Beckett
December 16th
I woke to the scent of coffee permeating the air. Zelda was at the desk, hunched over her work with one knee drawn up to her chin. Her long black hair tied up on her head, glasses on, her small frame bundled against the cold. The radiator was close to her feet, wheezing and clanking softly. The Christmas lights were on, pushing back the gray haze of the winter morning.
Those lights. And the rug. Such small changes to the grim drabness of this place, but they’d had the strangest effect on me.
Over the last ten days, I’d been doing my best to stay casual with Zelda. To be friendly and professional as we collaborated on Mother, May I? And nothing more.
But for the first time in a long time, I felt hopeful. For so many things. Maybe Zelda and I were building something incredible on the foundation she’d laid. Maybe this novel would take off and pay well. My life could take a different path.
Until now, thoughts of my future were limited to an endless stretch of days riding my bike around New York. Being a messenger until I was too old or until I got injured. Maybe Zelda was changing my destiny. Already she was an artistic partner—something I never saw coming.
I gazed at her beneath a garland of twinkling lights. She was something I never saw coming.
I threw off the blue comforter and hauled myself off the air mattress.
Zelda turned and gave me one of her sarcastic glances I’d come to love. “How was that? Sucked ass, didn’t it? Because you’re too big.”
I refrained from rubbing the stiffness in my lower back and gave her an innocent smile. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
She narrowed her eyes at me through those damn glasses, then sniffed and went back to her work.
I poured myself some coffee. “Do you want to work on MMI? today?”
“It’s your day off,” Zelda said, not looking up.
“Which means we can get a lot of time in.”
She toyed with her pen, and then finally turned to face me. “I want to go out,” she said. “Into Manhattan, I mean. I’ve lived here for weeks and I haven’t seen anything but the restaurants where we work and a Target.”
“Some people would kill to see the Atlantic Terminal Target,” I said. “You don’t know how lucky you are.”
She rolled her eyes at me. “It’s the eighth Wonder of the World, I’m sure. But I’m serious. MMI? is in good shape. Let’s go somewhere.”
I leaned on the counter, thinking for a second. My eyes landed on the little Christmas tree on the desk.
“I have an idea.”
The N train into Manhattan was packed with baby strollers and Christmas shoppers. We switched to the F at Herald Square and got off at 47th Street.
“Rockefeller Plaza?” Zelda asked. She wore a gray knit beanie pulled over her ears. Her hair spilled down her pea coat, and white knit gloves with a quaint, flowery pattern covered the ink stains on her fingers.
“Have you ever been?”
“Never. Only seen the tree-lighting on TV. The size of it always…”
She trailed off as we rounded the corner and the plaza spread out below us.
“Holy shit,” she finished.
The rectangle of the ice rink spread like a white carpet at the feet of the gold Prometheus statue. Above his shoulders, the Rockefeller tree rose up, ninety feet tall and strung with lights of every color.
“I never thought it was so…tall.” Her gaze slowly descended from the top of the tree to the people gliding around the ice rink.
“You want to skate?” I asked.
“Can we? You want to?” Now her eyes looked up at me, and they were so fucking brilliant, I had to wrench my gaze away.
“Yeah. I do,” I said. “It’s the best way to see the tree up close.”
We went to the rental area and had to wait a good hour for a turn, as the rink only let in 150 people at a time. Finally we were allowed to take to the ice. I’d never been skating in my life, but how hard could it be?
I found out in the first nanosecond my skate touched the ice and nearly slid out from under me. I made a frantic grab at the low wall to keep from falling on my ass.
Smooth, Copeland. Real fucking smooth.
Zelda laughed but that laugh turned into a squeal as she did the exact same thing. Her arms pin-wheeled at her sides, and her skates slid back and forth beneath her. I reached one hand out to grab her. She flailed and clutched at my hand, and I pulled her in to me.
Slowly, like two people battling their way against hurricane-level winds, we made our way along the wall.
“Oh my God, this is a nightmare,” Zelda said, though her smile stretched across both cheeks that were brushed pink with cold.
“No, wait. We can do this.” I moved around to her left, off the wall, with choppy, marching steps. I took her hand. “Okay, now let go of the wall.”
“Like hell,” she said.
“I got you.”
“Oh really?”
“No, not really,” I said, nearly losing my balance. “But it sounded confident, right? This is all your fault.”
“Mine?” she shrieked, laughing.
“You were supposed to secretly be a figure-skating prodigy to help me around on the ice.”
“You were supposed to be a weekend hockey player to help me around the ice. We both suck.”
