A Minor Hullabaloo
Grandview-on-Hudson, New York
A pop of the cork and champagne foamed into two flutes.
“Cheers, motherfucker,” Maisie Jensen said. “Welcome to my small, select hootenanny.”
“Quite the cordial kerfuffle tonight,” Dane said.
“Eh. Just a minor hullabaloo.”
Dane clinked his glass to hers. “Wouldn’t miss it.”
Most of the lights were off in the Jensens’ beautiful house on the Hudson.
No party. No fabulous pipple. And for Dane, no rooftop reunion with the violet-eyed Brit.
Just him and Maisie, a box of spanakopita triangles, and a bottle of Veuve Cliquot to make it classy.
Upstairs, Huff was asleep, having retired at 9:30 and floated away on his preferred cocktail of pain meds and sleep aids.
2016 could kiss his ass. He wouldn’t even do it the courtesy of seeing it to the door.
“Punch it in the face and give it my regards,” he called down. “Stern email to follow.”
So Dane and Maisie had their little supper, then went for a swim.
When the Jensens bought this house outside Nyack, they regarded the atrium with its small indoor pool as something of an embarrassment.
They’d worked hard to achieve their individual successes, and this riverfront house was a shared dream, but the pool was just a little much.
It remained empty and closed the first two years, almost like a dirty family secret, Huff and Maisie giving the stink eye to anyone who said the word pool.
All that changed last October, when Huff had his accident. Now his life revolved around physical therapy, especially swimming. Shame was thrown out and the men were called in. The atrium was renovated, the pool filled and the heater turned on.
“Next year, inshallah, New Year’s Eve will include swimming,” Maisie said. She popped the last bit of spanakopita into her mouth, then checked her phone, which was pinging. “Be right back. He needs some help.”
“Everything okay?” Dane said, half out of his seat.
“It’s fine, sit down. He has a complicated system of pillows and wedges. One cushion slides out of place and the whole house of bones comes down. I’ll just be a minute.”
She left the kitchen and Dane closed his eyes, following the sound of her footsteps upstairs and down the hall. He willed everything to be all right. Prayed all would be fixed with the adjustment of a pillow. Pillows, after all, had helped save Huff’s life.
Last October, Huff came out of his office on an ordinary Wednesday night and began walking home as usual, absently scanning his phone like any working yahoo at the end of a long day.
As he stood still on Broadway, returning an email, a cabbie suffered a seizure, slumped on the wheel and drove his SUV onto the sidewalk.
Huff took the hit of the front grille, which broke his pelvis and sent him flying through the window of Pier One Imports.
Doctors were sure if Huff had landed on the sidewalk or been crushed against the building’s unyielding facade, he’d be dead.
Two things saved his life: the cabbie’s foot sliding off the gas prior to impact, so he wasn’t accelerating, and Huff landing on a sumptuously-made display bed sporting a down comforter, two throw blankets and eight pillows.
The bedframe collapsed, the display went to pieces, a few dozen imported tchotchkes shattered, but the memory foam mattress and its luxurious linens closed around Huff like a nonchalant palm catching a tossed set of keys.
His injuries were critical, but he would live.
Maisie called Dane from the hospital. “Huff was hit by a car.”
“Holy fuck,” Dane said, on his feet. “Where is he? Where are you?”
“Lenox Hill.”
“Oh my God, Maze.”
“Please, Dane. Please, can you come?”
He’d never heard her like this. He didn’t know anyone with their shit more together than Maisie.
She was the rock. The fortress. The flame that never flickered.
Dane took problems to Maisie. Dane called her for assurance, for sympathy, for backup.
He never considered himself her mainstay.
Maisie cherished him but she didn’t need him.
“I need you,” she cried. “Please can you come?”
He went without a thought, making the ninety-minute drive to midtown Manhattan, which normally tied his stomach in knots.
Now he laid on the horn, ran yellow lights, wove in and out traffic and glared at jaywalkers, willing the city to get the fuck out of his way.
Yelling at the windshield the whole time.
