SPOTLIGHT (4 page)

Chapter Five

Abby?”

Those gorgeous pale blue eyes squinted at her as if he couldn’t quite believe she was really standing there in front of him. “What are you doing here? I mean, I’m glad to see you, definitely but it’s like, what, almost midnight?”

“It’s one fifteen actually,” Abby said, trying to answer the simplest of questions first.

“Is everything okay?” For a moment he looked genuinely worried.

“No. I mean, yes. Everything’s fine, thank you.” Abby took a calming breath. Why did he have the ability to make her so wonderfully flustered? “It’s just that, you see, I’m your neighbor. We’re neighbors.”

“We are?” This only seemed to confuse him more. He stuck his head out of the doorway and looked down the hall both ways as if the answer was out there.

“I’m 8C, you’re 8B,” she explained, pointing back to her open door.

“Oh wow. That’s amazing.”

Abby nodded her agreement. That about summed it up nicely, she thought.

“Anyway, I’m actually here about the music,” Abby said. She had had an angry speech that she’d half formulated on the way from her bed to here but it didn’t seem quite appropriate now. Besides, all her anger seemed to have melted away into giggly, bumbling school girl mush. “It’s a nice song. But it’s kind of loud.”

“The music?” He was scrunching up his brow again and Abby decided that she enjoyed his totally confused expression as much as she enjoyed his full force smile. Maybe more.

It was as if a light bulb turned on. “Oh!” He turned on a dime, disappearing behind the open door and back into his apartment. A few moments later the music came to an abrupt stop. He appeared in the doorway as quickly as he’d left a sheepish grin on his face.

“I’m so sorry. I always put the music on while I’m working on a story. It helps me concentrate, kind of blocks out everything else so I can focus, you know?”

“Definitely blocks out everything,” Abby said teasing.

“Your apartment was empty for the longest time. In fact, I didn’t even notice anyone had moved in,” William replied. He leaned against the doorway, stretching his long lean form against the wood.

“I moved in only a couple weeks ago. Actually, the day you saved me,” she reminded him with a blush.

“Right,” he said, “you had those suitcases with you. And I rushed off like a jerk and didn’t even help you or see where you were headed. Did I apologize for that yet?”

“At least a million times. Stop. You’re forgiven indefinitely.”

“I wanted to make it up to you. Take you out, maybe.”

Suddenly he pulled away from the door, taking his rich wonderful cologne scent with him. He looked all at once boyishly shy and Abby wondered how he could go from seeming so confident to being suddenly doubtful. Honestly, it was flattering how he seemed so desirous of being in her good graces.

“Was it too forward of me?” he asked, looking away. “To leave you my number? I should have asked properly. That was rude. That’s why you never called.”

Abby shook her head vehemently. “No, I didn’t call because I’m a complete and utter airhead. It was so busy at the restaurant that night. I somehow misplaced your number. But it was the sweetest note.”

That was true. Though she hadn’t been able to find it, she had had William’s words memorized almost instantly.
Maybe we can meet again
, he’d said and like an answered prayer, they had.
Nothing would make me happier,
he had said. Did he really mean that? Abby found that she hoped he did.

“So, yes?” William asked. He was back to leaning against the door again, smiling down at her, a playful glimmer in his eyes.

“Uh, yes what?” Abby felt her body temperature rise. The feeling had little to do with the continuing heat wave and everything to do with William’s attentions. He had a way of looking at you like you were the only person in the world.

“Is that a yes to going out with me? I’m asking properly and in person now,” he said.

Abby smiled. “Yes, I’d love to. Anytime.”

“Now?” He asked with a grin.

She let out a loud laugh at the audacity of that but then she saw by the sweet, earnest expression on his face that he meant it.

“Now?” she echoed.

“Well, it looks like I already woke you up.”

“You didn’t really wake me. I couldn’t sleep,” she cut in.

