Steve Kistulentz - Panorama

Richard found two navel oranges in the fruit bowl, began peeling them and breaking them into sections. It occurred to him that he could not remember the last time he’d eaten a piece of fresh fruit. “Tell me you aren’t tired of that life. Airplane, hotel, conference room, restaurant, airplane, repeat.”

Cadence puttered over to the cabinet and extracted a pair of coffee mugs. “Of course I’m tired of it. I’ve got platinum status on three airlines, and about the only thing it gets me is free drinks and upgrades to business class.” She threw some bread in the toaster, and Richard glanced at the bag, a ten-grain loaf, honey sweetened, unbleached and unbromated flour. He made a mental note to look up what unbromated meant.

Cadence took a seat at the kitchen table and blew across a too-hot mug of fresh coffee.

“I want you to come with me,” Richard said. “Come to Dallas, and then head back here for a few days to close up some loose ends, and then, eventually, Pennsylvania. I need to look for a house.”

“Pennsylvania?”

They both knew why he wanted her to come. She could call it whatever she liked, desperation, or even love, and she would be right.

The summary of what he was prepared to say: He could not inflict this city on a child. Not without giving Gabriel the extensive armature of a better neighborhood and $35,000-a-year private schools he could not afford. There was a certain intransigence to Richard that didn’t fit in the city. Unlike Lew, he’d never been comfortable in a culture that said things like You can wear any tie you want, as long as it’s red. In Pennsylvania, he could have acreage and dogs and, most of all, a homestead. If the kid voiced a desire for a horse, a horse could be provided. Moving meant no more apartments, no more fumbling for quarters just to have a clean T-shirt. No more hollering drunks in the alley, no curbside fistfights over a parking space. No flyers for 2-for-1 draft beers, no cover left on his windshield, and no bicycle messengers sliding Chinese menus underneath his apartment door at 4:00 a.m. The dreams that were available to him in Pennsylvania weren’t just speculative, they were achievable.

Richard hadn’t yet told Cadence about the job that was waiting for him. That was a conversation that could wait until the airplane, for whenever it was that the two of them would sit down and see if they could imagine themselves a future. Tomorrow. He checked his watch. It already was tomorrow.

“We never ate,” Richard said.

“Like the old days,” she answered, and he knew that she meant the first few evenings of their relationship, back when they had every intention of going out to dinner but never left Richard’s apartment. “Are you hungry?” she asked. “I could make something. Pancakes?”

“I could eat a double stack,” he said. “Like at Waffle House.”

Richard wanted to leave now, drive to Dallas with Cadence in the passenger seat, pretend there wasn’t any urgency in the situation. Pretend. There was no reason this had to be decided today. The road would give them cover, time to talk. They could take turns behind the wheel, four-hour shifts fueled by diet sodas, eat their meals at any place along the side of the road that served twenty-four-hour breakfast and good, strong coffee. It sounded equal parts pleasant and implausible. How much of his grown-up life had been like this, imagining what he wanted to do versus doing what he knew he must? He had to get to Gabriel; his only thought now was about the boy. The fact that he’d had to wait through the night ate at him. Already he was talking himself out of his fantasy drive with Cadence. He needed to be on a plane, and quickly. He was leaving in an hour. She could come with him or not.

Cadence pulled down a box from the cabinet, retrieved a mixing bowl. He was thinking about the restorative properties of a solid breakfast. His new house would need to have a spectacular kitchen, spacious, where each day would begin with a family breakfast. These meals would be the relaxed ceremonies that kicked off an era of good feeling. They could, Richard thought, lapse into a routine. When he heard Cadence’s blow-dryer click off, he’d pour the coffee, then the milk on Gabriel’s cereal right after that. For his new kitchen, he could buy an unobtrusive thirteen-inch television, and in the mornings they’d tune in to The Today Show for the weather. The forecast would always be for American sunlight, nostalgic and kind, the kind that dominated his memories. Cadence would come to the table and read the front-page headlines over Richard’s shoulder. When everything was normal in the world, the three of them would begin to eat.

Cadence ladled the batter into a frying pan and said, “I didn’t know what you were going to tell me last night. When you wanted to see me, I was expecting some sort of grand announcement. I thought maybe you were seeing someone.”

Richard laughed. “Who?”

“No one I know. Some woman who pushed her shopping cart into your car. Somebody like that.”

“There hasn’t been…,” Richard started to say. She brought him a plate with three pancakes, a side of fruit drizzled with vanilla yogurt and a touch of honey, then sat down across from him. The steam rose from his coffee cup in visible streaks. She watched as he doctored the food on his plate with thin-cut pats of butter, a generous dollop of real maple syrup. The pancakes tasted heavy in the way that a good rib-sticking breakfast should, dissolving into a sweetness he could taste on his lips after each bite.

“There’s no other girl. There is, however, plenty to talk about. We can figure all this out on the plane,” Richard started. “There’s never been any real reason for you to stay in DC. Your job is where the machines are.” Richard could see her figuring out the logistics, what the trip would entail in time and travel.

“What are you saying?” She took her mug in both hands, warming herself.

“I’m saying I need help. The guy from the airline”—he pulled Lemko’s card from his wrinkled shirt pocket—“he can put you on the 9:40 flight with me. I’m asking you to come to Texas.”

Cadence picked up her nearly untouched plate, scraped it into the sink, then ran the tap. “What makes you think I know anything that can help? I’ll be here for the phone calls and for advice. I can drive you to the airport. I can take care of stopping your mail and locking up your apartment, and I can pick you up when you get back. Beyond that, I can’t make any promises.”

Richard pushed his plate sideways across the table. “You can’t.” He regretted how much his inflection made it sound like a question.

She shook her head.

It was decided. Cadence would drive him to the airport, and he’d ride in the passenger seat with his father’s overcoat draped across his lap, and for the second time in twelve hours, he would sit by himself by an airport gate and wonder how on earth one talks to a child. At least in his dream, the child had been happy. The boy had Richard’s lanky frame and ran with a high leg kick, his heels nearly hitting his butt with each stride. Someone would bring him to the Dallas airport, and as Richard exited security, the boy would shake loose of his handler, run to be reunited with the uncle he did not really know. Or maybe the boy would be running toward the house, and Richard could recognize the house and remember the three dogs and the boy romping across the yard from his dream; only now did he realize that he’d never seen the face of the woman there. His vision had been faulty. The house and the dogs and the boy, those things were in his future. The woman, only that part, was fiction.

Downstairs, some of Cadence’s neighbors began to dig themselves out. The sound of snow shovels scraping against the asphalt echoed through the alley. He watched as she walked past him to the closet, extracted her small gym bag. For a moment, he thought she was packing to come to Dallas, but then he watched her fill the bag with cosmetics, a pair of close-fitting black pants, a blouse. Work wear. She stripped off her robe and began the process of sliding herself into the running tights that she wore to the gym, and he knew for certain she would not be coming. For her, today was just another day in a series of days, relatively indistinct. He would be the only variable in her routine.