Chapter 34
Thirty-Four
I devoured articles about Phoebe’s new post-show life. She’d been pap’d in the Hamptons, in Malaysia, and as a guest of a
former president at his Martha’s Vineyard soiree. Phoebe’s skin looked phenomenal, her arms more toned than ever. One news
headline proclaimed “PHOEBE HABBIT IS AMERICA’S NEXT RESURRECTED IT-WOMAN,” and from the makeup chair one morning, I shuddered
at the word resurrected. The former news anchor had taken to wearing demure but flirty styles, prints you couldn’t wear on air. Loads of green. I
mulled whether she’d get breakup bangs.
“Do you mind lightening my eyebrows?” Alanna Sorensonn asked the stand-in makeup artist. Dola and Trent Foster were both sick,
because now they were the kind of couple who got sick together.
“Olivia has to get in the chair,” the makeup artist said, but she dipped cotton swabs into a solution anyway.
“No one’s looking at me if it’s not an election year,” Alanna joked. She paused. “I’m so glad it’s not.”
Alanna was so striking that a painter would drool over her if she was in her slippers and pajamas. I clicked out of the Phoebe
article. “Soulmail will make elections messy, huh?”
She stood and gestured for me to take the chair. “All eyes on the next ones, like Switzerland.”
I wracked my brain, information about the Swiss democracy buried somewhere in there. “I’ll go ahead and pretend I understand the reference?”
Her sigh was warranted. “Annual presidential election. Federal Council. Their democracy is much different than ours.” She
opened the door, holding it for someone approaching. “Worldwide, who knows what Soulmail will do?”
“You might want to consider a laser treatment soon,” the stand-in artist said, sponging my undereyes. I must’ve made a face,
because she clucked her tongue. “Oh, don’t do that. You’ll get more wrinkles.”
I worked over how to respond to that when Samantha came banging into the prep room. “Turbo speed,” she ordered.
The makeup artist combed my eyebrows, her pace frantic.
“Don’t poke her eye.” Samantha frowned.
I sighed. “What’s up?”
“It’s Soulmail.” Samantha’s eyes flamed with something I couldn’t identify. “They’re out.”
I straightened. “What do you mean?”
“New round arrived earlier than anticipated. They weren’t expected for another week.”
“Three days,” I said. “They’re out? Now? Are you sure?”
“As of about ten minutes ago.” Samantha’s nod was a jerk.
“But it’s not three in the morning. That’s when they always come out.” Supposed to. Always. We had already gotten used to this unknowable, now known.
“It’s not,” Samantha said. “Something must be changing. Oh, and something else, while I have you.” She dropped a phone into
my hand, and I raised it to eye-level. QUEENS WOMAN VIOLATES RESTRAINING ORDER, IS MURDERED BY SOULMAIL EX, the screen read.
I fisted my hand, pressed it to my throat. “First, that’s—ugh. How horrible. And second, that headline is a lesson in victim-blaming.”
“Please don’t cry,” the makeup artist said.
“Olivia’s human. She can cry if she needs to,” Samantha snapped. She’d lost her no-nonsense resting face, trouble slipping
over her features. She put a hand on my shoulder and squeezed. “And you’re right on both accounts.”
“It’s awful to think about the people whose soulmates are like that guy.” I gestured to the screen. If your soulmate was a
bad person—real evil, or even one who straddled the dicey side of complexity—addressing that with grace seemed impossible.
I traced circles on the inside of my wrist, wondering if I was supposed to be inferring something bigger from this, if a person’s
soulmate was meant to be indicative of their own character. Wasn’t the mere thought of that also maybe some sort of victim
blaming? “It’s just so awful,” I said finally.
“Live in five,” a PA shouted from the hallway. “Internet is buzzing about these early drops, everyone.”
“It gets worse.” Sam braced her hands on her hips. “This isn’t the first time. It’s happening everywhere. New York State’s
had three restraining order violations that have resulted in attempted murder.”
A quiet, desperate wish to change the world tingled in my fingertips. I started mentally constructing social media posts in
my head. “So many of these experts claim Soulmails bring peace and harmony, but look where we are.”
“Right, which is why I’m telling you all this. We’ve been asked to have you step in for a ‘The More You Know’ PSA.”
I raised my eyebrows. “Me? Aren’t those an NBC Universal operation?” I could hear the old music in my head, see the iconic
shooting star with its rainbow tail.
Samantha nodded. “The government is launching a new resources site to help people whose Soulmail-mates are dangerous, and
they need a PSA to spread awareness.”
The makeup artist stepped back and sighed. “I think this is the best I can do with the time I have.” She twisted her mouth. “You really should sleep more. Just to lighten the dark circles under your eyes. That’s all.”
“You look great,” Samantha said before I could open my mouth to ask if I looked okay. “Same as always.”
Within minutes, Josef and I walked together to the news desk. His phone chimed, and he grimly switched it to silent.
“Everything okay?” I asked.
“Oh, yes, darling. It’s just that I’m avoiding my phone, because I’m certain I have a message I don’t want to look at.”
“Oh?”
He half-turned my way. “My husband is going to look at his Soulmail. Marco had said that if there was one more newsworthy
change, he was going to.” He mimed an explosion. “Early drop is news.”
I remembered Phoebe in the elevator, telling me Josef was unhappy with his Soulmail. A flash of Natalie-toned envy pinged
through me. “I hope it works out.”
Josef prayered his hands together and bowed his head. “Gracias. I’ve always been a lucky man.”
“Really into that lucky theme, huh?”
