Read Online This Must Be the Place by Anna Winger - Free Book Online Page B

she watched the man walk away. Her boyfriend? Her husband? Her brother. The elevator was small and old-fashioned. Once inside, Walter was close enough to smell her hair, or whisper in her ear if he leaned forward, or bury his face in her neck. She rested her eyes on the middle distance between herself and the door, and in his head he followed the tune she was humming like the ball in a karaoke video. He was able to anticipate the upcoming notes and even the lyrics, but still unable to name the song, a pop hit from years ago, the kind that lived on forever at the supermarket. Her version was nice, he thought, the acoustic original pared down to the kind of simple melody hippies used to play on guitars. When the old elevator lurched into its ascent she stopped humming. Then she continued out loud.
    “Forgotten what I started fighting for,” she sang under her breath.
    It was clear she hadn’t noticed that the song slipped out her mouth. When she took a long pause to inhale, he held his breath. They were so close to each other they might have kissed. The elevator creaked slowly past the first floor, then past the second.
    “It’s time to bring this ship into the shore,” she sang, “and throw away the oars. Forever.”
    The next line lingered on Walter’s lips. If this were a musical, he thought, they would break into a duet at the chorus. They would start off a cappella in the elevator, like Gene Kelly and Debbie Reynolds. The orchestra would join in as they danced onto the landing, singing together. I can’t fight this feeling anymore! As they twirled down the hallway, the neighbors would stick out their heads, then slam their doors in unison. Walter and the beautiful woman would just laugh, snapping their fingers, swinging their hips. The number would wind down at her front door. Arched back, dramatic kiss. In fact, they were still standing side by side in the elevator, but he grinned at her anyway, and when she saw his smile she stopped singing abruptly, covered her mouth with one hand. She was embarrassed! He wanted to tell her not to be. He wanted to say it was beautiful, but the English words escaped him. Tom Cruise has never made a musical, is what he was thinking. They could talk about that in California. They could develop the project together next year. Walter was still considering whether or not the singing parts should be dubbed into German when the elevator reached the third floor and the woman stepped out.

6
    Hope woke up late and went down to the end of her street to a Starbucks look-alike called Balzac, where she ordered a cup of coffee. That Balzac had its menu board in English (the unique nomenclature of Starbucks English) and a take-out system that required little contact with its employees meant that she often bought all her meals there, listening to the same collection of hits from the eighties that played on shuffle over the loudspeakers. Today, she had walked in to “Careless Whisper,” followed closely by “Total Eclipse of the Heart.” Normally she took her coffee to go and drank it back at the apartment, but after what had happened the night before she determined to stay. She was clearly spending way too much time alone. How long had she been singing out loud? Maybe she’d been doing it on and off for days, on the street and in her German class, in her sleep. She found herself an armchair by the window with her coffee. The night before she had rushed into her apartment from the elevator and done something she rarely did anymore: she called her mother.
    “At least he smiled,” said Hope. “If he hadn’t smiled I wouldn’t have noticed. I might have just gone on singing for days.”
    The song had been stuck in her head for a week: “Can’t Fight This Feeling,” an REO Speedwagon hit from high school that she’d never liked, even when it was popular, but like most of the Top 40 hits from her youth she remembered all the words. She hadn’t heard this particular song for fifteen