My heart has taken it upon itself to perform a series of trips or tricks inside my ribcage: a type of cardiac pratfall. It has decided to miss or stumble over every tenth or eleventh beat. The effect is one of unremitting anxiety, interspersed with spikes of panic. I have to press my hand to my chest, as if to reassure my heart, to tell it to behave. Sweat prickles along my hair line, inside my collar. I’m fine, I tell myself, tell my heart, we’re fine. But what if I somehow miss Todd? What if I don’t find him? What if I drop dead of a heart attack right here? Would the police be able to track down Claudette, to reunite her with my lifeless body? Is there enough ID on me for them to locate her?The clutter of brick buildings in front of me is silent. The doors are shut. The windows are still. But it’s almost the end of the school day and, any minute now, the place is going to erupt into activity and I will, I think, come face to face with my erstwhile friend Todd Denham for the first time in twenty-four years.A short internet search at Newark airport revealed that the vinyl-loving, cardigan-wearing, Derrida-reading Todd of the late 1980s is now a high-school teacher in Sussex.
