Inside the car again they blasted the heat. “I’ve missed that,” he said.
“You’ve missed it?” she said, touching her flushed face with both her hands. Then she burst into laughter.
They drove along the water, past seaports and tourist spots that had been battered the week before by the season’s first hurricane, which came earlier and hit stronger than anyone could have forecasted. The harbors and beaches had been damaged, and as they drove along they got a glimpse of a stretch of expensive beach homes, one of which had been cleaved on one side by a schooner.
They got on the highway that led home and he drove past the exit. “You just missed the exit, Tim.”
“Are you going to go back to work?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” she said. “Why?”
“Just curious.”
She didn’t want to go back to work. She supposed it was the best way to spend her time, that it was an honorable distraction from the many hours in a day, and that it gave her life continuity and purpose. But the truth was she didn’t want to do anything. She couldn’t explain why, but she was nearly completely absent of any assertive sense of what she wanted to do with herself. She didn’t mind that they had missed the exit. They could keep driving forever.
“I probably will,” she said.
“If you do go back,” he said, “I have a listing for you.”
“A listing?”
“Will you do me a favor?”
“Are we driving into the city?”
“Be honest with me. Do you really want to go home?”
“It’s probably the last place I want to go,” she said.
“Why didn’t you say so?”
“I’m supposed to be happy to be going home, aren’t I?”
“Not if home makes you unhappy.”
When they reached the city he parked in front of a fire hydrant and threw on the hazards. He didn’t step out immediately. She was taking her cues from him, so she waited, watching him. He turned and announced he’d quit the firm. He had presented his resignation to Mike Kronish the day before, only to learn that staff attorneys didn’t need to formally resign. They just needed to give personnel their two weeks’ notice. Hearing the news, she felt something for the first time.
“They were never going to let me back in,” he said.
“You thought they would?”
“Didn’t you know that’s what I was hoping for?”
“I didn’t understand how you could do it if you weren’t a partner,” she said.
“Well, I couldn’t.” He opened the door. “Come on.”
They stepped out. He had a key to the front door of a brownstone she had never seen before, and he had the key to the parlor floor, and when he opened the door to the empty apartment he said, “We don’t own it just yet.”
She hung in the doorway. He stepped inside and leaned his back against the wall to look at her.
“What’s all this about?”
He motioned for her to follow. They walked through the apartment. It was a tenth the size of their house in the suburbs. It had charm and character and windows full of sunlight, hardwood floors and a remodeled kitchen, and a restorer’s touch around the woodwork. It had an antique chandelier and claw-foot tub. He led her to the far room.
“This is the bedroom,” he said. “It’s the only one.”
She walked around the empty room. “What would we do with all our stuff?”
“What do we need stuff for?”
“And what happens when Becka comes home?”
“We give her the sofa.”
“What if she wants to move back in after college?”
He looked at her. “We’re talking about Becka here,” he said. “Have you met Becka?”
“Good point.”
“Here’s the point.”
“What?”
“Only one bedroom,” he said. “Only one bed.”
FIRST CHILL, THEN STUPOR
1
They woke that morning in the bed that had contained them like a miracle for another night. Four years had passed since her return. Any predawn stir in those days that rustled the bedsheets put the one on guard that the other might be ready to rise and start the day. But if neither of them opened their eyes to look at the other, that was a sign that sleep was still irresistible in the lengthening hour, maybe because of the lengthening hour, and they drifted back to sleep. They dozed in and out like that most mornings, half-conscious of the clock and of the other.
She woke in the bed alone and had no memory of his having left the room, and this surprised her. In the daze of half sleep she was vulnerable and for an instant she felt that bottomless fear. She got out of bed quickly and put on her robe and slippers and carried her reading glasses out of the bedroom, through the apartment into the kitchen, where the smell of coffee made her both instantly comforted and more alert. She went up to him without speaking and put her arms around him from behind as he read the newspaper.
“I was scared when I woke up,” she said. “I didn’t hear you get out of bed.”
“Why were you scared?”
“I don’t know,” she said.
The kitchen at that hour was a place of drift and small preparations. The milk and the sugar bowl and the jars of jam and the butter dish were laid on the counter, and when the toast popped up they dressed it, and when their coffee ran low they refilled it. She preferred a delivered paper, in part so she could do the crossword but also for its fresh inky smell, second only to coffee as an announcement of a new morning. She liked the physical touch of the pages and the sense of fullness that having it all in front of her gave her, a containment of the world. He ate his toast and she peeled a tangerine and they talked of what they were reading, sharing parts the other had not yet gotten to. They added a little commentary if something seemed outrageous or, more common, all too predictable, and sometimes one of them reached across the counter and briefly touched the other, as in good morning, and smiled, and then went back to reading.
At some point one of them got up and started to put the lids back on the jars and to move the dirty dishes into the sink, and the other, not to be hurried, finished whatever article had been started before standing and replacing the lid to the butter dish and collecting the crumbs off the countertop and moving them to the garbage below the sink.
