You Are Talking To God Now

"I always base everyone I write on a real person."

He had asked me to meet him for lunch. "When you're back in Toronto, come by the office so I can give you a squeeze." He always says that, give you a squeeze.

I met him after an audition and I walked quickly against the cold I didn't like.

"It's May! Why is it so cold?"

"You got me, doll." He always calls me doll.

"How are things?"

"Good. Great. It's getting busy in Toronto."

We sat in the corner of a cafe, on the second floor and overlooked Yonge Street. The waiter hovered and his eyes liked my dress, but we sat laughing.

Laughing exhausted him, I could tell.

"All he needs, right now, is Advil for the pain," is what our friend told me over the phone yesterday.

I ordered a Greek salad with chicken because I like routines. My life has no order so I ask for the same item at every restaurant, my vague and desperate attempt at sameness, predictability.

"And for you, sir?" the waiter asked him as he looked at me.

He didn't respond.

"Do you know what you want?" I asked him as I touched his hand.

He looked up at me and then, the menu, confused, like he didn't recognize anything being offered, like he didn't know my face, like he couldn't read the letters beneath him.

"I'll have the same."

He was sick. I should have known.

Looking back, there are always signs. They get heavy with the atmosphere of knowledge, they slip away and slide before you, teasing. They whisper, outlined with permanent marker, "You knew I was here all along."

"The discovery that heartbreak is indeed heartbreaking consoles us about our humanity."

We ate, fast or slow, I can't remember. We talked about my career.

"She said you go so deep into everything, like it was a bad thing. It's not a bad thing."

I felt a giant relief, like maybe everything would be okay. I felt so happy to be sitting with him. I think he was happy to be sitting with me, too.

"I woke up this morning, Katie, and I had the most beautiful feeling that you are going to get that movie. You are going to be shooting that movie next week."

"From your lips to God's ears."

Apparently, that day, his lips did have God's ears. If only my lips could have God's ears now.

This was the last time everything was still the same and somewhere, looking back, we both knew that, while not knowing it at all. The strangeness, beauty, tragedy of the world is that you both never know a thing and have always known everything. All along.

"Everything's going to be okay, doll. I just know it."

I hugged him goodbye outside the office and he hugged me back. I told him I loved him. I don't know that he heard me.