Sebastian Stuart - The Mentor

Emma smiles at the doorman. She feels better now. She even pats the briefcase. “I got what I came for,” she says. Now she can go to California before the corn bread gets cold. She walks out onto Central Park West. California I’m a-coming home.

“Hello, Emma.”

Charles is there. Where did he come from? She has to ignore him. She doesn’t want a scene. Not right here in front of his building. Plus it’s her book, and he doesn’t seem to understand that. She cradles the briefcase to her chest and crosses Central Park West. Charles follows, walking right beside her. Emma just keeps walking. She enters Central Park. Charles follows. A light rain begins to fall.

“What do you think you’re doing, Emma?”

“You want to steal it,” she says. There, that should shut him up. Show him she’s no fool. He’d better stop following her. She wishes she’d brought the knife with her. She could stick it into him and really shut him up.

She keeps walking, quickly. In the playground, mothers are gathering up their children and heading home. There’s a little black girl sitting alone in a sandbox, crying. Where is her mommy? Run away, little girl, run away.

Emma clutches the book, her book, tightly. She has to keep walking. She’ll be safe if she just keeps walking.

“Emma, that’s the finest hospital in the city. They were going to help you.”

Don’t look at him, don’t look don’t look.

Emma crosses the park drive. The path splits in two. Which one should she take? She can’t stop, stopping would be the worst thing she could do. She bears left and quickens her pace. The path winds up a hill, grows narrower, and is crowded with trees. Suddenly there are no people around. It’s dark on the path and the rain is coming down harder. Emma walks faster.

“You don’t belong in New York, Emma, you’re too fragile.”

Don’t listen don’t listen don’t listen.

“No one’s going to believe you wrote that book. A girl with your problems.”

Emma feels the cold rain soaking through her clothes. It’s so dark on the path. Ahead of her it opens up, there’s light. She has to get there, she’ll be safe there, there will be people there. Her daddy will be there and he’ll save her from her mommy and Charles and all the people who want to hurt her.

Emma runs and suddenly the path opens into wide steps and she runs up the steps and she’s high up, in a courtyard beside an old stone castle. It’s a beautiful place, up above the world. He brought her here once, a long long time ago. They leaned against the wall and looked all the way to Harlem. She looks around wildly. Where is her daddy? He isn’t here. Daddy, please come, Daddy, please come, Mommy’s hurting me.

“Emma, you need help. You didn’t have to kill your mother. You could have gotten help. You could have run away, but you didn’t.”

How can he say that to her, how can he? Doesn’t he understand? She didn’t want to kill her mother, she had to, she had to. She loved her mother, she loved her so much, she was her mommy. They made paintings together, with their fingers. Pretty painting, Mommy, pretty painting. Her mommy told her funny stories and they sang silly songs and painted with their fingers and then Daddy came home and made corn bread. I love you, Mommy, I love you. He shouldn’t say that to her, he shouldn’t. She’ll show him, she’ll show him what she knows. She reaches into the pocket of his jacket and pulls out the matchbook and throws it at him. There, Charles, what do you think of that? Then she starts to cry.

“You never loved me… you only wanted my book. That’s all you ever wanted.”

Charles looks down at the soggy matchbook and up at Emma. He sees her sobbing, shaking body, the hair matted across her cheek, her hands held like claws. He’s never seen anyone so lost. So hopelessly lost. Like a small wounded animal abandoned by its mother, all alone in the woods with night falling. And the rain pelting down.

But she’s wrong about one thing: he did love her.

His face changes. She sees it. Something lifts in his eyes. His mouth softens.

“I’m sorry,” he says. “I want to hold you.” Is he crying too, or is that the rain?

He moves toward her, slowly, and then he has his arms out and is almost touching her. Mommy has her arms out and Daddy is making corn bread.

She blinks through the rain and her tears and Charles is beside her.

“I do love you, Emma.”

He looks like a little boy who’s lost his mommy. Like I lost my mommy. Like I lose everything.

“I’ve done terrible things, Emma. Please don’t hate me.”

“I don’t hate you.”

Thunder rolls across the sky and she lets the book slip from her grasp; she doesn’t care about it anymore, it doesn’t matter-it has only brought her this.

She runs her trembling hand down Charles’s cheek. She wants to comfort him, say something gentle and tender- little lost boy, poor Zack-but there’s no time. Running away, I’m running away, Daddy’s waiting, I can’t be late. California I’m a-coming home. Still, she wants her last words before she leaves to be words of kindness.

“I love you,” she says. And then she turns, pulls herself up to the top of the wall, and jumps.

Mark and Judy Nealy of Medford, Massachusetts, checked into the Stanhope Hotel at 10:45 last night, which happened to be their wedding night. Their fourteenth-floor suite has a view of Central Park, just as they requested. Except for a cursory hour spent, at Judy’s insistence, at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, they’ve stayed in bed the entire day. They’re looking forward to seeing Ragtime tonight.

It’s just past four o’clock in the afternoon when Mark Nealy, a software engineer, gets up from the bed, puts on the thick terry-cloth robe that the hotel provides, and goes to the window. He’s sure about the time because Judy has just turned on The Oprah Winfrey Show. Harrison Ford is the scheduled guest, and Judy jokes that she married Mark only because of his resemblance to her favorite movie star.

It’s hard to see much through the driving rain, but the gray turret of Belvedere Castle is clearly visible. The castle sits on a rock ledge above a small lake and the Delacorte Theatre, an outdoor stage where Shakespeare plays are performed during the summer. Then Mark makes out two people, a man and a woman, in the courtyard beside the castle. How strange to be out in this weather, he thinks-but hey, this is New York.

He watches as the woman reaches up and touches the man’s face. Then she turns and climbs up on the wall that encloses the courtyard and throws herself off. The man reaches out to save her, but it’s too late. Her body lands beside the lake, on a flat slab of rock.

It’s a summer night, a night filled with perfume and hope and youth. New York is a twenty-first-century dream, all light and movement racing fearlessly toward the future.

The party, at the River Cafe, is the hottest ticket in town. As well it might be. The Sky Is Falling has been the beneficiary of a carefully orchestrated publicity campaign. The world loves a comeback and Charles Davis is making one of the biggest. The book is being hailed as brilliant, revelatory. Critics are calling it original, wrenching, with the grim inevitability of tragedy-and then the startling ending, hope snatched from the jaws of horror. The final image is of Zack and his aunt, watching the sunset from her front porch. He’s safe and loved. Saved.

Charles’s triumph is tempered only by the fact that Portia and Emma aren’t alive to share it with him. Emma was so important to the book; her story inspired it. If only her ending could have been as serene as Zack’s. The publicity surrounding his gallant attempt to save her was the beginning of his career resurrection. Even the whispers of an affair only add to his reputation. How bitterly ironic it all is. The only solace Charles can take is in the book’s dedication: “In memory of a lovely lost child.” He thinks of it as Emma’s book as much as his own.