“Do you have a showing today?” he asked.
“Too many,” she said. “Although look at that.”
He peered out the window. “Another beautiful day,” he said.
“If it keeps up—”
“Let’s hope it keeps up.”
“Then we can do something this weekend.”
A few years prior he had found a job as an adjunct professor teaching a class on mediation at Columbia, and now she said, “You have class today?”
“At three,” he said.
He rinsed the dishes and placed them in the dishwasher and heard the water going as she prepared to take a shower.
He was back at the counter looking at the Internet when she came in dressed for work. She told him the tub was still leaking and now seemed to be draining slowly, and he said, “The one-two punch.”
“Let’s just call a plumber,” she said.
“Where do you want to have lunch today?” he asked.
Later that day at an early lunch they talked about what had transpired since breakfast, which was nothing, really, but they still talked as if they hadn’t seen each other in a while. They had lived another half a day and that time had gone by without incident and they were together again, and this alone made them talkative. Then, after paying the bill, they walked to the back of the restaurant as they did once or twice a week, sometimes more, first her, followed by him, and entered the same door and locked it, and sometimes they did it with her on the sink and sometimes they did it against the wall. The illicit risk, the appeal of the fear of being suspected or caught, never attenuated or grew stale, and they knew that to make things really exciting
, they needed only to change the tempo and slow everything down and stare intently at each other and stay in there much longer than anyone ever should. Then they left the bathroom just as they came in, her first, followed by him a minute later, keeping their eyes fixed on the exit until they were outside again.
“Well,” he said. “That was fun.”
“Have a good class,” she said, kissing him modestly on the cheek.
“Good-bye, banana,” he said.
“Good-bye, banana.”
She troubleshot the downpour that descended on the city by slipping inside a Starbucks, where she bought a latte in exchange for temporary shelter. All the tables were full and the show of the tempest out the window was standing-room only when things really got going. Everyone watched it as they would some gripping season finale. The only sounds not of the storm were of order calls and cries from the espresso machines. Outside it was torrential. The skies were all drumspit and fury and made her feel a child’s awe at the natural world, even if her view was only of stalled taxis and whipped awnings and water flowing over a slanting putty-colored pavement. She waited half an hour until the contentious storm eased back a little and she could wait no longer. Then she reentered the street with a small umbrella that went sailing in the wind and proved as ineffective against the driving rain as a kite on a string. Her heels hit every pothole and puddle and curb-hugging rapid and she felt dog-wet and slimy when she entered the lobby running woefully late.
The man she met there was an art dealer named David. David owned two galleries, one on Tenth Avenue and the other in London, and he came to her as her other clients did, by referral. He was sitting on a leather sofa under a softly lit sconce and rose to greet her when she walked in. She apologized for being so wet. He wore a tailored suit with a linen shirt, no tie and an open collar, and did not appear to have a single drop on him. She wanted to ask what portal he had emerged from, but instead they made small talk and then went up together in the elevator.
She took him around the apartment, a seven-room duplex with a wall-to-wall view of the Hudson, a wine pantry, a professional culinary kitchen, and it dawned on her, slowly, as they drifted through the impeccable rooms filled with the occult light of a sky gone prematurely dark, and talked casually about the place, with none of the usual tension that characterized conversations during walk-throughs with prospective buyers who tended to think you were lying about every I beam and faucet—it slowly dawned on her that this man, David, was of that type, on account of his shoulders and full head of hair, his two days’ growth flecked with gray on the chin, and the bright blue of his intelligent eyes, that he was of the type she found tempting. He would have been a temptation. Five or six years ago, he would have been better than a drink. If a man like David had pressed himself on her five or six years ago, she might have avoided drinking altogether.
They talked over the details of the building’s recent renovation and she pointed out the best features of each room. She did most of the talking but when they turned silent again and his attention was elsewhere, she looked at him intently. He reminded her of other men she had encountered in passing, infrequently and always fleetingly, who in their wake left her feeling reckless and intense, afraid of what she was capable of. They brought out in her a longing that stayed with her for a day or two, like a particularly vivid dream, until it began to fade and was finally forgotten. As they continued through the rooms, she started to feel giddy and romantic. Just to indulge a fantasy, she pretended that they were looking at the place together, that she knew everything there was to know about contemporary art, that her name was not Jane, that she went to parties with painters and eccentrics, and that as they looked at each room, they wondered what piece would go best on what wall. Then she returned to earth, smiled at David, and told him that she would wait for him in the kitchen while he had a chance to look over the place on his own.
She was staring out at the grim day through the window overlooking the river when he came down the spiral staircase. The steps were white and curved and reminded her of the wings of a swan. She turned and watched him descend the final few steps. He clapped his hands together and rubbed them hungrily. “I’m going to put a bid in,” he said.
