After Hello by Lisa Mangum Page A

standing on her toes and pointing to a small playing card that had been taped to the bottom of the subway sign.
    “Ah! Aces’ calling card.” Sam hopped off the rail and moved closer to investigate. “Told you he’d leave a note. Looks like he’s gone to the park. Heading south.”
    Sara raised one eyebrow. “It’s the ace of clubs.”
    “Spades are north. Hearts are east. Diamonds are west.” Sam shrugged, settling his bag more comfortably on his shoulder. “Clubs are south.”
    “That’s kind of vague. Doesn’t he want people to find him?”
    “Codes and clues are part of what he does. Don’t worry—Aces will leave out another card if we need to change direction.” Sam headed into the park and turned south on the first pathway he came to.
    Even on the leading edge of Central Park, the trees were huge and green. The wide canopies of leaves cast soft shadows over the hard concrete. New York was a vertical city, no two ways about it, but Central Park had its own unique verticality. Trees instead of buildings. Monuments and statues instead of lampposts and street signs. Wide, rolling lawns spread like green paint, pooling around bridges, ponds, and pathways. The green evoked a strange mix of calm and excitement in Sam, a color that felt all the more shocking and refreshing to his eyes after days of staring at mottled gray sidewalks, rust-colored bricks, and tinted glass buildings.
    They walked deeper into the park, past picnickers and Frisbee players and a pack of bicyclists. The afternoon sun was falling lower in the sky, adding some pink and gold to the blue. The sounds of the city—the cars, the sirens, the background hum of endless activity and energy—faded along with the light and were replaced with the sounds of nature: the wind in the trees, a birdsong chorus, a barking dog.
    Sara inhaled deeply and wiped her fingers across her cheeks.
    “Are you crying?” he asked quietly, pierced with the pointed edge of his lingering guilt.
    She shook her head, but he wasn’t quite sure he believed her. Those sunglasses of hers were an effective barrier.
    “I was just thinking how this place makes me feel like I did at St. John’s.”
    “Quiet?”
    “Yeah, but a different kind of quiet. I mean, there it was all about an inside quiet. Like I should whisper, even in my thoughts. But here, I feel like running across the grass and shouting—but I still feel quiet on the inside. It’s strange.” She shook her head. “I’m not explaining it well.”
    She reached up and touched a branch of a nearby tree. A few small leaves came away in her hand, three tiny green buds clustered together. She stashed them in her bag.
    “I think I understand,” Sam said. “It’s kind of like how you feel during the first big snowstorm of the season. Part of you just wants to stay inside and watch the snow fall—and the rest of you wants to go outside and build a snow fort.”
    “I’ve never seen snow.”
    “Never?”
    Sara cocked her head at him and placed her hand on her hip. “It doesn’t snow in Arizona, you know.”
    Sam grinned. “Aha! I knew you’d tell me where you were from eventually.”
    She clapped her hand over her mouth, the tops of her cheeks turning pink. “Oh, man, I wasn’t going to say that.”
    “Why don’t you want me to know anything about you? Is it embarrassing? Scandalous? Are you really a Russian government spy sent to uncover my secrets?”
    Sara lifted her sunglasses and slanted a look at him. “Do I look Russian to you?”
    “I wouldn’t have guessed you were from Arizona. You could have gotten that tan anywhere.”
    She looked away, rubbing her arm as though attempting to smooth away the caramel color.
    “So what secrets are you keeping?” she asked, a tease in her tone. “You know, so I can report back to the KGB at the end of my mission.”
    Sam swallowed the words that weighed down his tongue. Not yet. Instead he shook his head and tsked in mock disapproval. “Look at you.