Rachel Alexander 04 - Lady Vanishes

like.
    “So now people get to talk about how much they love Indian food or going to a concert or playing tennis, everyone saying what they like to do. But we all know we can’t do it, we can’t go out for Indian food, go to a concert, play tennis, we have to stay with the kid because no one else will, not for love or money.
    “Of course, that’s not my problem, right? I can go home and forget all about it.
    “Fat chance of that. Just like them, even though I’m not with it twenty-four hours a day, I’m stressed out. I’m drained. I don’t have the energy to go out and find myself a sweetheart. And even when I’m not dealing with these kids, I’ve lost my ability to make small talk, doesn’t seem to matter that they’re not mine, they inform my life as if they were.
    “Not mine. Of course they’re mine. Who else is there to worry about them but me?” Venus was talking to herself, telling me her story at the same time, both of us looking beyond the traffic at the river, the light dancing on the water, a boat passing now on its way to the ocean.
    “How do you get close to someone who doesn’t understand the peculiar strain of what you do all day, of what you’re devoted to? And Rachel, someone doesn’t know these kids, they could never understand.
    “But just when I’m convinced this is it, forever and ever, I meet a man.”
    “On line?” I asked.
    Venus nodded. “On this chat group.”
    The traffic light on Eleventh Street was red, the cars looking like the runners in the New York City Marathon, lined up, tense, waiting for the shot, see who’s the fastest one.
    “It was like a miracle,” she said.
    Meeting someone on-line, I thought, what does that even mean? On-line, it could seem like one thing, be something else entirely.
    “After a while, we’re not in the chat room anymore, it’s just the two of us, staying up late writing long, long letters every single night, no exceptions, letting it all hang out, hopes and dreams and fears, nothing we couldn’t say.
    “All of a sudden, everything’s different. Someone’s listening to me, and me to him, listening to my problems, saying I’m kind, and funny, taking my advice, giving me some too. And, you know something, Rachel, I’m not so lonely anymore. I got [email protected] to talk to.”
    “No names?”
    “No real names. Just made-up names we use on-line. That’s how it worked in the chat group, and we stuck to it. I never asked for more. Neither did he. We both had so much more than we’d had before. Why rush? Why be greedy when you already feel rich?”
    “Weren’t you concerned?” I asked. “Meeting on the net, you wouldn’t know anything for sure. You wouldn’t know who he really was.”
    “Who he was? Of course I knew that. I knew he was kind, intelligent, sad, but funny too. I knew he was warm. I knew he cared about me and that I cared about him. What else did I have to know?”
    Lots, I thought. But I didn’t say so.
    “I know what you’re saying, Rachel—that he could be a kid, fooling around, or a con artist, about to lay a big story on me and ask for money, or an old lady in a wheelchair, passing the time away on her computer; that nothing I knew was real, that I could get myself one big hurt doing this. But in a short time, I knew that there was nothing I could find out about this man that would change what I felt for him. Not one thing.
    “And shortly after I knew I felt that way, that’s when he told me he was married.”
    Fortune, a Jewish proverb says, is a wheel that turns with great speed.
    But Venus didn’t look upset. She unscrewed the top of her water bottle and took a long drink. Then she hit the cooldown button on her treadmill.
    “I have a meeting.” Very businesslike now.
    She stopped the belt and shut off the power.
    “I have to get back. I’ll see you tomorrow, at two-thirty, then again here at five-thirty, and I’ll go on with this.”
    “Venus—” I said.
    But before I got the chance to ask anything else, she was off the treadmill and on her way to the ladies’ locker room, leaving me alone, the belt of my treadmill moving rapidly along, me getting nowhere, fast.

CHAPTER 5
    I Left My Number, Just in Case

    I didn’t go directly home from Serge’s. First I crossed back over the highway, walked uptown to the Gansevoort Street dog run, a private, locked run for members only, and looked through the chain link fence at the dogs playing ball to see if there were any pulis there. If