Matchmaking for Beginners(60)



There is not a taxicab in the world that could contain both me and Noah right after that meeting, so I make sure to turn down the taxi he hails as soon as we get outside. He is a big brown bruise of a man just now, furiously texting with his mom, and I feel like I’m in a dream I can’t wake up from.

I decide to take my chances with the thunder and lightning and the rain that is splattering all around us. I wave him away and start down the street, pulling my sweater up over my head.

As soon as I get to a Starbucks—a familiar landmark!—I duck inside and find myself surrounded by a zillion rain-soaked people, all tapping on their phones and ordering skinny chai lattes.

I’m shivering and reading the sign, trying to decide what to get when a woman next to me says sharply, “Are you on line?”

“Pardon?”

“I said: Are you on this line or not?”

“Oh, you mean am I in this line? Yes, oh yes, I am,” I say. “I thought you were asking me if I was online, like on the Internet.”

She stares at me, shakes her head, and then turns away, muttering about some people.

Huh. So people in New York stand on lines instead of in them. Good to know.

After I get my chai latte, I find an armchair in the corner that a guy with a laptop is just vacating and sink down into it. I’m going to be living in this city for three months.

At the table next to me, two women are talking, leaning forward in intensity like no one else in the world is there. One of them has deep-purple hair, and both of them have on coats that look like they’re made of quilted black parachutes. And by the way, they’re in love, and later today they’ll probably go out and get a dog.

I need a coat, probably. And a job. A pair of warm gloves. More black clothing so I can fit in.

I take a sip of my chai. And all of a sudden, just like that, I know that I don’t want to be in Brooklyn. I want to go home.

This is not a good place to live. It’s dirty; it’s loud; it’s impersonal—and for heaven’s sake, it doesn’t even know how to have a proper thunderstorm! I like my thunderstorms to arrive in the late afternoon after a buildup of humidity and heat so that by the time the storm comes, you’re grateful for it. It does its job, chasing out the sticky air, and moves on, and the sky clears right up. But this—this is a constant gray drizzle with intermittent booms that seems like it could go on all day. Who needs this?

I tap my fingernails on the table, push all the crumbs into a little pile. Maybe I should go back to Charles Sanford’s office and tell him that I’ve made a horrible mistake. I’ll tell him that I’m simply not up to it.

This was an amazing gift, TOTALLY amazing, and I am very appreciative of Blix’s kindness, but, sadly, I myself am not up to it. But . . . thank you.

Let the place go to a charity, and I’ll take the next flight home tomorrow, and later this week, I’ll tell my family the good news that I’m marrying Jeremy.

We’ll go to Cancun for our honeymoon like Natalie and Brian did. In a few years, we’ll have a kid, and then another, hopefully of the opposite sex, and I’ll decorate the house and garden and join the PTA and drive in carpools and keep a color-coded calendar hanging on the kitchen wall and get to say things like, “Honey, did you do your homework?”

I kind of love this idea. And in thirty or so years, I’ll be there to help my parents when they need to move to a nursing home. Jeremy will close his physical therapy practice, and maybe we’ll go back to Cancun for our fiftieth wedding anniversary when we’re eighty. And we’ll say, “Where did the time go?” like everybody else in the history of the planet. And then we’ll die fulfilled and people will say, “They were the luckiest ones.”

That’s a life, isn’t it? A person could do that. There will be so many, many good moments to that kind of life.

So why does it feel like right this minute I’m at a crossroads, trying to decide between the unknown and the known? Between the city and the suburbs? Between risk and safety? Didn’t I already make that choice? I told the guy I’d marry him! I kissed him right there in the diner, and I saw the happy look on his face, and how surprised he was—and now all I have to do is tell him that there’s a little piece of real estate that’s holding things up.

Blix, I am so sorry, but I already decided all this about my life. And now you’ve come to give me a gift that is going to muck up my whole life, and I’m sorry, but it’s just such a huge, huge mistake! I am not the person you thought. I don’t want a big, big life.

I know that if I called Natalie right this minute and told her everything that’s happening, she wouldn’t even have to think about it. She’d say I should run, not walk, back to Charles Sanford’s office this minute and insist that he rip up all the pages with my signature. Refuse to leave until every last shred of my signature is gone.

I’m about to punch in her number when I remember that I am carrying a letter from Blix right in my handbag. With my heart pounding, I take it out and open it, somehow knowing it will change everything.





TWENTY-FIVE





BLIX


Dear Marnie,

Sweetheart, an hour ago I got off the phone with you. You were asking me for a spell to bring Noah back to you, a request that pierced me to the core of myself. You love him. YOU LOVE HIM. At first I thought I’d go over to my book of spells—yes, I really do have one, but it’s more a joke than anything else because the best spells just sort of happen without any need of external stuff—but then I thought, what the hell, I’d try to find just the thing you could drink or eat that would make you a magnet for Noah once again. Maybe it would be only a placebo spell, but it would work because that’s how it all works. They work on BELIEF. And some directed energy. Here’s the truth, sweet pea: we are all vibrational beings in physical bodies, and thoughts actually become reality so you have to make sure you’re thinking about what you want and not about what you don’t want.

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