Dina Santorelli Read Online Free Page B

never gave up. He had been encouraging her to write fiction
since she won a short-story contest in the fifth grade—a story that she got to
read on a local radio station. And as much as she pooh-poohed the idea to
friends and colleagues, becoming a creative writer had been a longtime dream of
Jamie's, a dream she had set aside when she took a job at a local newspaper
just out of college, a dream that she kept aside while married to Bob.
Somewhere, lurking in the deep recesses of her brain, and her hard drive, three
enthusiastically started but abandoned novels lay dying.
    Another
text arrived:
    DINNER
TONITE. MY TREAT. B/C U R UNEMPLOYED & BROKE...
    And
then another text:
    AND
DIVORCED & LONELY...
    Jamie
smiled and started to text back when her phone vibrated again:
    &
UGLY 2...
    Jamie
laughed out loud. She typed:
    SOUNDS
GOOD & I'M HAVING DESSERT!
    She
put her phone away and turned her attention back to the blonde who was now
packing up her things and presumably returning to work. Lunchtime was coming to
a close, as more and more chairs lay abandoned and New Yorkers prepared to suck
it up for just a few more hours until the five o'clock whistle. Jamie, of
course, had nowhere to go. At least, not until dinnertime.
    A
little girl about four or five years old popped into view, hopping along in
front of a woman who was beseeching her to "slow down" and "stay with mommy."
Her young face was radiant, with her long, dark hair pulled back into a
ponytail and a slight sunburn on her cheeks and the bridge of her nose. When
she slowed down so that her mother could catch up and take her hand, she
surveyed the park with fascination and caught Jamie watching her; she responded
with a smile and a wave, which Jamie returned.
    From
the corner of her eye, Jamie saw the man in black wave too and wondered if he
mistakenly had gotten the impression that she had been waving to him, and not
the little girl, but then he settled back against the veterans' monument as
before, hands crossed in front of him, left leg bent. He must have seen
someone he knew , she thought. Only there was something different about him
now, and it took her a moment to realize what it was—he was smiling. It was
hard to see, because his face looked as impassive as before, but the corners of
his mouth were turned up; Jamie was sure of it, because the shadows on his face
had changed. Then he began to move methodically, almost robotically, unfolding
his arms, brushing down his suit sleeves, which had bunched up in the crooks of
his elbows, and bending his right leg up from the knee, and then his left, as
if he were about to go for a jog right now in his black tailored suit. When he
brought his left hand up toward his sunglasses, Jamie was rapt, as if in the
audience of an open-air theater, eager to see the elusive man behind the
shades, the man who seemed to exist unnoticed by the mass of people leaving the
park, as unnoticed as the stone monument behind him. And as he lifted the
sunglasses off the bridge of his nose, her entire body froze.
    He
was staring at her.
    Jamie
nearly toppled over on her wobbly bench. Her flight response kicked in, and she
had the sudden urge to run, to just get up and go, the kind of thing adults
tell children to do when they're in trouble, but instead she stayed put,
telling herself that she had to be mistaken. She looked to the right and left
of her, but no one was there, and her mind filled with questions: Had he been
staring at her all this time? Does he think he knows her? Does he know that she
had been looking at him too? Was she overreacting? Then the man in black
moved again, this time at an angle to the monument, his body turned so that he
was facing her. In a flash, his right hand was in the air, waving, a broad,
purposeful wave, the kind you see at a rock concert.
    Now
the alarm bells were sounding, since Jamie had ignored the original distress
notification, but, again, instead of hightailing it out of the park, she did
the complete