“And I’ve been up staring at the computer screen so long the words don’t even make sense anymore. There’s a small twenty-four-hour café at the end of the block that serves tea that’ll put you right to sleep. That and amazing chocolate cake.” He shot her a winning smile. “I know it’s not traditionally romantic like dinner and a movie, but it might be fun.”
            It definitely sounded like fun, and after all they were in the middle of the city that never slept. Still, Abby bit her lip, wondering at the impropriety of the impromptu date. Before moving to Manhattan she’d vowed to herself not to be the type of small town girl that people took advantage of. But this was William, handsome, funny, heroic William with the laughing eyes and shy grin that she felt she had known her entire life though it had only been two weeks.

Abby had faltered too long, William began to frown.

“It’s a silly idea,” he said but Abby shook her head.

“No, it sounds fun! And chocolate cake? I’m sold.”

“Great!”

Abby looked down at herself, suddenly remembering her state of dress.

And my bed hair, oh no,
she thought to herself.
Did he really just ask me out looking like this? He must really like me.

Out loud she said, “Just give me a moment to change. Even in New York it can’t be okay to trudge down the street in your bedroom slippers.”

“Right, me too,” he said. “And I’ve got to grab my glasses.”

“Glasses?” Oh, she couldn’t wait to see that.

He waved away her teasing. “I usually wear contact lenses during the day.”

That explained why he had been squinting at her like she was an apparition when she’d arrived unannounced at his front door.

They parted ways, Abby rushing back into her apartment to change into jeans and a light sweater. In front of the mirror she shook out her brown hair, lamenting the frizz brought on by the humidity, but she didn’t want to keep him waiting. She grabbed her keys and wallet feeling woozy with excitement. William was standing in the hallway already waiting for her when she came out. He’d changed from pajamas to a plaid button down shirt and khaki shorts, his thin framed glasses perched on his nose.

“You look great,” he said, pushing his glasses up higher on his face. “I look like a dork.”

She laughed. “Not at all.”

William smiled, he held out his hand for her. “Shall we?”

She took it, liking how their entwined fingers seemed to fit together seamlessly.

“We shall.”

They walked down the hallway hand in hand towards the elevator.

Chapter Six

Abby dreamed of her sister, alive and beautiful and whole.

The last time she had seen Angelica, her twin sister had been sixteen and so Abby could only refer to her own face to imagine what an older Angie might have looked like. However, her subconscious seemed to have no difficulty summoning up a believable image.

In keeping with the usual strangeness of dream logic, they were both grown up but back in their old shared room in South Meadow. Abby was on her side of the room. Her suitcase was open on her bed though she wasn’t sure where she was going. She packed all the same, folding her clothes with an agitated urgency.

Angie was on the other side, lounging on her own bed, watching with that look of smugness she had been wearing so frequently in her last days set firmly on her face. Angie was speaking, Abby realized, in that way you realize things in dreams, but whatever her twin sister was saying, Abby couldn’t hear it. And Abby was beginning to understand that she couldn’t hear Angie because she didn’t want to.

At sixteen, Angie had taken her free-spiritedness to a whole new level. She had always been the exuberant one, impulsive in ways that were both endearing and alarming. The Dawes family was small and tight knit. Both daughters were close to their parents. But lately, for Angie, secrets were creeping in. She had a habit of disappearing, sometimes for entire days only to show up at dinner as though nothing was the matter. Angie was not necessarily disrespectful to their parents, not any more than any other teenager, but she didn’t have the deep-seated sense of duty towards them that Abby felt. As a result of her sister’s burgeoning waywardness, Abby felt that she had to carry an extra amount of loyalty on her shoulders. She had to be the good one. Even if it meant setting aside what she truly wanted for herself.

Dream Angie was speaking, was telling her something. Abby tried to listen, she truly did, she strained to hear the words but she knew that it was a bit too late. Watching her sister’s mouth move, she thought she could make out the words New York. Of course Angie was talking about New York again. She always was. Abby’s twin was forever promising, practically threatening, to move to the city as soon as she turned eighteen; what their parents might have wanted or wished, never entering her mind.

Abby wished she could listen to her sister, but her dream limbs were moving of their own accord. All too soon she was zipping up her suitcase and pulling it down from her bed. Without even a mere backwards glance to Angie, she was leaving their room. It was time to go, she knew, time for her to leave. There was no turning back.

