Yes, the sign was there. The absolute certainty was there. The peace was there. The sleeping lips smiled. If her eyes had opened, they would have been blazing with light.
Wake up, he wanted to say. I know your happiness. Now you must discover it. Wake up.
He reached to touch her cheek but pulled his hand away. Her eyelids moved. Her mouth opened.
Quickly, he turned and lay huddled over on his side of the bed and waited.
After a long while, he heard her sit up. Then, as if struck a lovely blow, she exclaimed something, cried out, reached over, touched him, found him asleep, and sat beside him, discovering what he already knew.
He heard her get up and run around the room like a bird wishing to be free. She came and kissed him on the cheek, went away, came back, kissed him again, laughed softly, then went off quickly into the sitting room. He heard her dialing long distance and shut his eyes, tightly.
“Robert?” her voice said, at last. “Bob? Where are you? Silly. Stupid of me. I know where you are. Robert. Bob, oh, God, can I fly there, will you be there when I arrive, today, this afternoon, tonight, yes? Would it be all right? … What’s come over me? I don’t know. Don’t ask. Can I come? Yes? Say yes! … Oh, grand! Goodbye!”
He heard the telephone click.
After a while, he heard her blowing her nose as she entered the room and sat on the bed next to him in the first light of dawn. She had dressed quickly and haphazardly, and now he reached out and took her hand.
“Something happened,” he whispered.
“Yes.”
“The wish. It came true.”
“Isn’t it incredible? Impossible, but it did! Why? How?”
“Because both of us believed,” he said, quietly. “I wished very hard, for you.”
“And I for you. Oh, Lord, isn’t it wonderful that both of us could shift at the same time, move, change, all in a night? Otherwise, it would be terrible, wouldn’t it, if just one changed and the other was left behind?”
“Terrible,” he admitted.
“Is it really a miracle?” she asked. “Did we wish hard enough and someone or something or God heard us and lent us back our old loves to warm us and tell us to behave, we might never have another wish or another chance again, is that it?”
“I don’t know. Do you?”
“Or was it just our secret selves knowing the time was over, a new time had come, and time for us to both turn around and go, is that the real truth?”
“All I know is I heard you on the phone just now. When you’re gone, I’ll call Anne.”
“Will you?”
“I will.”
“Oh, Lord, I’m so happy for you, for me, for us!”
“Get out of here. Go. Get. Run. Fly away home.”
She jumped to her feet and banged at her hair with a comb and gave up, laughing. “I don’t care if I look funny—”
“Beautiful,” he corrected.
“Beautiful to you, maybe.”
“Always and forever.”
She came and bent down and kissed him and wept.
“Is this our last kiss?”
“Yes.” He thought about it. “The last.”
“One more, then.”
“Just one.”
She held his face in her hands and stared into it.
“Thanks for your wish,” she said.
“Thanks for yours.”
“You calling Anne right now?”
“Now.”
“Best to Anne.”
“Best to Bob. God love you, dear lady. Goodbye.”
She was out the door and in the next room and the outside door shut and the hotel suite was very quiet. He heard her footsteps fade a long way off in the hall toward the elevator.
He sat looking at the phone but did not touch it. He looked in the mirror and saw the tears beginning to stream unendingly out of his eyes.
“You, there,” he said to his image. “You. Liar.” And again: “Liar!”
And he turned and lay back down in the bed and put one hand out to touch that empty pillow there.
The end
