The Sun Is Also a Star
Page 18

I take out my phone. “So. You ready for these questions?”
“You are relentless,” she says, not looking at me.
“Persistent,” I correct her.
She slows down and looks over at me. “Do you really think asking me deep, philosophical questions is going to make us fall in love?” She puts air quotes (oh, how I dislike air quotes) around deep and philosophical and fall in love.
“Think of it as an experiment,” I say. “What’d you say before about the scientific method?”
This gets me a small smile.
“Scientists shouldn’t experiment on themselves,” she counters.
“Not even for the greater good?” I ask. “For furthering mankind’s knowledge of itself?”
That gets me a big laugh.
USING SCIENCE AGAINST ME is pretty smart.
Four Observable Facts: He’s perfectly silly. And too optimistic. And too earnest. And pretty good at making me laugh.
“Number one’s too hard,” he says. “Let’s start with question two: Would you like to be famous and how?”
“You first,” I tell him.
“I’d be a famous poet in chief.”
Of course he would. Observable Fact: He’s a hopeless romantic.
“You’d be broke,” I tell him.
“Broke with money but rich with words,” he counters immediately.
“I’m going to vomit right here on the sidewalk.” I say it too loudly and a woman in a suit gives us a wide berth.
“I’ll clean you up,” he says.
Really, he’s too sincere by half. “What does a poet in chief even do?” I ask.
“Offers wise and poetic counsel. I’d be the person world leaders came to with nasty philosophical problems.”
“That you solve by writing them a poem?” The skepticism in my voice cannot be missed.
“Or reading one,” he says, with more unflappable sincerity.
I make some gagging sounds.
He bumps me lightly with his shoulder and then steadies me with his hand on my back. I like the feel of his hand so much that I speed up a little to avoid it.
“You can be cynical all you want, but many a life can be saved by poetry,” he says.
I scour his face for a sign that he’s joking, but no—he really does believe it. Which is sweet. Also stupid. But mostly sweet.
“What about you? What kind of fame do you want?” he asks.
This is an easy one. “I’d be a benevolent dictator.”
He laughs. “Of any particular country?”
“Of the whole world,” I say, and he laughs some more.
“All dictators think they’re benevolent. Even the ones holding machetes.”
“I’m pretty sure those ones know they’re being greedy, murderous bastards.”
“But you wouldn’t be that?” he asks.
“Nope. Pure benevolence from me. I would decide what was good for everyone and do it.”
“But what if what’s good for one person isn’t good for another?”
I shrug. “Can’t please everyone. As my poet in chief, you could comfort the loser with a good poem.”
“Touché,” he says, smiling. He pulls out his phone again and begins thumbing through the questions. I take a quick look at my own phone. For a second I’m surprised by the crack in the screen, until I remember my fall from earlier. What a day I’m having. Again, I’m thinking about multiverses and wondering about the ones where both my phone and headphones are still intact.
There’s a universe where I stayed home and packed like my mom wanted me to. My phone and headphones are fine, but I didn’t meet Daniel.
There’s a universe where I went to school and am safely sitting in English class instead of almost being hit by a car. Again, no Daniel.
In another Daniel-less universe, I did go to USCIS, but I didn’t meet Daniel in the record store, so our chatting didn’t have a chance to delay me. I arrived at the crosswalk before the BMW driver showed up, and there was no near-miss accident. My phone and headphones remain intact.
Of course, there is an infinite number of these universes, including one where I did meet Daniel but he wasn’t able to save me at the crosswalk, and more than just my phone and headphones are broken.
I sigh and check the distance to Attorney Fitzgerald’s office. Twelve more blocks. I wonder how much it will cost to fix my screen. But then, maybe I won’t need to get it fixed. I’ll probably need to get a new phone in Jamaica.
Daniel interrupts my thoughts, and I’m kind of grateful. I don’t want to think about anything having to do with leaving.
“All right,” he says. “Let’s move on to number seven. What’s your secret hunch about how you’ll die?”
“Statistically speaking, a black woman living in the United States is most likely to die at the age of seventy-eight from heart disease.”
We come to another crosswalk and he tugs me back from standing too close to the edge. His gesture and my response are so familiar, like we’ve done it many times before. He pinches my jacket at the elbow and tugs just slightly. I back up toward him and indulge his protectiveness.
“So the heart’s gonna get you, then?” he asks. I forget for a moment that we’re talking about death.
“Most likely,” I say. “What about you?”
“Murder. Gas station or liquor store or someplace like that. Some guy with a gun will be robbing the place. I’ll try to be a hero but do something stupid like knock over the soda can pyramid, and that’ll freak robber guy out, and what would’ve been your average stick-’em-up will turn into a bloodbath. News at eleven.”