The Good Luck of Right Now(57)

“Then I would write out the letter over and over until my penmanship was good enough to be read by a real officially elected mayor. Mom would read it, and as we dropped the letter into the neighborhood mailbox, we’d both cross our fingers and hope the mayor was moved enough to let us visit City Hall—that I had been a good enough boy.

“I’d always receive a personalized handwritten response a week or so later, saying I was a good boy and was allowed to visit City Hall. Mom and I would walk down Broad Street hand in hand, watching City Hall grow up from the street taller and taller, and we’d take the elevator up to the top of City Hall—which, incidentally, once was one of the tallest buildings in the world and was the tallest in Philadelphia until 1987—and we’d look out over the City of Brotherly Love, seeing how Philadelphia is mapped out in right angles, like a big grid constructed by the most anal of city planners determined to make sure no one would ever get lost, and I’d be so proud to be high in the sky looking down, knowing I’d earned it by being an exemplary boy.”

I could see excitement in Elizabeth’s eyes, and I hoped I was doing well here, because my heart was pounding and my gloves were soaked through with sweat.

“It wasn’t until I was an adult that I figured out anyone and everyone is allowed to go to the top—regardless of whether they have been good or not—and that Mom had written the letters from the mayor, pretending.

“And so I visited the top of City Hall again as a man, took the same tour, but of course it wasn’t as special anymore, because anyone could do it—I hadn’t earned it. The building didn’t rise as majestically from the asphalt when I walked down Broad Street, the elevator ride up didn’t make my heart pound, the view wasn’t as spectacular, the right angles of the city blocks didn’t look as crisp, and I didn’t even want to stay up there for very long, not without Mom.”

“She sounds wonderful,” Elizabeth said, and smiled.

“She was.”

“You miss her.”

“Very much.”

“I’m sorry for your loss.”

“I’m sorry you had to eat your pet rabbits and were abducted by aliens.”

She sat down on a bench, and I sat next to her.

We watched the snow dance its way down from the sky and onto the river.

I thought Elizabeth would look up into the night, trying to spot UFOs, but she never lifted her chin even once.

She wasn’t interested in UFOs that night—nor was she interested in talking about aliens.

From watching movies, I knew that this was the time to put my arm around Elizabeth, and my heart was about to explode, just thinking about the possibility of having my arm around another human being, our ribs touching through our coats.

But I didn’t put my arm around her.

We just lingered next to each other on the bench until our hats were covered in white snow and our noses were red.

When she stood, I stood.

We walked back to the hotel in silence, leaving two sets of footprints that would shortly be covered by new accumulating snow and then shoveled away, erasing all evidence of our walk through Old Montreal together, and I thought about just how many millions of people had had significant small, quiet moments in the city of Montreal—moments that were so important to the people having them, but insignificant to everyone else who had ever lived.

Elizabeth opened her hotel room door with the plastic key card and then said, “Good night, Bartholomew.”

“Good night,” I said, standing in the hallway.

She looked up into my eyes for a long time, with her hand on the doorknob and the door slightly ajar.

Then she reached into her pocket and pulled out another tektite necklace.

When Elizabeth held up the leather loop, I lowered my head; she placed the necklace around my neck and nodded.

I nodded back.

“Max wanted you to have that, once you worked up to it. You have,” she said and then went into her room.

It was funny because two tektite rocks didn’t really feel like anything, but I noticed the weight of three.

Three wasn’t too heavy, but palpable.

It was a tipping point.

I stood in the hallway for a time, wondering why—after spending the entire day with three people—I felt so much lonelier than I had ever before in my entire life, and yet I didn’t want to go into the room with Father McNamee.

I wanted to be with Elizabeth—just to sit next to her silently for another five minutes would have been divine.

I also wanted to be by myself too, which was confusing.

Somehow I ended up all alone on the roof of the hotel, next to the steamy pool that was now lit, glowing blue and wondrous.

I looked out over the city and wondered if my biological father was really out there, somewhere in Montreal.

I looked up and wondered where Mom was.

I sat down on a chair and felt the cold on my face as I watched the snowflakes evaporate instantly, the moment they hit the warm, blue, chlorinated pool water—and I wondered if what I was witnessing could be a metaphor for our lives somehow, like we were all just little bits falling toward an inevitable dissolve, if that makes any sense at all.

I rested there by myself for what felt like hours, feeling like a snowflake the second it hits a heated pool—wondering if that could really be our whole life summed up in the grand scheme of the universe.