by Amy Field
Jacob, unfortunately, had not really packed for a night on the town in New York. He owned a single jacket, which was at least a size too small around the chest, and one single button down dress shirt, which had clearly seen better days. Katie was able to get them into the restaurant based on her celebrity, but the concierge was clearly not pleased at the situation. She wondered what would happen if later they tried to go to a club.
Jacob, for his part, seemed to get more and more overwhelmed. When they arrived three of Katie’s fellow skaters were already in their places and had ordered. They were all eating sparsely and drinking heavily, but when Jacob saw the price list on the food relative to the portions he went ballistic.
“Catherine,” he whispered. “That woman literally has a bunch of asparagus and a slice of beet on her plate. The menu says it cost seventy dollars!”
“Sshhh,” she said, trying to cover for him. “Prices get so confusing with the exchange rates and all that. Just order whatever you like. I’ll take care of it.”
“But I can’t eat a hundred dollar steak. There were homeless people on the street when we walked in here!”
Katie squeezed his leg under the table and he knew to calm down, but he was clearly still agitated. It was nothing, however to his reaction at the club.
They didn’t get there until after eleven, and in fairness Katie was just as tired as Jacob, but she hadn’t seen her New York friends in months and knew that this was their preferred way to reconnect. It was dark enough that the bouncer gave them no trouble about Jacob’s attire, but in the club the atmosphere as suffocating. There was bumping and grinding everywhere, none of the more formal dancing Jacob had been expecting, and probably eighty percent of the people were visibly drunk or high. This was definitely not his scene.
Jacob, normally so full of life and vigor, withdrew totally into himself. He ordered a single beer and sat at a table in the corner, watching as Katie bumped and shook with her girlfriends, and danced with not a few guys as well. Jacob was relieved when, just an hour or so later, she came over and told him it was time to go home.
He as silent for the entire ride, and by the time they got back to the condo you could have cut the tension with a knife.
“Catherine?” He asked. “Am I not enough for you?”
Katie turned to look at him, hurt on her face. “Of course you are, Sweetheart. Why would you ask that?”
He paused, choosing his words carefully. “I know that we come from different worlds, and that it will be hard work to try and make our lives come together. But tonight, I watched: you ate too little, drank too much, spent far too much money, and the way you were dancing with those men…”
Katie decided to land on that last one. It was probably what had hurt him most and potentially the easiest to explain away. “About that, Jacob, that kind of dancing is the custom here. It doesn’t mean anything…”
“I know what it means!” There was real anger in his voice now. “I have been to discotheques in Europe. I know how people dance in clubs, and I’m not opposed to going dancing with you, but you were sending those men signals tonight, and if you want to be married to me then…”
Katie raised her hand. “Okay, okay, I get it. I do. We’re both just feeling this out still, you know?”
“No!” The anger was still there, and rising. “Feeling it out is deciding that you have to sell your condo or I have to apply for a visa and move here. Feeling it out is me getting to know your parents or figuring out when and where we should marry. Feeling it out is not me watching you get drunk and grind on other men. There’s nothing to feel out there, at least not for me!”
Katie started to whimper and the tears started to come. Strangely, Jacob did not come to her aid. He didn’t try to apologize or comfort her. He just sat and watched. It was a long time before he finally spoke again.
“Catherine,” he said, in measured tones. “I love you. And I believe the real you is the girl I met on the mountaintop, not the club-hopping party girl I saw tonight. If that’s true, then I’m still in for this; but if what you want is more of what we had tonight, then tell me now and I’ll be on the next plane back for Zurich.
The sobs came out in full force now. Jacob did respond to this and came closer, putting his arm around and pulling her close.
“I want you, Jacob,” she sobbed into his shoulder. “I’ll leave this all behind. It doesn’t make me happy anyway, which is why I came to see you in the first place. I’m so sorry, Jacob. I’m so sorry.”
Jacob patted her on the back and kissed her on the forehead. “It’s okay, Love. I’ve got you now. Just let it all out.” She fell asleep on his chest a short time later he undressed her, put her in fresh pajamas, and he put her lovingly to bed. He slept, as he had at her parent’s house, on the couch.