“Some people think luck is beyond our control, but me?” He put his hand over his heart. “I keep the positive outlook. You
pick up what others are putting out there, then you persevere.” He shoved a Listerine strip into his mouth. “You already know
this.”
You’re just like me, I remembered Josef saying that one day off camera. The same day he said Phoebe was scared of me. Lucky.
My own memory was suspect lately. At night, I dreamed about Caleb and me from when we were young. I’d wake somewhere between
bliss and panic, desperate to go back to sleep to continue those dreams.
My mail forwarding finally went through.
Ads targeting brides-to-be arrived in one rubber-banded packet, then in regular intervals.
I threw them all away, then, on second thought, rescued a pile.
Some things didn’t change, and one of those was that I was a woman who couldn’t bear to give up a coupon or a promo code.
In mid-October, I interviewed a group of women who called themselves the New York Anti-Romeos. They’d peeked at their Soulmails,
discovered their person was a non-romantic equivalent, and started a weekly meet-up group of people who felt they’d been given
permission to live life without romance. Cilotte Cilotta, a famous romance author who broke out in a big way last summer,
revealed her status as a group member. She announced her new novel Ready or Knot had been pulled from publication, and she was rewriting it to “redefine tropes.” Its new title was Ready for Naught. Late one night after two glasses of wine, I pre-ordered it.
If there was one thing I’d learned those first few months after Soulmail, it was that memory was malleable. The world accepted
that for all human history, no one had cosmic reassurance of a soulmate, and now it did. More and more stories came out that
people “always had a feeling” that their soulmate was the person Soulmail revealed to them, that “signs stared them in the
face” but they ignored them. A lifetime of being the girl whose older sister died young had taught me that rug sweeping means
the dirt is always there, just hidden. Right now, forgetting the text from Cambrey to Wells would be preferable. Less painful.
Keeping it present was more like living with a splinter. The skin grew over it.
“Sustenance,” Wells said. He held up a bag of old-fashioned doughnuts, his dimple flashing. It was a gray day near Gramercy
Park, and he looked meticulously sculpted in his black workout clothes.
I took the bag from him, inhaling the scents of hot sugar, cakey dough. My mouth watered. “Cheers,” I said. We ate and walked, our silence more companionable than awkward. I stole glimpses of the inside of the gated park, easier now that the leaves were falling.
Wells cleared his throat and ventured a glance my way. “My therapist said I should talk to you about something. Is now an
okay time?”
“Of course.”
“I’m having a hard time missing Charley,” Wells said. “I’d normally talk to—well, you know—about him. But I’m not.”
Wind gusted down the street, sending an empty coffee cup skittering into a parked car. “That’s complicated. And I’m truly
sorry you’re sad,” I said slowly. “But—do you want some kind of accolade or something for not talking to her?”
His headshake was vigorous. “Not at all. I just wish you knew him.”
“Me, too. Same way I wish you could’ve known my sister.” We stepped over a crack in the sidewalk, one I always avoided on
my runs. This sidewalk was full of them. There was a tiny elevation change here, one you only notice if you were paying attention.
Up ahead, a construction worker in a hardhat set a cone in the center of the sidewalk, shooing a pigeon out of the way.
He brushed my shoulder. “I just wanted you to know I miss him, and my therapist said I should tell you that. I did an awful
thing. It was so wrong, and it was a low point, but I promise I’m not a bad guy.”
Olivia, olive tree, olive branch. This was my soulmate. And while I’d never known Charley, I had known loss. “Maybe we should
plan a trip to give us something to look forward to?”
Wells patted his pocket as if to pull out his phone, then thought better of it. “Oh, yeah? Where?”
“Someplace tropical.” Overhead, the sky deepened from pearl gray to charcoal.
“How specific,” Wells teased. “We’ll see.” He skirted the cone, then waited for me to catch up.
As I followed, the construction worker held off on revving his chainsaw and tilted it toward an already jackhammered open
spot of concrete. And then I saw them: tree roots, rising like the camel humps we’d seen in Egypt, punching through the sidewalk
like zombie hands in a graveyard. We had a terrible picture from that, me with visible sweat stains in a long-sleeved shirt.
“Is the tree dead?” I asked the construction worker.
“Not the whole thing, if I can help it,” the worker said. “This area used to be a swamp. They drained it to make the park.
I’ll be damned if things don’t grow different here.”
Something about it made me want to avert my eyes, like I was trespassing on something secret or private, but I didn’t. It
was a tree. “Good luck,” I said, balling the empty doughnut bag in my fist.
“I love the idea of a trip,” Wells said once we fell into step again. Unsurprising. We’d always traveled well together, agreeing
on restaurants, activities, even bedtimes. “You know me. I’m game. But don’t you think we should plan it for the spring? In
the meantime, we can go visit my parents a couple weekends. We can definitely relax there.”
Tension leaked into my chest. “Definitely,” I echoed.
“Oh. Meant to tell you. I picked up my tux.”
My eyebrows knitted at the subject change. “For the wedding?”
“The other one. For your welcome gala,” he said. “Did you decide on what to wear yet? It’s next weekend.” He tugged my shoulder.
“Wait. Vacation together. Plans for the future,” he said. “Does this mean . . . wedding’s on?”
I calculated. Not long until the end of October. “Let’s see how the next week goes,” I said.
A loud crack split the air. I whipped around, expecting to see the tree we had just passed lying across the concrete.
But then I felt it: a raindrop, splattering cleanly on my hair part.
The tree stood just where we’d left it. Wells grabbed my hand, tugging me away, as a fall thunderstorm ripped the sky open and sent us fleeing for cover.