Abby awoke in her cramped Manhattan apartment bed with hot, bitter tears streaming down her face and wetting the pillow beneath her head. Her alarm clock was going off and she wondered blearily how it had been going on for five full minutes without so much as cutting into her dream.

I certainly needed the rest,
Abby thought as she sat up and rubbed the sleep from her eyes. She calculated that she had only gotten about five hours sleep the night before, but as was frequently becoming the case as of late, it was going to have to be enough.

She hopped out of bed and rushed to the shower, eager to start another hectic day and already five minutes behind schedule. She had gone to an all-day actor’s workshop and agency audition the day before and was going to have to work two straight shifts at the restaurant to make up for the time she’d missed.

Breakfast was going to have to be limited to a banana on the way out the door, again, but Abby paused in her rush to peer at the calendar that hung on the wall of her kitchen. Her mother had sent her the small inspirational twelve-month calendar as a sort of house warming present. When Abby and Angie had been young their mother had always read them a brief prayer or passed on some uplifting story she had heard while she served them breakfast in the morning. Now Abby liked to look to the monthly quotes of the calendar for that little bit of motivation as she started her day.

June was over, her very first month of living alone and Abby welcomed the first day of July by flipping the calendar over to its next page. July’s picture featured a beautiful sunrise just beginning to peek between dark clouds and over a body of water, and Abby took a moment to find within herself the peace which that place reflected. The memory of Angelica which her dream had evoked sat on her chest like a weight, and even though it was a new day and a new month, somehow yesterday’s problems still sat upon her shoulders and threatened to pull her down.

“Instead of living in yesterday’s shadow,” Abby said aloud, reading July’s little bit of inspiration. “Walk in today’s light and tomorrow’s hope.”

Abby smiled at that. She liked the little play on words. It was just the sort of thing her mother would say and it was exactly what she needed to hear to start another day of working hard in pursuit of her goals. Forcing herself to shrug off the last dredges of melancholy, Abby headed for the door with a brave smile, a bit of armor for a rough world.

In truth, Abby had hoped to run into William in the hallway but what she found instead was nearly just as good. A small yellow sticky note had been affixed to her door frame where she would be sure to see it and Abby recognized William’s tight looping journalist’s handwriting at once.

“Procrastinating by thinking of you,” Abby read the simple little note with a secret delight. She was in a hurry but she still paused to pull her own stack of sticky notes from her purse along with the golf pencil she used to take down orders.

Quickly she wrote back, “Hope you meet your deadline. Don’t work too hard.”

As she headed towards the elevator she stuck the note on the inside of William’s door. Behind the door she could hear the faint din of classical music, so quiet that if she hadn’t already known the song so well she wouldn’t have been able to make it out.

It had become a special thing between them, the sticky notes, and sort of an unspoken game they played. William often kept odd hours researching stories or trying to meet a deadline for his editor. Abby too frequently found herself working a graveyard shift at the diner, then running to a casting call in the morning only to finally get to sleep with the blinds drawn in the late afternoon. Even though they were neighbors, stealing time to see each other was difficult and the sticky notes were a form of communication that Abby treasured. It was sort of like having an instant pen pal, perfect for the city that never sleeps.

“And we’re the couple that never sleeps,” Abby mused aloud in the empty elevator and then immediately blushed.

They weren’t really a couple, not officially, but Abby couldn’t get the fair-haired writer out of her head. And though he had not explicitly said so yet, she was fairly certain that William felt the same way. It was in the way he looked at her and laughed at her jokes. It was in the way he’d reach out his hand and play with the little lock of dark hair that grew too short to reach behind her ear. And those same strong hands would hold hers and she’d treasure the feel of them, large and strong and nearly smooth all over except for a callous raised on his finger from writing too much. It was these little things that made Abby confident that William cared for her, even if behind his pale blue eyes there was still that sad little something that seemed to make him hesitate, that kept him from saying the words out loud.

