Page 33 of Still Me
Sam was flying in that day, and staying until Monday evening. He had booked us into a hotel a few blocks from Times Square. Given what Agnes had said about how we shouldn’t be apart, I had asked if she might give me part of the afternoon off. She had saidmaybein what I felt was a positive tone, although I got the distinct feeling that Sam coming for the weekend was an irritation to her. Still, I walked to Penn Station, a bounce in my step, and a weekend bag at my heels, and caught the AirTrain to JFK. By the time I got to the airport, slightly ahead of time, I was buzzing with anticipation.
The arrivals board said Sam’s flight had landed and that he was awaiting his luggage so I hurried into the Ladies to check my hair and makeup. A little sweaty from the walk and the packed train, I touched up my mascara and lipstick, and swiped at my hair with a brush. I was wearing turquoise silk culottes with a black polo-neck and black ankle boots. I wanted to look like myself, but also as if I had changed in some indefinable way, perhaps become a little more mysterious. I dodged out of the way of an exhausted-looking woman with an oversized wheelie case, gave myself a little spritz of perfume, then finally judged myself the kind of woman who meets her lover at international airports.
All the same, as I walked out, heart thumping, and peered up at the board, I felt oddly nervous. We had been apart only four weeks. This man had seen me at my worst, broken, panicked, sad, contrary, and still apparently liked me. He was still Sam, I told myself. My Sam. Nothing had changed since the first time he had rung my doorbell and asked me, ham-fistedly, through the intercom, for a date.
The sign still said:AWAITING LUGGAGE
I wedged myself into position at the barrier, checked my hair again and trained my eyes on the double doors, smiling involuntarily at the shrieks of happiness as long-separated couples found each other. I thought, That’ll be us in a minute. I took a deep breath, noting that my palms had started to sweat. A trickle of people made their way through,and my face kept settling into what I suspected was a slightly mad-looking rictus of anticipation, eyebrows raised, delighted, like a politician fake-spotting someone in a crowd.
And then, as I rummaged in my bag for a handkerchief, I did a double-take. There, a few yards away from me in the mass of people, stood Sam, a head taller than anyone around him, scanning the crowd, just as I was. I muttered, “Excuse me,” to the person on my right at the barrier, ducked under it, and ran toward him. He turned just as I got to him and promptly whacked me, hard, in the shin with his bag.
“Oh, shoot. Are you okay? Lou?... Lou?”
I clutched my leg, trying not to swear. Tears had sprung to my eyes and when I spoke it came through a gasp of pain. “It said your luggage wasn’t through!” I said, teeth clenched. “I can’t believe I missed our great reunion! I was in the loo!”
“I came hand luggage only.” He put his hand on my shoulder. “Is your leg okay?”
“But I had it all planned! I had a sign and everything!” I wrestled it, specially laminated, out of my jacket and straightened, trying to ignore the throbbing in my shin.WORLD’S HANDSOMEST PARAMEDIC. “This was meant to be one of the defining moments of our relationship! One of those moments you look back on and go, ‘Aah, do you remember that time I met you at JFK?’”
“It’s still a great moment,” he said hopefully. “It’s good to see you.”
“Good to see me?”
“Great. It’s great to see you. Sorry. I’m knackered. Didn’t sleep.”
I rubbed my shin. We stared at each other for a minute. “It’s no good,” I said. “You have to go again.”
“Go again?”
“To the barrier. And then I’ll do what I planned, which is hold up my sign, then run toward you and we kiss and we start it all properly.”
He stared at me. “Seriously?”
“It’ll be worth it. Go on. Please.”
It took him a moment longer to confirm that I wasn’t joking, then he began to walk against the tide of arrivals. Several people turned to stare at him, and somebody tutted.
“Stop!” I yelled across the noisy concourse. “That’ll do!”
But he didn’t hear me. He kept walking, all the way to the double doors—I had a fleeting fear that he might just jump back on the plane.
“Sam!” I yelled. “STOP!”
Everyone turned. Then he turned, and saw me. And as he started to walk toward me again I ducked back under the barrier. “Here! Sam! It’s me!” I waved my sign and as he walked toward me he was grinning at the ridiculousness of it all.
I dropped the sign and ran toward him, and this time he didn’t bash me in the shin but let his bag fall at his feet and swept me up and we kissed like people do in the movies, fully and with absolute joy and without self-consciousness or fears about coffee breath. Or perhaps we did. I couldn’t tell you. Because from the moment Sam picked me up I was oblivious to everything else, to the bags and the people and the eyes of the crowds. Oh, God, but the feel of his arms around me, the softness of his lips on mine. I didn’t want to let him go. I held on to him and felt the strength of him around me and breathed in the scent of his skin and I buried my face in his neck, my skin against his, feeling like every cell in my body had missed him.
“Better, you insane person?” he said, when he finally pulled back so that he could see me properly. I think my lipstick may have been halfway across my face. I almost definitely had stubble rash. My ribs hurt where he was holding me so tightly.
“Oh, yes,” I said, unable to stop grinning. “Much.”
—
We decided to drop our bags at the hotel first, me trying not to gabble with excitement. I was talking nonsense—a stream of disjointed thoughts and observations coming out of my mouth unfiltered. He watched me the way you might look at your dog if it did an unprompted dance: with faint amusement and vaguely suppressed alarm. But when the lift doors closed behind us, he pulled me toward him, took my face in his hands and kissed me again.
“Was that to stop me talking?” I said when he released me.
“No. That was because I’ve wanted to do that for four long weeks and I plan to do it as many times as I can until I go home again.”
