Wish I Were Here

Chapter 29

U pstairs in my apartment, I bury myself in work, pulling books off my shelves, printing out Dr. Gupta’s notes and spreading them across the coffee table, and tearing apart my research paper outline so I can put it all back together again. Outside, the sun goes down and the streetlights come on. Down the hall, I hear a door open and close, and footsteps pass by my door. I briefly wonder if it’s Sal, but I keep working, stopping only to run to the bathroom and to shove a protein bar in my mouth.

Finally, around midnight, I lean back against the couch cushions and take one last look at the laptop on my knees. My outline for my paper is good. It’s better than good. It’s great, and when I’m done with the paper, it’s going to be accepted to Studies in Applied Mathematics on the first try. I’m sure of it. With a sigh, I gaze around my apartment. If I were at Dad’s place, I never could have worked like this. There would have been too much clutter to spread out my books and papers, and too many distractions.

I feel a tremor of panic. What if I can’t sort out my identity tomorrow? Will I end up living in chaos again? I guess if that’s the case, I won’t have any research papers to write anyway, and I won’t need this clean, organized space. I’ll be on a direct route to clown town. At least it’s the kind of job you can do without a bank account.

I never thought I’d see the day when that was a silver lining.

I grab for a throw pillow to hug for comfort, and my hand closes around something else instead. A large scrap of black fabric. Luca’s hoodie. He must have left it here the other day.

Of course he left it. He also left a glass on the side table without a coaster and a pair of sunglasses on the kitchen counter, and he doodled all over my to-do list. He’s like a walking hurricane blowing through and leaving chaos in his wake.

Except… I clutch the sweatshirt to my chest, and Luca’s scent drifts over me… When I found those other things lying around, I didn’t mind as much as I expected. It was nice to have evidence that someone had been here.

That I wasn’t alone.

With a sigh, I haul myself off the couch and clean up my papers and books before heading out the door. I’ll leave the sweatshirt in the lobby, where Luca will find it tomorrow. I am not secretly hoping he’ll be sitting there playing cards with Mrs. Sterling. Or dancing with Mrs. Goodwin.

Nope. Not at all.

I take the stairs because I could use the walk, and arrive to a dark, empty lobby. The elevator appears to be broken again, because all the lights over the door are shut off. I hadn’t minded walking down, but I’d planned to ride back up. So much for that.

I drop Luca’s sweatshirt on the front desk and am about to head back toward the stairs when I sense movement on the ground below. It’s Luca, curled up on a pile of blankets. He stirs for a moment, rolling from his left side to his back, and then he settles into sleep again. I stand above him, taking in the lock of dark hair flopping over his forehead—the one I reached up and ran my fingers through just the other day—his stubbled chin that scraped my cheek when he kissed me, the tattooed arms that wrapped around me, pulling me closer.

How am I going to pass him every day in the lobby without my heart aching at the sight of him?

But then he stirs, and I remember that he’s there on the floor . I’ve never gotten to the bottom of why he sleeps there, and I don’t care to. Chaos , I remind myself. A hurricane wrapped in a tornado tied up with an earthquake.

And then my mother’s voice: We have to be careful of the men we let into our lives.

We both learned that lesson the hard way. I might have gotten this identity mess sorted weeks ago if it weren’t for Luca misplacing my mail.

I head back upstairs. About four flights up, I hear a familiar step-shuffle-shuffle-step coming from the floor above me. Sal. Picking up my pace, I take the stairs two at a time. Around the bend, I find Sal taking slow, deliberate steps.

He glances over his shoulder, flashing me a wide grin, and for just a second, there’s something familiar about it. I don’t have time to think about it, though, because Sal misses a step and nearly takes a tumble. At the last moment, he grabs the railing for balance.

“Whoops!” he says with a chuckle once he’s righted himself.

I run the last few steps and take his arm. “Sal! We’ve talked about this. You shouldn’t be using the stairs.”

He shrugs. “Elevator’s broken.”

“There’s a freight elevator, though. You could wake up Luca and ask him to take you on the…” I abruptly stop talking. And it’s like the lightbulb over the elevator door comes on in my head. Is that why Luca sometimes sleeps on the floor? Because the elevator is broken, and he wants to be there to take people on the freight elevator?

As if Sal can read my mind, he gives me a wink. “Luca needs his rest, and I need my exercise. Keeps me young.”

Still turning this new development over in my head, I keep hold of his arm, and we climb the stairs together.

“How’s the identity crisis coming along?” Sal asks as we round the bend from the fifth to the sixth floor.

“It’s no longer a crisis, I hope. I found my mother and got my birth certificate. Tonya at the Social Security office seemed to think they could use it to add me back into the system. If all goes well, I’ll have my identity back by this time tomorrow.”

“And you’re sure that’s what you want?” Sal asks, setting his left foot on the step above us.

“Of course I’m sure.” I shuffle up next to him, imagining the approval on Dr. Gupta’s face as he reads my next outline of my research paper, and then again when we’re accepted to Studies in Applied Mathematics . I visualize coming home every night to my calm, quiet apartment upstairs. “I’ll be able to go back to work, and pay the rent on my apartment, and finally get everything I worked so hard for.”

“Hmm,” Sal murmurs as he takes another step up. “There was a moment there where I thought maybe you wanted something a little different.”

I hurry to follow him up to the next step. Did I make that wish out loud that day in the car with Sal? And did he somehow make it come true? My gaze searches his face, looking for a sign that he had something to do with all of this. But his mild expression doesn’t waver, and he seems to be concentrating more on getting up the next step than he is on this conversation.

I give my head a shake. How could Sal possibly have something to do with this? Rationally, I know he couldn’t have, but just in case, I say in a loud, clear voice, “I don’t know what I was thinking, but I was wrong. I want my identity back.”

Sal nods. “And you’re happy now that everything can go back to the way it was?”

Uncle Vito’s gruff face pops into my head, followed by the swish of Mrs. Goodwin’s orthopedic shoes as she turns me out into a graceful spin across the floor. Then Fabrizio handing me a pair of scrubs and the book club inviting me to join their group. My chest squeezes, and I hesitate for just a moment. When I opened my door this morning, I found a cooler packed with Lorraine’s pasta fazool along with another care package courtesy of Mrs. Flowers and the Meals on Wheels folks at the community center. I would never want to go back to a time when those people weren’t a part of my life.

And I’ll admit that the idea of writing all those research papers alone in my apartment doesn’t have quite the same appeal as it once did. Gaining Dr. Gupta’s approval doesn’t seem as important, especially if it means he’s going to keep piling on more assignments and taking the credit.

But I’ve worked my entire life for this. And what’s the alternative? Going into the clown business with Dad? Becoming a burlesque dancer? No, I want to be a mathematician. I enjoy it, and—like Dr. Gupta said—my work has real promise.

Besides, it’s not like things will entirely go back to the way they were before. They’ll be better now than they ever were. I picture sitting on Melanie’s pristine white couch eating cheese cut into perfect geometric shapes and telling her I’m the youngest woman in the department to make tenure. I’m about to have everything I always wanted.

“Of course I’m happy,” I say, hoping my extra enthusiasm masks the tremor at the end. “Of course I am.”

“Okay, then.” Sal takes another step, and then another. “I’m happy for you.” And then he reaches in his pocket and holds out a butterscotch. “I guess I just can’t for the life of me figure out why you look so sad.”