Out of the Blue Read Online Free PDF

a heavy black drape over my head. He noticed.
    “Are you all right, Anna?”
    I tried to give him a reassuring smile, but my hand chose that moment to deck my water glass. If I could only predict when these things were going to happen I could just check into a padded cell until it passes and I’d do a lot less damage. The goblet went careening across the table, teetered at the edge and crashed to the floor. There was a fuss as the waiter mopped and swept. I wasn’t so much mortified as very, very tired, so bone weary that it was an effort to open my mouth to speak.
    “Do you want me to get the check?”
    I nodded.
    While we waited, he stared at me through the candlelight. “You are so beautiful it’s scary,” he said.
    “It’s just the candles.”
    “You know that I’m in way over my head here.”
    “You can’t be. It’s too soon and I’m a really bad bet.”
    He smiled. “Anna, you’re so sleepy I can say whatever I want and you’ll forget I made a complete fool of myself.”
    Not bloody likely. Oh my, talk about beauty. His eyes were like jewels in that light, shimmering facets of blue and green and gold.
    “Can you take me home now?”
    He held me very close in the cab, and when he walked me to the apartment door, he gave me a gentle, lingering kiss on the mouth.
    “Tell your mother hello for me,” he said. I clung to the doorknob for support until he walked away and I could let myself in.
    Ma was in bed already with her reading light on. She was always careful not to intrude on my privacy after I’d been out. If I went in to see her, that was one thing, but I could count on her to keep out of my way otherwise. I’d thought that the moment I got home, I’d collapse for ten hours of sleep. But I sat down in the dark in the living room and stared out the window. Joe was out there in some Manhattan apartment, throwing his keys down on the table, shrugging off his jacket, pouring himself a glass of water. Maybe he’d stand at the sink a minute, lost in thought, remembering the soft glow of the restaurant. I looked out at the lights in the distant buildings. They seemed magical, like Joe’s eyes across the table. The fatigue crept over me again but I forced myself to stay awake. I knew the way I felt wasn’t going to last for long.

4
    Joe phoned Thursday night to say he’d been called out of town for a couple of weeks, but wanted to know when he could take me to the theater.
    “Oh, any time,” I answered, with a private nod to the little subtitle that flickers through my thoughts whenever I make plans: Assuming I’m not in the hospital. One of the characteristics of relapsing/remitting MS is a disconcerting element of surprise. Just when you think you’re on an even keel, or maybe you’ve even had a day when you’ve forgotten you have the disease, it jumps out at you and yells “Gotcha!” Last summer, I was working out on the treadmill at the “Y.” Other than a slight tingly sensation when I lifted my feet, everything seemed normal. Of course, normal doesn’t mean the same thing it did when I was on the track team. Then, about ten minutes into my routine, everything simply shut down. My legs disappeared from under me and the treadmill spit me out onto the floor in a heap. I hit my head pretty hard and came to with one of the supervisors trying to lift me. I wound up in the hospital for a couple of weeks until they got me stabilized on steroids, did another series of MRI’s that boasted an increase in brain lesions, and sent me home in a wheelchair. That’s relapsing/remitting for you. So when I told Joe “any time,” it was delivered with a certain amount of poetic license.
    “Sorry I have to be away so long,” he said before he hung up.
    “Me, too.” But I was lying. In fact, I was having too much fun savoring the afterglow. Why rush into screwing up a perfect memory? Besides, I’m a sucker for the instant replay.
    In my mental video of Joe and Anna: The First Date, I watched