 Abby had never felt a particular confidence around men. That certain trait had gone to Angie of course. Angie seemed to carry around with her an eternal spotlight that drew people in. The world had been Angie’s audience and that audience had certainly included a few boyfriends, much to their parent’s chagrin.

Mr. and Mrs. Dawes had been adamant about not letting their daughters date, aside from the occasional supervised trip to the movie theater. But as she was wont to do, Angie had now and then found a way to skirt this rule and ensnare a few long term boyfriends before the age of sixteen. But just as easily as Angie enthralled them, she’d cut them loose, citing the smallest of reasons for her sudden lack of interest. None of the boys were of great importance to Angie, and to Abby’s knowledge few had gotten past the giggling hand-holding stage with her twin sister. For that reason Abby had never much paid attention to the boys who followed her sister around with hopeful puppy dog eyes, and she paid even less attention when those same boys would end up heartbroken by Angelica’s unpredictable whims.

The twins had agreed quite early on in their teenage years that they would never be interested in the same guy. It had never been a problem as long as Abby was willing to let her sister pursue whomever she wanted and anyway most of the boys of South Meadow weren’t as taken with the clumsier, quieter twin, no matter how much the two girls looked alike.

After Angie’s accident and death, Abby lost interest in dating all together. After she graduated high school, she would go out now and then with guys who would treat her nicely and act as perfect gentlemen, but none of them truly excited her and Abby had begun to believe that the emptiness she felt at losing her twin, her other half, would always be a gaping wound. She began to believe that even if she was with a man romantically, she would always feel a little bit alone.

With William she never felt alone or unenthused. His boyish smile was infectious, his spirit was light. He spoke about everything, from faith to politics to sports to what books he’d read with a deep-thinking confidence. And he listened to what Abby had to say, flicking the dark blonde strands from his face so he could look at her better, so he could stare, she felt, right into her soul. He was thrilling and that thrill made Abby feel guilty.

“Guilty?” Noelle squawked at her. The Home Sweet was nearly completely empty on that slow Wednesday afternoon but Abby shushed her friend nonetheless.

They were both leaning against the counter, watching their respective sections of the diner dully. With only one customer between the two of them—an elderly man who came in every Wednesday without fail for the soup of the day—they had gotten to talking about Abby’s middle of the night dates with William.

Abby told her coworker about that first night when they had gone for chocolate cake and chamomile tea and hand in hand gotten to know each other.

“I’ve lived in a little bit of everywhere,” William had said.

Abby had laughed at that. “That’s an odd way of putting it. A little bit of everywhere,” she repeated. “I like that.”

“It’s true,” he explained. “My father was in the military, air force specifically. We’d live on this or that base for a little while. Or he’d get deployed and my mother would drag me and my little brother off to live with this or that relative for a couple of years. We lived in Europe for a few years when I was very young and then there was a monotonous series of little Midwestern towns. Eventually when I was seventeen we stayed on a New Jersey base. I sneaked off to New York City on the train one day and I loved it more than anywhere I’d ever been. So here I stayed and here I am.”

Abby loved the way William spoke about himself. He had an amusingly unique pattern of speech, a quirky accent that he admitted he’d developed from all the traveling he did as a child and all the reading he’d done during that travel. Everything he said was like a story, and though he looked away sometimes or reddened like he was remembering something he’d rather not elaborate on, he was still fascinating to watch and listen to.

Tales of ordinary, hum-drum
South Meadow had seemed boring after all that William had seen and Abby had not elaborated much. And she had left out Angelica. Abby didn’t know why she didn’t mention her twin when she talked about her parents and the little house she had lived in her whole life. It just hadn’t seemed like the time to bring up that nearly ten-year-old grief. But now her omission compounded her guilt.

William had been open with her that night and every night since. Their trip to the little twenty-four-hour café near their apartment had become a nearly daily thing. A standing date that existed whenever their paths would cross and they had a few free minutes to grab tea or coffee or that infamous chocolate cake. Abby had already begun to lament what it was doing to her dancer’s figure, but she relished the time with William to get to know him better or even to sit together in silence while he worked on his story and she memorized lines for this or that audition.