“No,” he said, pointing a finger at the Universe like it was a disobedient dog. “No. Absolutely not. I lost Nomi, I lost Ethan. Maisie does not lose Huff. Period. Full stop. This is non-negotiable. Get your hands out of our lives and start turning these lights green. I am not playing with you…”
For the six hours Huff was in surgery, Dane stayed by Maisie, who was a wild-eyed and desperate tiger, either pacing the perimeter of the waiting room or hunched in a chair with her hands laced behind her neck.
She abruptly declared she wanted to go to the hospital’s chapel.
Dane walked her there. One step inside its cool, quiet interior and Maisie shook her head.
No, she didn’t want this place. She wanted a cup of coffee.
Dane walked her to the hospital’s satellite Starbucks, where Maisie shook her head again.
She didn’t want this either. She stood in the lobby, stunned and bewildered.
She looked like she’d dropped five pounds in an hour, like she was lost inside her clothes.
Running on pure intuition, Dane drew Maisie into a restroom and flipped the lock. He hit the light switch, pulled her into his arms and told her to let it go.
Maisie let go. She cried and cried, her voice ricocheting off the tiled walls.
The sound of her uncontrolled terror was horrible, made even more so by the pitch dark.
But Maisie needed to cry it out and not be seen.
So Dane set his teeth, locked his knees, hung on tight and let the tsunami crash down and do its worst. When the tide retreated and Maisie quieted, Dane turned on the light.
Maisie looked like her own accident scene, but she didn’t look lost anymore.
She blew her nose, splashed her face and combed her hair.
She went back to the chapel and lit a candle, then to Starbucks and got a coffee.
Back on the waiting room couch, she slouched, rested her temple on Dane’s shoulder, relaxed the vigil and took a twenty-minute power nap.
“Thank you,” she said when she woke.
“Anything,” Dane said. “Anything. Anytime. Anywhere.”
“You’re the first person I thought of. Isn’t that funny?”
He understood her perfectly. “It is.”
She laced her fingers with his and raised the clump to her mouth. “You’re my pipple,” she said.
He tucked loose hair behind her ears and kissed her forehead. “We’re the best pipple.”
“All good,” Maisie said, coming back into the kitchen. “So what’s on the party agenda? I think I got enough in the tank to watch…maybe a quarter of a movie?”
“Actually,” Dane said, “I wanted to show you something.”
“What?”
He thought about how to phrase it and decided on, “A small art installation.”
She raised her eyebrows. “How small?”
“About the size of a dining room table.”
She gestured with her hand. “By all means. Are these your creations?”
“I wish.” Dane went upstairs to get the bundle of postcards from his backpack.
As he dealt them out on the table, Maisie’s expression went from confused to expert.
Worried wife morphed to shrewd art dealer as she put on her glasses and took professional inventory.
She turned each card over, examined it thoroughly, placed it back in the grid, proceeded to the next one.
Dane had received nineteen postcards since June.
Six were postmarked from China. One from Russia.
Three from Ukraine. Five from Dubai. One from Cairo.
One from Seville. And the latest two from the United Kingdom.
Each had a different drawing of the Three Hares on the front.
The back of every card was the same: the quote from the Book of Ruth, and Ethan’s fingerprint.
Maisie reached the end, then went back to the top row and started again. “You’ve been getting these since June.”
“Yes.”
“And they’re exactly following the progression of the Three Hares game?”
“Yes. China to Europe, along the old Silk Road.”
“Jesus, that goes through all kinds of sketchy places.”
“He skipped Central Asia entirely. I brushed up on my Three Hares lore and remembered all the Iranian pieces aren’t actually housed in Iran.
One’s in a museum in Texas. Couple others in Kuwait.
I think that’s why this batch of five are all postmarked Dubai.
He drew them from there before going to Cairo. ”
“Is he sending duplicates to Saskia?”
“No, just me.”
She took a sip of champagne and chewed it thoughtfully. “Do you want my professional or sisterly assessment?”
“Both, please.”
“Keep these in a safe, humidity-free place and if I see you put a rubber band around them again, I will disown you.”