As if to prove her point, my skate slipped out from under me and I went down, taking Zelda down with me. We both landed on our asses in a tangle of legs and skates and painful laughter.
“You okay?” I asked her.
“I bruised my ass and my pride. Otherwise, I’m just peachy.”
“Okay, good.” I lay down on the ice, on my back. “I’m going to stay like this for awhile.”
Zelda laughed. “Safer down here.”
I looked upwards and the smile slid from my face as my mouth fell open in awe. My chest tightened as I blindly reached for her arm. “Zelda. You have to see this.”
I thought she’d make a joke or tell me I was crazy, but she lay on the ice beside me, her hair almost touching my cheek.
We stared upward, at the sky that was deepening to a dark blue, and the Christmas tree that towered above the rink. A glittering, glowing cone of green, wreathed in thousands of colored lights. The city was alive with light. In the tree and the towering high rises. Glinting off the white ice and the gold statue of Prometheus.
The world was beautiful. Even more with Zelda beside me, shoulder to shoulder, warming me when the cold should have been seeping into me from the ice below.
“Are you seeing this?” I asked.
I felt her nod. “So beautiful.”
We remained there for only a few minutes before an ice rink official skated over to remind us it wasn’t exactly smart to lie down on the ice while one hundred and forty-eight other people with blades on their feet whizzed past our heads. But it was worth it. My jacket was damp but it was worth it.
Seeing the city light reflected in Zelda’s eyes was worth it.
We returned our skates, and I bought us two hot chocolates. We sat under a heat lamp at a little table next to the rink, sipping our drinks. I looked at Zelda. My emotions were a tangle, but maybe if I just let my words come as they wanted, a new story would unravel in the cold, night air between us.
But Zelda spoke first, her voice hesitant. Almost shy.
“I wanted to ask you something,” she said. Her gloved hands clutched her hot chocolate, her teeth grazed her bottom lip.
“Sure,” I said. “Ask away.”
She glanced down at her drink. “So you know I get these panic attacks about seeing my family. Or even if I think about them too much.”
I nodded.
“And because of that, I hardly ever see them. Maybe once or twice a year. And that sucks. I miss them. A lot. But it’s just…too hard.” She shook her head. “I know it sounds cowardly as hell…”
“It doesn’t,” I said.
She gave me a grateful smile, then gone again. “It feels cowardly. I know it hurts my mom, but… Anyway, now that I’m only a few hours away from Philly, I can’t not visit them for Christmas. It may be a huge mistake but I need to try.” Her gaze had been fixed on her cup, but now she raised her eyes to meet mine.
“So I was wondering if maybe you’d like to come with me.”
I sat back in my chair. “You want me to spend Christmas with your family?”
She nodded. “Because… I know this sounds crazy, but I feel safe when I’m with you.”
My heart began to pound a steady, heavy pulse against my ribs. “Zelda… I don’t know what to say.”
“It’s weird, right? I don’t know why, but ever since I first met you…” She shook her head. “Remember at the burger joint? You knew exactly what to do. I never had a panic attack vanish that fast. You didn’t just help it. You stopped it. And when I told you the story of what happened to Rosemary, the actual story…” She shrugged, looked away. “It was okay. Somehow you made it okay for me to say the words that had always burned me like poison.”
I stared, and Zelda must’ve mistaken my silence for discomfort, because she buried her face in her hands. “Oh God, I’m sorry,” she said between her fingers. “I’m really not trying to pity you into coming with me. If you don’t want to, you don’t have to. But I—”
“I want to,” I said, and in the short second of her raising her head, her expression full of hope—and maybe even happiness—the shitty reality of my situation sucked all the warm possibility out of the air.
“But I can’t,” I said.
Her face fell. “You can’t?”
“I can’t leave the state without written permission from the Parole Board,” I said, hating every syllable that came out of my mouth. Hating that I’d forgotten the hard limits on my life. Hating how the city lights now turned into a barbed-wire wall keeping me inside. Most of all, hating those few magical moments when I lay on the ice and felt normal. I didn’t feel like a felon. My future didn’t feel ruined. The moments laughed in my face now and I hated it.
“Can you get permission?” Zelda asked.
“The process takes thirty days.”
“Maybe Roy can do something—”
“He can’t.” I chucked my hot chocolate into a trashcan even though it was still nearly full, and got to my feet. “Ready to go? It’s getting fucking cold out here.”
“Beckett…”
“I’m sorry, Zelda. It was nice of you to offer, but I can’t do it.”
Because I’m a felon. And fuck me for forgetting that.