Remembrance

I sat back down in the chair. Now we were getting somewhere. Now we were reaching the tall, dark stranger part. Better yet, this handsome stranger was preloved. Maybe he was the man who was going to take Jamie out of my mind and heart. And maybe Nora did know how to play the game after all.

“When am I to meet this man?” I asked, for I know how to play the game.

Nora just sat there staring at me, wordless, while I stared back. I was glad I wasn’t paying her by the hour.

“Sorry,” she said, then looked away. “Just reading thoughts.”

This statement made my mind reel. What were my thoughts? Could she read anyone at any time? What went on in the heads of people? Could she sit next to a guy on the bus and know he was planning a murder? I was sure there was a story in this.

But then, of course, a person couldn’t read other people’s minds, could she?

While I waited, Nora ran her hand over her face (proving she wore no makeup, something I truly envied; my hair and skin are so pale, remove the makeup and I look like a rabbit). “You are a very unhappy person.”

I drew in my breath sharply. No one had ever before said that to me. I am successful, self-confident, pretty, smart, etc. I am what I hoped I would become.

I gave Nora a raised-eyebrow look. “I am a very successful writer.” Damn! I thought. Rule number one: Never tell psychics anything; let them tell you.

“Money means nothing in life,” Nora said. “Success means nothing. You could be a queen and be a failure in life.”

The British royal family has proven that, haven’t they? “What constitutes success?” I asked, deciding to forgo sarcasm in favor of hearing another opinion.

“The giving and receiving of love,” she answered.

Love, I thought. Love is what I write about. Specifically, giving love to a man. But at the moment a human man was something I didn’t have.

“I have friends,” I heard myself saying. “I love many people and they love me.” I sounded like a petulant child.

“No,” she said. “For you there is something more.”

Maybe I looked frustrated or maybe I looked as though I were going to start crying—about how I felt. I have a tendency toward self-pity anyway, and her telling me I wasn’t happy had rung some bells inside me. I had heard that Steve’s wedding was beautiful.

“Maybe I should explain,” Nora said. “Many women can be happy with any of…well, perhaps one man in twenty. But then they don’t ask much. They want a nice man, someone who’ll support them, who plays with the children. They—”

“Every woman wants that.” I have a dreadful habit of interrupting people. Only in New York, where people talk on top of each other, do I fit in.

“Yes, that’s what I said,” Nora answered, eyes boring into me, pointing out my rudeness and showing she had more spirit than I originally thought. “Most women want a man who is good to them and they choose him based on compatibility, race, money, education, things like that.”

After that she just sat there, saying not a word. Yes, okay, I thought, so you told me the prologue, but where’s the story? I searched my mind for what I was supposed to say, since she seemed to be waiting for me to speak.

Sometimes my brain works like lightning but sometimes it just sits there. “Oh,” I said at last. “What do I want?”

Nora smiled so sweetly at me that I felt as though I were back in first grade and had just received a star from my teacher.

“You,” she said, with twinkling eyes, “want everything. You want a Grand Passion. A Great Romance. You want the stars and the moon. You want a man who is brilliant and strong, as well as soft and weak, a man who’s handsome and talented and…” She paused, looked hard into my eyes and said, “You want a man who can love. Love with all his being, just the way you’d love him in return.”

I collapsed back against the chair and stared at her. In months, therapists, self-help books, palm readers, astrologers, all of them combined had not figured out as much about me as this woman had in minutes.

“Yes,” I managed to say. “I want it all.” I was so full of emotion I could hardly speak.

Unfortunately, what Nora did then was give me a very stern look. “You ought to settle for less.”

My head started to clear. What were we talking about? My sense of humor was beginning to come back to me. “Okay,” I said, smiling. “I’ll settle for half. You have any good-looking cousins? Except red-haired men. I don’t like red-haired men.”

Nora didn’t so much as crack a smile. “No. No one will do for you. You will know him when you see him.”

I lost my humor. Yeah, right. One of those, I’ll-know-him-when-I-see-him gags. What I wanted was an address, or at least a telephone number. I wanted someone who would drive Jamie from my head.

Nora was looking at me in that reading-thoughts way. Let her look into my mind all she wanted. Whatever was in my mind had already been put on paper and sold to my publishing house. And if she “saw” Jamie I could truthfully say that he was just another of my paper heroes.