“I haven’t been able to stop thinking about you since you came into the barbershop. I’ve come this close to calling you every day. I’ve tried to put my finger on what it was, what element of our conversation made this happen, but . . . I talk to people all the time. As a mayor, that’s three-quarters of my job. And here as well, that’s why people go to barbershops, so they can talk and make sure someone is listening. Men either go to bars and unload their problems on the bartender, or they talk to their barber while having a centimeter shaved off a head of hair that doesn’t need cutting.”
A car honks loudly outside my room. A lover is waiting for his mistress to join him. Or an angry father is trying to get the attention of a wayward teenager in the kind of trouble that only takes place in motels.
“Where are you, Kelly?” Vince asks. “What is all that noise?”
“You talk to a lot of people,” I remind him. I like to hear Vince describe his life, his world. It is hard to believe he lives in the same town and the same time as I do. He makes everything sound so much simpler than I have ever found it to be.
“I don’t want to make a mistake,” he says. “I don’t want to say too much.”
“We all make mistakes.”
I feel like I did when I was a little kid, standing at the edge of the high dive at the pool. The board quivering under my weight, sending chills of terror up my spine. My mother giving me a look from her lawn chair that said, Just jump, Kelly. Don’t keep everyone behind you waiting. And Theresa or Ryan yelling from the side of the pool, “Be careful!”
“You can say whatever you want,” I say.
“I’ve fallen in love with you.” His voice wavers like a teenage boy’s. “I know this is completely inappropriate. I know you’re married to one of my oldest friends, who is a wonderful man. I know this means nothing to you—”
“Not nothing,” I say.
“This . . . this sensation hasn’t happened to me in over thirty years. At first I decided to keep my feelings to myself, to avoid you, to leave you in peace, but I’m not that strong. I told myself we could have just one more conversation, that I would tell you how I feel, and I would back away. And then you called tonight.”
My cell phone rings in my purse. I forgot to turn it off when I came into the room.
“I’ve upset you.”
I unzip my purse and pull out the ringing cell phone. I lay the real phone next to me on the bed. “Hello,” I say, still a mix of quivering and blankness. Still waiting at the edge of the diving board. Still not responding.
Louis says, “Your mother just broke her hip. She’s on her way to Valley Hospital.”
When I turn off the power on my cell phone and Louis’s voice dies away, all I can think to say to Vince is, “Can I call you back later?”
LOUIS IS waiting at the entrance to the emergency room when I arrive. He takes my coat from me, which I am carrying balled against my chest like a bag of groceries. I don’t know how I drove here. I don’t remember one road sign I passed or one turn I took. All I could think during the short drive was that my mother had known what I was doing and had decided to punish me.
“She fell in her room,” Louis says. “Apparently she lay there without calling for help for hours. The doctors think she might have had a stroke.”
“Why did they bring her to Valley instead of Hackensack Hospital?”
“That was my call,” Louis says. “Valley’s closer, and I thought that since it’s Lila’s training hospital, we might get special treatment.” We walk in through the automatic doors. He says, “She’s very tough, Kelly. Don’t worry.”
“I know she’s tough. Can I see her?”
“She’s with the doctor now. The nurse said the doctor would come out as soon as he was done with the examination.”
“I should be with her,” I say.
The waiting room is almost empty. There is a young man reading to a small girl, and an old man dozing in the corner. Louis takes my elbow and leads me to one of the neon green chairs by the door.