at me. “You want to go get a cup of coffee?”

Kimberley doesn’t
do coffee
. She swills it on her way to someplace else, on her way to work, or a meeting, or an event. She doesn’t sit down in a café and have coffee and
talk
, not even with me.
Ever
.

But fifteen minutes later, that’s what we’re doing. Sitting and drinking café au lait in some charming café about ten blocks from
Liaison’s
office in Paris.