Page 33 of A Map to Paradise

Hollywood, April 14, 1966

Eva holds the two bouquets of roses like a bride might as she searches the throngs outside the Palace Theatre for her friends. Melanie had told her to look for them beyond the stanchions and past the photographers now pressing their shutter buttons at a frenzied pace. But Eva hadn’t considered there would be so great a crowd for the premier of A Moment in Time .

June was being modest when she wrote in her last letter that it probably wouldn’t be a bad idea to take a mid-morning flight out of the Twin Cities and to get to the theater early.

Eva had assumed half an hour was early.

Perhaps she should’ve forgone the side jaunt to Malibu to gather the roses, but even Sascha hadn’t tried to talk her out of the two-hour round trip. Wise, rational Sascha, who knew everything about the rose garden.

And everything else about everything else.

“I think we can make it back to Los Angeles in time,” he’d said. “This is important to you.”

She’d been relieved Sascha had understood this.

If Elwood’s secret grave haunted June at times like Ernst Geller’s haunted her, she wanted to reassure her friend that Elwood rested in a beautiful place that he’d loved, as lovely as any memorial garden. And to remind herself that Elwood was not Ernst.

Collecting some of Elwood’s roses had seemed the best way to properly celebrate June’s and Melanie’s new movie. Their first.

It wasn’t Melanie’s first, of course; she’d been in a dozen French films in the past decade. And it wasn’t June’s first, either, now that she was finally getting the screenplay credits she’d long deserved. But it was their first project together: the original screenplay being June’s, the starring role Melanie’s. The story was that of an unhappy woman who uses a time machine to travel to the past but who discovers she’s only allowed to convince a younger self to make just one different choice, and only one—all while remaining unseen by that younger self.

The surprise ending was apparently a huge hit with early reviewers and critics, but Eva already knew what the twist was. Melanie, who’d flown to California from Paris for pre-premier publicity, had told her over the phone a week ago after Eva begged her to. Of all the things the unhappy woman in the film can do differently, she opts to save the man she loves even though she knows it means he will choose someone else. When she returns to her own life in the present, though, she finds that she is married to this man. Her sacrifice had changed her future.

“True love conquers all,” Melanie had chuckled. “Although it doesn’t, actually. But people love a happy ending.”

“Because people love hope,” Eva had said.

“And they like to imagine the outcome if love could conquer all.”

“Perhaps it does, though. Or it would if…”

“If the world were a different place?”

“If people were different.”

There had been a pause then.

“You got the airline tickets, didn’t you?” Melanie had finally said.

“We did, thank you. It’s very kind of you.”

“It’s nothing. You need to be there for the premier, Eva. No one knows the inside of this screenplay like you do. My parents and Nick will be there, too. He remembers you, you know. Alex might even show up. He said he would. But I’ll believe it when I see it.”

“Do you see them?” Sascha now says. He is at her side, and she can see a tiny smear of scrambled egg on the lapel of his suit coat where their five-year-old, Anna, hugged him before they left that morning.

Eva starts to say she cannot, but then she catches a glimpse of Melanie. She is dazzling in a sequined black dress and diamonds.

They make eye contact and Melanie shouts her name. A phalanx of photographers parts to see who the star of the movie is addressing, giving Eva a view of June, standing next to Melanie in an organza gown of fairy-tale blue.

Eva and Sascha inch their way forward as Melanie and June move toward her. A man in a black tuxedo unclips the stanchion rope and allows them to pass through onto the red carpet.

Melanie quickly pulls Eva into an embrace, and Eva holds the bouquets high so that they are not crushed. She turns then to hug June the same way.

The years have been kind to her friends. June looks tanned and radiant; Palm Springs’ ample sun has surely been generous. And Melanie, married now to a French designer and the mother of two twin girls, looks like she hasn’t aged a day.

When they part, Eva extends the two bouquets.

“I made a little detour to Malibu before coming to the theater,” she says. “I hope…I hope you don’t mind? I think Elwood would be so proud of you. Of both of you. I hope this is okay?”

As a surprised and moved June reaches to take hold of the flowers, one stray thorn pierces her finger and she winces.

Eva opens her mouth to apologize but June raises her hand to stop her even as a tiny bloom of crimson dots her forefinger.

“They are perfect, Eva,” June says. “Absolutely perfect.”

“That was really sweet of you,” Melanie adds.

Eva feels so at home in the company of these people that she wants to freeze time even though strangers surround them and she’s wearing a silk gown she will likely never wear again.

How wonderful and curious it is that home is not just the house you share with the people you love and who love you, she muses, but it is also this . This sensation, this way.

An usher approaches to lead them inside, telling them the film is about to start.

“Shall we?” Melanie says.

Sometimes you belong only to the moment, Eva thinks as they turn to follow the man, and that one singular snippet of time owns your fate. You belong only to that moment and to nowhere else.

And then sometimes the moment belongs to you.