From Comfortable Distances Read Online Free PDF Page A

carry on like that. It’s just
that Kyle seems to have convinced himself that we need to move and is on a
mission to find us a place when there’s no reason for us not to stay in my
place.”
    “I’m sure you two will
figure it out,” Tess said, her voice low. Talking business seemed like another
language to her right now. She felt as if she had overdosed on muscle relaxers.
    Dale’s head moved back as
if she were trying to distance herself from Tess while she studied her. Her
lips were a straight line.
    “I mean that you don’t
have to explain to me,” Tess said.
    “Right. Thanks for your
vote of confidence. I’m sure we will figure it out,” Dale said.
    Tess nodded. Michael was
standing beside her now. He and Dale nodded and smiled at one another, and then
the girl pulled open the door to the stairs and was gone. Tess was lost as to
what had just happened; she wished that she could transport herself from the
yoga studio into her bed. That was where she needed to be in her present
lost-in-space state of mind.
    “Shall we go?” she said
to Michael.
    “Cute girl,” Michael
said.
    “She’s taken,” Tess said.
    “So were you,” Michael
said, and with that Tess made her way to the elevator, grabbed a schedule from
the bulletin board, and pushed the down button.

Chapter 4: Seek and You
Shall Find
     
    Tess made a sharp turn
off of Avenue U onto 66 th street and hit the gas. Homeward bound. It
had been a long day, but a good one—she closed two houses and her two
top-producing agents had each closed one. It was like this each spring: real
estate deals closed with the steadiness of planes landing at the airport,
coming in one after the other. Spring and summer, Tess knew, was wedding time,
and the feeling of optimism in the air, the promise of new beginnings, the
desire to please future mates was contagious to house shoppers. Sometimes while
showing a home to a young, hopeful couple, Tess envisioned them down the road,
weathered, kids rushing through the house, noise, dirt, bills to be paid
scattering the counter, and she wanted to tell them it wasn’t worth it—that in
a dozen years, this home would become their jail cell.
    Tess sighed and felt her
shoulders fall from their perches by her ears. She looked forward to drinking a
cup of chamomile tea and soaking in a bath. At the stop sign, she fiddled with
the radio. There never seemed to be anything on except for deejays talking to
people who were struggling with relationships. A woman was telling the deejay
that she was divorced, middle-aged, and that she wanted to find her soul mate.
For an instant, Tess wondered how many more days of her life she would zoom
down 66 th street at 8:00 pm on her way home to an empty house, and a
wave of something—sadness, despair—washed through her. But her day had been too
full and there was too much she had to accomplish tomorrow to feel anything
other than anticipation for her cup of tea and a bath.
    In the darkness, she
spotted him, or rather his white shirt and shiny head, out of the corner of her
eye as she fiddled with the scan button on the radio, trying to stop it from
skipping from station to station. It was him , the guy with a death wish,
the middle-of-the-street walker. Only this time he was on a bicycle, on the
opposite side of the road, riding in the middle of the street in the darkness.
She beeped at him, and opened her window, ready to scream to him to get out of
the street, but he smiled and waved at her and at that moment, church bells
rang. A car behind her beeped at her and Tess pulled over to the curb. All
those years of living in Mill Basin and Tess couldn’t remember the last time
she had heard the church bells from St. Bernard’s Church over in Bergen Beach.
The chiming soothed her, took her back to the other night, the yoga room, the
bells chiming to invite them into class and then at the end of class, the
teacher using them to stir the class from their rest. Tess had been sleeping,
hadn’t