“Gosh.” Jane blushed.
“It’s not because you’re talented, or beautiful, though you certainly are both. It’s because you’re so uniquely you.” Laura said the words that she wished she’d had time to tell her own daughter: “Everything about you is amazing.”
The blush reddened as Jane struggled for a pithy response.
“No.” Laura would not let the girl’s sarcasm ruin the moment. “You’ll find your way, Jane, and it will be the right way, no matter what, because it’s the path that you set out for yourself.” She squeezed the girl’s hand one last time. “That’s my advice.”
Laura felt Jane’s eyes follow her progress as she slowly walked across the room. She had sat at the bar too long. Her foot was numb. The bullet lodged inside of her back felt as if it was a living, breathing thing. She cursed the shard of metal, no larger than the nail on her pinky finger, that sat dangerously close to her spinal cord.
Just this once, this last time, she wanted to move quickly, to recapture some of her former agility, and complete the task before Jane could find her seat on the front row.
The lobby had emptied of important men, but their cigarette and pipe smoke lingered. Laura pushed open the door to the ladies room.
Empty, as Nick had predicted.
She walked to the last stall. She opened and closed the door. She struggled with the lock. The sliding bolt would not fit into the slot. She banged it twice, the metal singing against metal, then finally got it to stay closed.
Laura was overcome by a sudden dizziness. She pressed her hands to the walls. She took a few moments to stabilize. The two drinks on top of her jet lag had been a mistake, but she could be forgiven her fatalistic choices on today of all days.
The toilet was old-fashioned, the tank mounted high on the wall. She reached behind it. Her heart fluttered as she blindly searched. She felt the tape first. Her panic ebbed only slightly as her fingers traced their way up to the paper bag.
The door opened.
“Hej-hej?” a man said.
Laura froze, heart stopped.
“Hello?” The man was dragging something heavy across the floor. “Cleaner here. Hello?”
“Just a moment,” Laura called back, the words choking in her throat.
“Cleaner,” he repeated.
“Nej,” she said, more stridently. “Occupied.”
He gave a vexed sigh.
She waited.
Another sigh.
Another moment.
Finally, he dragged whatever he had brought into the toilets back across the floor. He closed the door so hard that the stall door slipped its flimsy lock and creaked open.
Laura felt the sliding bolt press its finger into the small of her back.
Improbably, a laugh tickled the back of her throat. She could only imagine what she looked like, skirt rucked up, standing with a leg on either side of the toilet bowl, her hand up the back of the tank.
All that was missing was the sound of a passing train and Michael Corleone.
Laura pulled down the paper bag. She shoved it into her purse. She went to the sink. She checked her hair and lipstick in the mirror. She studied her reflection as she washed her trembling hands.
The eyeshadow was jarring. She had never really worn make-up in her normal life. Her hair was normally worn back off her face. She normally wore jeans and one of her husband’s shirts and a pair of her son’s sneakers that he normally left by the door.
Normally, she had a camera swung around her neck.
Normally, she was frantically running around, trying to book sessions, working sessions, planning recitals and rehearsals and practice and meals and time to cook and time to read and time to love.