“Maybe cruel is an understatement. Call ittwisted,” Paul went on, sighing.
Lauren snorted once more, even louder.
“Please inform your wife that she is starting to get on my nerves,” Paul grumbled, turning back to Arthur.
He walked to a bench and sat down. Arthur and Lauren followed suit, sitting on either side of him.
“Is it really that bad?” Lauren asked.
“Well . . . not in itself, I suppose.”
And he told them about the conversation with his editor.
“You don’t have to go if you don’t want to,” Arthur advised him, giving Lauren a look that Paul could not interpret.
“Well, I don’t want to. Not at all.”
“So that’s it, then,” Arthur said.
“No, that’s not it!” Lauren exclaimed.
“What?” the two men chorused.
“Tell me: What, exactly, is your idea of happiness? A trip to the laundromat? Plopping down in front of the TV with a plate of cheese and a glass of wine? Is that how you picture the life of a great writer?” Lauren fumed. “How can you give this up without even trying? It’s like you enjoy disappointing yourself. Or maybe it’s just easier that way. Unless something more important happens between now and then, you are getting on that plane, mister! Finally, you’ll be forced to find out how you really feel about that woman, and how she feels about you. And if you come back alone, at least you won’t have to worry about getting over a relationship, because you’ll know it was never really a relationship to begin with.”
“And you’ll be there to console me, just waiting at my laundromat with a sandwich, right?” Paul smirked.
“You want the truth, Paul?” Lauren said. “Arthur is even more scared than you are about you going over there, because the distance between the two of you already bothers him more than anything. He misses you, we both miss you. But because he’s your friend, he’s going to tell you that you ought to go. If there’s even a tiny chance the trip might end with you finding true happiness, you have to take that chance.”
Paul turned to Arthur, who—clearly with great reluctance—nodded his head in agreement.
“Three hundred thousand copies sold . . . of one single novel . . . I guess that really is something, isn’t it?” Paul whistled, eyeing two pigeons nearby. “Amazifying!As my editor would say.”
She was sitting on a bench, eyes glued to the screen of her phone. David had called a half hour ago. Mia had not picked up.
The caricaturist left his chair and went to sit down next to her.
“The important thing is to make a decision,” he said.
“Make what decision?”
“One that will enable you to live in the present instead of constantly wondering what the future will be like.”
“Look, I know you’re trying to be nice, and it’s really very kind of you, but it’s just not the right time. I need to think.”
“If I were to tell you that in one hour your heart was going to stop beating, what would you do?”
“And here I thought you were a caricaturist, not a psychic.”
“Answer the question!” the caricaturist ordered in an authoritarian tone that terrified Mia.
“I’d call David and tell him he’s a bastard, that he ruined everything, that there’s no way we can go back to the way it was before, that I don’t ever want to see him again, even if I do still love him, and that I need him to know these things, even if it’s with my dying breath.”
“There you go,” said the caricaturist in a softer voice. “That wasn’t so hard, was it? Call him, tell him exactly what you just told me . . . except for the last point. Because I’m not actually a psychic.”
And with these words, the caricaturist returned to his easel. Mia ran after him.
“But what if he’s changed? What if he somehow went back to being the man I knew when we first met?”
