| DON'T
LOOK DOWN by Tima Smith |
CHAPTER ONE
I’m standing there
half asleep, sipping coffee and listening to a guy in dreadlocks
play “Dream a Little Dream of Me” on his guitar,
when the headlight on the seven-forty noses into the station.
I think about taking the next train, waking up a little, finishing
the song and the coffee. But there’s the meeting with
Mr. Minican at nine-fifteen. The meeting where he’s expecting
to see drawings for the spring line. Not sketches, Amanda, I
tell myself. Drawings. With details, styles, specifications.
The guitar player glances up at me, which makes me wonder if
I just said all that out loud.
The train squeals to a
stop, the doors slide open, all the people on the platform start
moving at the same time, and I take one final gulp and toss
the cup into a bin. Then I toss a dollar into the open guitar
case, and the wink the singer gives me knocks me off balance.
That makes the second time today, and I’ve only been awake
for a little over an hour.
I slide into a window seat
and consider the other reason this day has me on edge. Not that
it’s something you particularly go out of your way to
commemorate, the date you got divorced. But it ends up being
there anyway. Leaping out at you from the calendar while you’re
holding down the button on the toaster so it can’t pop
right back up again after only three seconds and wondering if
it’s ever going to stop raining.
I lean my umbrella against
my leg and pull my sketchbook and pencil out of my bag.
“Excuse me.”
His elbow bumps my arm as he sits down.
We smile at each other
briefly. Out of the corner of my eye I recognize the shoes,
Gucci. And the attaché. He’s occasionally on the
seven-forty, but so far the only contact has been visual. And
unconvincingly accidental.
“Lousy weather,”
he says.
“Terrible. This rain
seems endless.”
“They did say it
might clear out today.”
“I think they said
that yesterday, too.”
“Well, eventually
they have to be right.”
We smile at each other
again and I open my sketchbook to the page I was working on
last night before I traded it in for a bowl of popcorn and P.D.
James.
I feel him eyeing the drawings.
“Art student?”
I shake my head. “I
design jewelry.”
“Ohh.” He watches
me for a while very intently, and Mr. Minican floats into my
mind, tapping his index finger on the confidentiality oath I
had to sign to get the job. “As with any creative line,
Amanda, we must expect a high degree of discretion from our
employees.” He’d have a coronary if he could see
me now. But the whole thing’s so ludicrous, so paranoid.
The oath. The locked offices. The vault.
“I hope you’re
not a spy scooping designs from the spring line.”
“Got me.” He
puts his hands up. “What are those anyway? They look like
some sort of weird modern art.”
“They’re aboriginal,
actually. Australian.” I look at the ancient symbols
I’ve drawn onto rings, pendants, bracelets.
“Where do you find
them?”
The conductor announces
my stop. I snap the sketchbook shut, slip it into my bag. “Sorry,”
I say, leaning toward him a little, “but that’s
top secret stuff.” I slide my bag onto my shoulder. “And
this is where I get off.”
He stands to let me out.
“My stops Huntington,” he says. “Nice talking
to you.”
“I enjoyed it.”
“I’m Philip,
by the way.”
“Amanda.”
The train stops, the doors
open, I move away.
“Amanda?”
I turn around.
“You forgot something.”
He holds my umbrella out. “See you again?”
Nice, I think, moving with
the flow across the platform toward the stairs.
On the bottom step I glance
up toward the exit to see if it’s a drizzle or a downpour,
but it’s neither. For the first time in four days the
gray is gone, the air’s bright, the sky almost blue.
“Is that sunshine?”
someone says. And then someone else, “Can you believe
it?” Seeing the color of the sky, I feel my balance coming
back, simple as that. A little sun, a little exchange on the
train. I start humming “Dream a Little Dream of Me,”
and that’s when I see Ramon, just a glimpse through the
spaces in the crowd ahead of me on the stairs.
He’s the last thing
I’m expecting, so I don’t do any of the things I
should—at least call his name or, better yet, aim the
pointy end of my umbrella at his back. I just stand there staring
as he rises into the sunlight, at the thick curly hair, his
handsome head, the smooth line of his suit across his shoulders.
He reaches the top, turns the corner into the bright air and,
poof, he’s gone.
A girl with two rings in
her nostril pushes by me. “This ain’t no escalator,
you know,” she says.
Two seconds later I’m
pushing past her, weaving my way around, squeezing through,
shoving when I have to. I step on somebody’s foot. I slam
shoulders with a guy in a sweatshirt. “Sorry,” I
say. “Sorry. Sorry,” and keep going. The only thing
on my mind right now is Ramon and how much I want to grab him
by his elegant elbow and ask him who the hell he thinks he is
anyway. And how much I want to let him know how furious I am.
Seriously, utterly furious.
At the top, I head in the
direction he disappeared, half blind in the sudden light, groping
in my bag for my sunglasses. Ahead, there’s a sea of people
charging across the intersection, heading down half a dozen
sidewalks. And he may be distinctive, but he’s not that
distinctive.
I start to drift in the
other direction, looking back over my shoulder every few seconds
while it all churns around inside me—
all the things I didn’t get to say.
“Amanda! Wait!”
I know the voice. I break
into a trot and try to make myself small. I jog a block, make
it across the street after the Don’t Walk goes solid,
throw myself at the revolving doors of One Prospect and squeeze
into Elevator A.
I catch a glimpse of Carter
just as the elevator door slides shut. His face is red. His
tie’s crooked. Why won’t he just give up?
I clutch my bag to my chest
and start feeling around inside for my office key, and that’s
when I discover that my sketch book’s gone. |
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