“On the first one you’ve seen?”
“I love it,” he said. “And I’m very impulsive.”
“Well,” she said, “that’s wonderful.”
They talked about what his initial offer should be and what she thought they could get the developer to come down to. He wanted it badly and suggested starting at the listing price minus ten percent, but she knew that the developer was having a hard time selling and suggested that he start at minus twenty and go from there. He thanked her for the advice and after going over a few more formalities, they left and she locked up.
In the elevator, he surprised her. “Remember how I said I was impulsive?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“Well, I say we celebrate.”
“Celebrate?”
“A drink, my treat. A deal like this can’t happen every day, can it?”
“Well. Nothing is, you know, final yet.”
She felt dull and sobering, having said that.
“I can promise you this,” he said. “I’m buying that apartment. And at this hour—”
He moved to reveal the watch beneath his cuff. She liked the watch and she liked the graceful way he brought it out into the light.
“—we can just avoid scandal.”
For one fleeting instant, her sobriety was tested as it had not been since the day Tim picked her up from Cedarview. For one fleeting instant, her way of life, necessary for normal healthy functioning, struck her as totally lifeless, drained of spontaneity and energy and pleasure. She wanted nothing more than to have a drink with him. She wanted to get herself lost inside the darkness of a neighborhood bar, become unrecognizable to herself, gorge on the excitement of a stranger and risk everything—the languorous mornings, the illicit lunch dates, the companionable nights—risk it all for the sake of the risk itself. Then, the moment passed.
“I’m not much of a drinker,” she said.
“Oh, don’t make me beg,” he said. “Everyone enjoys a glass of champagne.”
“Especially recovering alcoholics,” she said.
He leaned back in his tracks and winced. “That was stupid of me,” he said. “I would have never suggested.”
“How could you have known?” she said. “Don’t think a thing of it.”
“Dinner, then,” he said.
His look was unwavering. He was so prepossessing that it didn’t seem brazen. It seemed merely part of his charm that he didn’t give a damn about whether she was married or not. She was flattered, mystified, exhilarated. She was also, after a moment, steady.
“I’m having dinner with my husband tonight,” she said, just as the elevator dinged and the doors opened. He smiled and gestured for her to go first.
Walking through the lobby, she felt effervescent. She had shown resolve. They stepped out together onto Greenwich Street just as night was falling. She was surprised by the sudden chill in the air. “It’s plummeted,” she said, as her phone began to ring.
“At least it’s stopped raining,” he said.
“I have to take this,” she said to him. “I’ll just be a second.”
Later she thought back on that moment, and the ironies were not lost on her. That she was with that particular man who had the power, just in passing, to make her feel restive and extravagant, urgent, fanciful, and destructive. That such a man was buying, in essence, shelter, protection from rain and falling temperatures. That Tim calling at that very moment should have driven the final stake between her and temptation.
“Tim, are you there?”
She gestured for David to give her a minute. David opened his umbrella to shake the trapped water from its folds. There was more sound on the other end than that stillborn nothingness of a bad connection, so she persisted. “Tim?”
“It�
��s back.”
She turned around and looked at David. In that moment she saw more than a temptation. She saw a life.
Hang up!
So I’ve had a change of heart about dinner.
Say wrong number, say…
But first take me to a bar. Order the champagne.
Say are you there? I can’t hear you. Are you there, Tim?
Start from the beginning. Teach me everything there is to know about art.
Turn it off and throw it in the gutter.
Where do you think this piece should go—this wall here, or that one?
Jane? Jane who? You must have the wrong number.
Hurry, David, come to the window! Look at the storm gathering over the river.
I wouldn’t want to be out in that.
But it’s beautiful, isn’t it?
“Jane?” he said. “Are you there?”
“Come home,” she said.
2
A sudden splintering of the wind had scattered the rain like a school of silverfish. Women held their clothes to their bodies as they ran. The freak menace drove people inside, some to where they belonged, the rest to the nearest shelter. The fear was ingrained in them, bone-deep, and their reactions foretold. One or two wretches wandered around in it, indifferent to the lashings, drenched, labeled crazy to give the world its point of reference. His body moved him down the sidewalk. From the storm, the raging city edges, the clanking lanyards, the corridors of wind, the raindrops white as blisters, the windows whipping in their warped sills—from these things he had no awning under which to take cover, no deli, no lobby, no office, no Starbucks, no bedroom.
Blue security horses lay in the street. He removed his gabardine blazer and let it fall to the ground. A man came out of a doorway, one of a loose association of the ill and unkempt, and picked it up and put it on and returned to the doorway where he sheltered. The man should have followed him as he discarded the rest: his tie next; his white oxford, which he tore the buttons off and let fall some distance from the tie; his watch, which Jane had given him for a recent anniversary, sent clattering into the gutter. Rainwater backed up around the sewer drains with a gray and foamy choleric density.
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