Coincidence by David Ambrose Page B

meet.”
    I hung up and looked at Larry. We both began laughing. In a few moments we were cackling like idiots. I don’t know about him,
     but I’m sure that my own hilarity came from a release of the pent-up tensions that I felt and still couldn’t bring myself
     to talk about. It was a kind of hysteria, but I was grateful for it, and for the chain of events that had led up to it. I
     was grateful that I had something to distract me from the painful events and the unbearable truth that I was not yet ready
     to face up to.
    “You’d better come and check out my wardrobe,” I said, wiping my eyes and getting my breath back. “Pick out what you’re going
     to wear. I get the impression looking at you that you’re a snappier dresser than me, so think of this as a character role.”
    He laughed and followed me through the bedroom and into my walk-in closet. Half an hour later he was dressed in one of my
     casual tweed jackets, cords, and a roll-neck sweater. I wore the jacket, designer jeans, and handmade boots that he’d been
     wearing—everything a perfect fit. The boots were the most comfortable I’d ever worn, and I made up my mind to get some made
     for myself. I even tried on his hat and sunglasses. When we looked at each other, the transformation was complete.
    “Okay,” he said, “here’s the plan. Why don’t I take a cab to meet your agent, then you follow on in about half an hour. When
     you walk in wearing my clothes, he’s
really
not going to know which of us is which.”
    “Wait a minute,” I said as an obstacle occurred to me, “how will you recognize Lou? You’ve never seen him.”
    Larry looked blank. “Shit, I hadn’t thought of that. Don’t you have a photograph or something?”
    Luckily I did have one, taken at some writers’ dinner where Lou had been my guest. It was a good enough likeness for Larry
     to find him in a bar.
    We took the elevator down to the garage again and exited the side of the building. After a couple of blocks Larry waved down
     a cab.
    “This,” he said, getting in, “is going to be fun.”
    He pulled the cab door shut, and I watched it drive off into the gathering Manhattan dusk. He twisted around to look back
     at me through the rear window and made an “O” with his thumb and forefinger, grinning broadly with boyish pleasure.
    I began walking in the same direction. After a couple of blocks—inevitably, I suppose—a certain melancholy descended on me
     again, but not with quite such a crippling heaviness as it had earlier. I still had the distraction of this strange new adventure.
     Something else to think about. Something that was by any standards remarkable. It had been both the saddest and the most astonishing
     day of my life. Such a coming together, a coincidence of opposites, must mean something in itself, I thought. A book, certainly.
     I had a book to write, of that there was no question. I would throw myself into it with all the energy I had.
    Yet I sensed there was still something more to it all. The day was far from over, but by the time it was, I felt that I would
     know something more about the direction my life was going to take, was perhaps destined to take, from that point on.
    It was a disturbing and at the same time an oddly liberating feeling.

Chapter 14
    I t has always been a rule of thumb with me never to lie unless I have to, and even then to keep it to a minimum. I would never,
     for example, resort to an outright untruth where a simple exaggeration would suffice. Sometimes it is enough simply to leave
     some small detail out of the larger picture.
    My encounter with Nadia Shelley happened exactly as I described it to George, though I confess to omitting any mention of
     the circumstances that led me to that point. When he did ask, later, I made up something bland about being in town on business
     and taking a walk.
    The truth was that I had been attempting to enter a branch of the Chase Manhattan Bank at which I had set up an