“What’s the professional assessment?”
She pointed toward the front door. “Leave this house.”
He took his own smug sip of champagne.
“Anyway, I’m afraid the sisterhood is at a loss. Do we just take these cards at face value, or is Ethan trying to tell you something? Is this a pilgrimage or an apology tour? Or both? I don’t know.”
“What am I going to do?”
“Do you have to do anything?”
“Eventually.” He gestured toward the table.
“China to Europe along the Silk Road. He’s in the UK already.
If he’s following the route of the game, he’ll finish in Devon, then go back to the continent.
France, Switzerland, Germany. The game ends in Paderborn Cathedral. At the Drei-Hasen-Fenster. Then what?”
Maisie slowly shook her head.
“When I get a postcard from Paderborn, the game and the pilgrimage are over.”
“You think he’ll come home?”
Dane nodded.
“How do you feel about that?”
His nodding head now swiveled side to side.
“I’ll support you no matter what,” she said. “On one hand, you do not have to give him a nanosecond of your time and energy. On the other…”
The sentence went nowhere. Dane heard the kitchen cuckoo clock whir to life and its doors fly open. The wooden bird within sprang out with a two-tone chirp. Twelve times in all.
“Happy New Year,” Maisie said.
Dane leaned and put his head against hers. “This was a real swell hootenanny.”
She sighed beneath his temple. “It was not the plan.”
No, Dane thought. No, it wasn’t. I’m supposed to be on the roof with a violet-eyed man.
Getting asked nosy questions. Resolving further.
Exchanging names. Maybe getting kissed. I literally counted the days until tonight.
I looked forward to this party like a girl plans her wedding.
I was picking out what to wear months ago.
I banked so much emotional capital in this vault.
I was supposed to see him again. Who was he? What’s his name?
He almost asked. Why not? The dream was over, it was a year Dane would never get back. Why not just ask Maisie: Hey, last year I met a guy at your party. British. Total fox. Amazing eyes. Know who I’m talking about?
But Danelaw Strong was a compassionate and attentive man, and he saw Maisie was exhausted, and occupied with far more important matters.
“On second thought, fuck everything,” he said, scraping up a smile from the bottom of his soul’s barrel. “More bubbly?”
“I can barely finish this,” she said, twirling the stem of her flute.
“Forget it. Go to bed, I’ll finish it myself. There’s two more bottles we can open tomorrow. For mimosas.”
“Visiting nurse is coming at eight,” Maisie said absently. “Ugh, drawing the short straw to work on New Year’s Day. I feel terrible.”
“Then we’ll gift both bottles to the nurse.”
“You’re brilliant.”
They hugged and kissed, said goodnight. With a last reminder to turn off lights, Maisie went upstairs.
Dane put on his jacket, hat and gloves and went up to the widow’s walk.
There he finished the champagne, but didn’t even get buzzed.
He sat in one of the Adirondack chairs and laced his fingers behind his head.
Staring over the Hudson and waiting for a rendezvous he knew wouldn’t come.
The day was over. The year was over. The waiting was over. All of it was over.
He’s not coming, said a voice in his head. Let’s just go to bed. Enough torture. We’ll get up tomorrow and find something else to look forward to.
Dane had learned recently that some people didn’t have inner monologues.
No little voice narrating them through the day, making observations, rationalizing, asking and answering questions.
Those people looked blankly at the concept, asking, “What voice in your head? What are you talking about?” While Dane looked back at them, stunned, because he couldn’t imagine life without the voice that lived in his head in general, but spent most of its time behind his left eye.
His blue eye. The voice was both a part of him and apart from him, and the voice was female.
Some people had inner monologues. Danelaw Strong had Diane.
I’m so sorry, Diane said. These things happen. Life happens. You missed your second date with that guy. But Huff is alive. He’s safe downstairs, sleeping, and it’s all that matters.
Still Dane sat. Patient and disappointed. Checking his watch through the year’s first hours and hoping.
Diane sat with him. Patient and attentive. Checking on him.
And she hoped, too.