Love and Other Consolation Prizes(95)

The clerk looked at him as though he’d heard a million excuses to cut in line and a million more sob stories about missing children and misplaced wallets and purses. Then the man lit a cigarette and checked his clipboard. “Name?”

“Ernest Young, looking for Grace Young.”

The clerk flipped to the end of his paperwork and then said, “No need for the sob story, pal. You’re on will call.” He handed Ernest a VIP ticket and shouted, “Next!”

Ernest regarded the ticket, confused but grateful, as he walked to the entrance to the elevators. While waiting, he gazed up at the rotating restaurant that sat atop the pitched columns, five hundred feet above them. Thousands of feet higher, rivers of clouds stretched across the sky, slowly drifting beyond the tip of the needle, which made the spire appear to lean, as though millions of square feet of concrete and iron were falling. Ernest had to look away to keep from feeling dizzy.

“Gracie, what are you doing?” he whispered to himself as he watched the golden elevator capsules, one descending, and one rising. He could see faces in the elevator windows, some happy, some nervous and scared.

Once inside the building, he crowded into the lift as a tall elevator operator in a short dress welcomed their group with a cheery smile and a brief introduction. As they ascended beyond the ground-level visitors’ center, Ernest heard a rhythmic booming, drumming, and the brassy strains of trumpets and trombones. The World’s Fair Band emerged into view below, dressed in white and yellow, parading down the street. The musicians seemed like a throwback to Ernest’s first fair, except their caps were now emblazoned with the spiraling pattern of a hydrogen atom. As though on cue, a pair of fighter jets streaked across the sky, split in different directions, and wiggled their wings at the fairgoers below, who waved pennants and caps. Ernest swallowed, remembering how an identical jet had flown overhead and crashed on opening day. A married couple on the ground had been killed.

Ernest closed his eyes as the ground fell away beneath them. Then he opened them and for a moment was transported to 1909. He was back in the hot-air balloon, rising above an entire world that was celebrating the future.

He blinked as the elevator slowed and the view from the window portals was blocked by steel girders and slabs of concrete. When the doors slid open, Ernest stepped out into a crowded black-tie party, where finely dressed men and women were celebrating with glasses of champagne. Ernest felt underdressed and certainly uninvited as he scanned the room for any sign of Gracie. He worked his way through the room and around a grand piano. He held his breath as he stepped into the open air of the observation deck, felt the wind, appreciated the towering height. The sun was setting, kissing the tops of the Olympic Mountains, as boats on Lake Washington and Puget Sound switched on their red and green running lights. People milled about with cameras, elegant couples, posing, smiling, waving exposed squares of Polaroid film. Ernest searched for Gracie as guests and dignitaries mingled together, waiting for their snapshot smiles to develop. He circumnavigated the deck, ignoring the view of the fair below as he searched.

Then he saw a familiar woman, but much older, in a pearled gown as white as her hair. The spitting image of Madam Flora, she was walking toward him, also scanning the crowd. Her blue eyes lit up when she saw him, greeting him with open arms and a smile that he’d never forgotten.

Maisie.

They met amid the current of people, two stones in a river that eddied and swirled about them. The lines of age, the extra curves and wrinkles, the heaviness of time and circumstance had caught up to the Mayflower, just as those years had accumulated on him. Her hair was short, like when they’d first met. And instead of a hummingbird hat she wore a faded antique ribbon pinned to her shimmering dress. He recognized it as a commemorative souvenir from Hurrah Day.

“Hurrah,” she said, but the word came out more as a question.

“What are you doing here?” Ernest asked. He stood stunned, gazing at the smiling face he hadn’t seen in decades. “And do I call you Margaret now?”

She beamed. “You can always call me Maisie if you want to. No need to stand on ceremony. I’m too old to care what people think of me now. And I was about to ask what made you call me after all these years, but…”

Neither one spoke. Instead they hugged each other, held on as though each couldn’t believe the other person was real. Then they hugged again.

“Well, I can see by the look in your eyes, this meeting is a surprise to you,” Maisie said. “Just like the first time we met…”

“All those years ago.”

“I’ve always wanted to see you,” she said. “I’ve wondered how this would go, after all this time. But, I’m guessing this meeting is someone else’s doing, isn’t it?”

Ernest looked around, expecting to find Gracie lurking nearby, smiling, giggling, happy or heartbroken, lucid or delusional, he wasn’t sure. But she was nowhere to be found. “Fahn goes by Gracie these days.”

“And she’s still your…wife?”

Ernest drew a deep breath and exhaled, nodding. “Something like that.”

Maisie smiled, but Ernest could feel the disappointment.

“And you’re married again?” he asked.

“Oh, I’m long since widowed,” Maisie said. “Twice over.”

“I’m so sorry to hear that. You look beautiful, as you always did. And it’s so wonderful to see you in person. I’ve followed you in the newspaper over the years—the society page might as well be dedicated to you. It’s just that…” Ernest hesitated.