Page 2 of An American in London

After first going in the wrong direction, I find my room, which is all cream and pale blues. The beachy theme and sun coming through the window make me almost feel like I’m on vacation. I dial my best friend, Melanie, before I’ve even kicked off my shoes.

“You’ve landed?” she asks.

“I’m at the hotel. I just got here, and you’re not going to believe where they’ve got me staying.”

“Buckingham Palace?” she asks.

“How did you guess? Kate Middleton and I are going for mani-pedis later. No, this hotel is hosting a Daniel De Luca convention. Isn’t that ... weird or funny or something?”

“Oh, Tuesday.”

I skim right over the sympathetic tone to her voice. “Funny, right? They gave me a map to all his movie locations.”

I put the phone on speaker, unfold the map, and move the fruit bowl on the small table by the window so I can spread the entire city of London out in front of me. “Hang on; let me switch to video. You gotta see this.”

I switch the camera around so she’s seeing what I am.

“Oh, God. There are hundreds,” she says.

Different-colored lines starting at locations on the map lead out to the edge of the paper where there’s an image of the scene shot there.

“Which movie is that one on the top left, where he’s wearing the hat?” she asks.

I know even before I’ve found the image which scene she’s talking about. “Never on a Sunday, where he borrows the kid’s hat to make the mom laugh.”

I trace my finger along the top of the map, trailing through stills from his movie catalog before landing on the one fromNever on a Sunday. It was always one of my mom’s favorites. I often wonder if she considered whether Dad would remarry if she ever died, like Daniel DeLuca ended up doing in that film. Not that she knew she was going to die. And not that Dad ever did remarry.

“If you could monetize your Daniel De Luca knowledge, you wouldn’t need the job at the bank. You could come back to New York today,” Melanie says.

I laugh. “Yeah, I should be running this convention.” My knowledge is probably a little out of date now. It’s been a while.

“Maybe if it doesn’t work out at the bank, you can throw a convention in New York.”

I laugh again because the idea is ludicrous. I don’t indulge myownfantasies, let alone those of thousands of strangers. “My mom knew far more than I ever did.”

“That’s bullshit. You knew everything.”

I turn from the map and unzip my suitcase. “No, my mom was obsessed with him. I was just along for the ride.”

Melanie bursts into laughter. “It was totally the other way around. You were so in love with him. Don’t you remember your vision board?”

I’d started my vision board to copy my mom. She was always tearing images from magazines and flyers—a field of daisies, a pretty sundress, a sunset over the Rocky Mountains. Then she’d pin them to the giant corkboard in our kitchen or stick them to the refrigerator using my old alphabet magnets. Mom always said it was good to be surrounded by things you wanted in your world. And I wanted Daniel De Luca in mine.

I suppose Melanie’s right. My mom was just my partner in crime when it came to worshipping him. It feels like such a long time ago, when life was far simpler than it is now. “I thought I was going to marry him.”

“Yes!” Melanie says. “We dressed you up in your mom’s veil and a white apron. Do you remember?”

I’d carefully cut out the picture we took of me dressed as Daniel’s bride and stuck it next to a picture of him inSunshine on a Rainy Day. That’s how my vision board started. I gradually added members of thecongregation and then the house we’d live in—in England, obviously. I was planning to relocate after the wedding.

“Maybe your vision board is finally coming to life. I read yesterday he split from his girlfriend. He might make an appearance at the convention, and he’ll realize, after dating all those twenty-two-year-olds, it’s you he wants.”

I sigh. “Don’t hold your breath, Melanie. Life isn’t a movie.” I learned that the hard way and far too young.

“No, if it was, you’d have the chance to go to London for a month.London, where there are tons of British guys. If not Daniel De Luca, then maybe someone else.”

Melanie’s desperate for me to be “over” Jed. She doesn’t need to worry. He and I were together a long time and being dumped is never fun, but I’m fine. I don’t need to get under a British guy to prove it.

“This isn’t a vacation,” I say. “This is an opportunity to get onto the management fast track. You know I’m about ninety-eight-point-seven percent likely to get fired if I fail. They’ve already announced layoffs of junior analysts. If they don’t think I’m good enough for the fast track, why would they keep me?”

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