“Whether any of it was what I thought it was.” He said. “Any of it.
The company, the engagement, the direction of things.” He paused. “It’s a particular kind of lonely having everything and not being certain about the thing underneath everything.”
The study was very quiet. “I know what that kind of lonely is.” She said.
“Not in the same form, not with the same texture.” “But the shape of it, the feeling of going through the motions of a life and wondering if the motion is actually yours.”
“And that was not a feeling that respected the distance between South Side apartments and North Side estates.”
He looked at her. She looked back. Outside, Chicago moved in its enormous and indifferent way.
The lakefront, the towers, the bus routes, the July light on the water, the same city that had held both of them in entirely different registers their entire lives.
“I’m going to say yes to the role.” She said. “But I need you to know that it’s because I want to do the work.”
“Not because of anything else.” “I know.” He said. “That’s why I asked.” She nodded once.
She didn’t move toward him. He didn’t move toward her. There would be time for the rest of it or there wouldn’t, and whatever it was would be built on the only foundation she trusted.
Ordinary days, real attention, and the willingness to pay honest notice to what was actually there.
She turned toward the door. “Monday.” She said. “I’ll have a plan for the Phyllis transition by Friday.”
“Take your time.” He said. “I never do.” She said and let herself out. She walked down the second floor hallway, past the guest suite, past the storage rooms, past the east wing door that was just a door now, and she descended the stairs into the kitchen, where the morning was continuing and the coffee was still hot, and Phyllis, who was washing a mug at the sink, looked up when she entered.
“Well?” Phyllis said. “I said yes.” Imani said. Phyllis turned back to the sink, but Imani caught the small, satisfied adjustment of her posture.
The expression of someone who had known what the answer was going to be before the question was asked and had been quietly right about it and was too professional to say so.
Imani poured herself a coffee. She stood at the kitchen window and looked out at the garden, where the July morning was doing its easy, warm work on the peonies and the fountain and the white stone paths that she knew now by heart, every turn, every junction, every passage through.
She had paid attention. She had found the corridor. And she was, for the first time in a long time, exactly where she had found her way to.
