Change Places with Me(19)

She clasped her hand to her jaw. What had been a dull ache had turned to searing pain.

“What’s the matter?” Selena said. “It’s Nick and Darcy, isn’t it?”

Rose stood. Her half-eaten oatmeal looked thick and soggy as wet cement. She placed some money on the table.

“Thanks. I may need that if I can’t find any cash,” Selena said.

“It’s the tip.”

“For that stupid waiter who wouldn’t shut up?” Astrid said. “I ought to tell the owners to fire him.”

Rose picked up the tip. “I’ll give it to him myself.”

“The party?” Selena said. “Next week? I’ll tell everybody.”

At the door, Cooper came to Rose’s side. “Are you all right?”

“My jaw really hurts,” she said, practically hunched over.

“How’d you hurt it?”

“I don’t know.”

He just looked at her. “Hey, if you need to lie down, there’s a room in the back with a couch. Do you want me to call someone to pick you up?”

He was really nice. “Cooper,” she said, and insisted he take the tip, and by mistake told him her old name, maybe because Kim had just said it, and realized she felt better. “It’s nice to actually meet you.”

“Nice to actually meet you, too.”

He stuck out his hand. Such an old-fashioned gesture. She took it. And didn’t let go. They just held hands.

“Would you want to hang out sometime?”

“I don’t know—there’s this guy . . .” She shook her head. “Well, I guess not, really. I might’ve set a world record for the shortest relationship ever.”

“I bet I beat it. One time I took a girl to the movies. Her old boyfriend was on line behind us, and by the time I bought the tickets, they were back together.”

She smiled.

“Now that’s a real smile,” he said.

She pointed across the street. “You see that place, Forget-Me-Not? What is it?”

“No idea. I never noticed it before.”

Exactly. It was meant not to be noticed.

“Are you heading up there?” he asked her.

“Yes. No. I’m going . . . somewhere else. To the Bronx Global Conservation Center.”

“You mean the zoo?”

“I mean the zoo.”

“Mm-hmm.” Cooper looked deep in thought. “The rush here is winding down, and I haven’t been to the zoo in . . . ever.”

“Really? You’ve got to see the gorillas!” She gave his hand a tug.

“Let me get my jacket. I’d love to see the gorillas.”





CHAPTER 11


An old express bus left Belle Heights every hour on the hour in the direction of the zoo and returned to Belle Heights every hour on the half hour. Rose and Cooper found seats together; Rose settled into the cushy fabric lining, so unlike the plastic seats on hydro-buses. Cooper had on a bulky shearling jacket, which, since it was slightly too big for him, made Rose feel like she was sitting next to an overstuffed pillow.

Neither one said anything down several hilly, curving streets of Belle Heights.

Rose spoke first. “Wish I had my phone with me. I’ve got a great song on it. ‘Changes,’ by David Bowie.”

“Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes,” Cooper sang, very badly. “Here, try this one.”

He took out his phone, found the song he wanted, and held it to her ear. It was a short song with a simple, quiet, lilting tune, and the words—well, they took her breath away.

It seems we stood and talked like this before We looked at each other in the same way then, But I can’t remember where or when.

Some things that happen for the first time, Seem to be happening again.

And so it seems that we have met before, And laughed before, and loved before, But who knows where or when.

“You like it?” Cooper asked her.

“More than that. I’m crazy about it.”

“It’s called ‘Where or When,’ from a Broadway show almost a hundred years old.”

But it could have been written that day and sung for the first time by the person sitting behind them on the bus. It felt that immediate and timeless.

Cooper started talking, mostly about his family. He had two older sisters, Ava and Ginger; one was a geneticist, and the other was an engineer who built suspension bridges. “That takes all the pressure off me. I can do—whatever.” Which turned out to be writing and filming his own science-fiction movie. “Everything will be exactly the way it is now, except for one specific thing.”

“And what’s that?”

“Haven’t gotten quite that far yet.”

Rose laughed. She liked Cooper’s voice, easy and gentle. Back in the diner, she’d liked his eyes, and how he’d held her hand.

Things were starting to add up here.

When they got off the bus, the wind was sharply colder. Rose huddled inside her coat and pressed her face into the collar.

“Cold?” Cooper said. “I can give you my jacket.”

“No, I’m okay.” She remembered something from long ago. “That’s what Kim used to do for me, when we were kids.”