Katie awoke the next morning slightly hungover, but grateful that the man she had chosen for her own—weirdly, it seemed, had been chosen for her own, was the sort of person who could undress her and put her to bed without doing anything else to her. Not only that, but even after the night she’d put him through he was up early, had exercised, and made a fresh breakfast for them before her appointment with Pete and her publicist.
The meeting was to take place in the offices of Blade magazine, the premier journal of speed skating and other hardcore winter sports. It was headquartered in an office building in lower Manhattan, just a couple of blocks from Ground Zero. Katie hadn’t mentioned that to Jacob, but he couldn’t fail to notice given the signs and monuments along the way.
The meeting itself went pretty well. It was tense at first, and Pete was very, very suspicious of Jacob, but his honesty and charm eventually won them over. Once her team had a pretty good idea of what was going on they dismissed Jacob into the lobby so that they could discuss options for a press release, how this would effect publicity for the winter games, and what sort of shot of the two of them would look the best for the cover of the summer issue.
After nearly two hours Katie emerged, relieved but exhausted. Her driver was still waiting, and so they got into the back seat of her car and started back uptown towards her apartment. She announced she was starving and was going to have something delivered, and was about to make the order when Jacob asked if they could stop.
“Stop, Honey? Why?”
“Just please, may we stop for a moment. It’ll only be a moment.” Katie could see the seriousness in his face and nodded her head. She knocked on the window, whispered something to her driver, and they felt the car veer to the right and pull up to the curb. Jacob immediately opened the door.
“Oh, no, Sweetheart, are you going to be sick?”
Katie was concerned about him throwing up in her car. That was literally the last thing on his mind. They were pulled off on Fulton Street, somewhere near Greenwich and literally across the street from the 9/11 Memorial. Katie and her driver watched through the window as Jacob waited for a break in traffic, dashed across the street, and crossed into the Memorial Park. There are two great pools there with the names of those who died inscribed in great bronze plates along the side. Katie watched as Jacob walked the pools slowly, his fingers tracing the edges, and then dropped to one near at the far end, crossed himself, and prayed. It was like she had seen back in Switzerland, this overtly religious gesture was performed here in a public park in front of dozens of people, and he seemed totally unaware of the fact. It made her want to join him, but something held her back.
He returned to the car a few minutes later and they were off. Katie asked if he was okay with Thai food, and Jacob gave a noncommittal grunt before falling into a brooding silence.
“Jacob, Honey, I’m so sorry. I didn’t think about this being your first time in New York. Of course you would want to visit the Memorial, and all the other sights.” She leaned across the seat and rubbed his knee. “I’ve got more meetings tomorrow, but then on the weekend we can go to the Statue of Liberty and…”
He cut her off. “I do not care about ‘the sight
s’, Catherine.” She saw the driver’s eyebrow go up at the use of her given name. “I came to pay my respects to the dead and to pray here, because it is the right thing to do.”
Catherine shook her head in affirmation. “I get that, Jacob, I really do. It’s just hard, because when you live and work around it all of the time…”
“Europe has suffered too, Catherine. My own country, famous for being neutral, was bombed during the War. My mother is from Schaffhausen, and her family’s business was destroyed when some Americans thought they were bombing a German military base. There’s a memorial there too, but no office building across the street. There’s no gift shop at Dachau either.”
The accusation hung heavy in the air. Katie was hurt and didn’t know what to say. Jacob tried to reach out.
“I don’t mean to say this is your fault, Catherine. You weren’t even living in the city when the planes hit, no?” She wasn’t. She’d still been in high school back in Kansas.
“But while I was waiting for you in your meeting, I had a very nice talk with Norma.”
“Who?”
“The woman at the front desk in the lobby.”
“The receptionist?”
Jacob shrugged his shoulders. “Ya, ya. Anyhow, she tells me how close we are to the site, and how so many people she she loved died in the building. Did you know her son was a janitor in the Second Tower?”
Katie admitted that she did not. What she did not admit, but what was beginning to turn in her gut was that she had been visiting that office on a monthly basis for more than five years and did not know that woman’s name. Jacob had learned it in the first five minutes. This was why she loved him—because he was that guy.
“Anyhow, after having such a good talk, and hearing of her family, and how she has been raising her grandchildren since their father’s death, I thought I should go and pay my respects.”
Katie started to cry. Not huge, sobbing tears, but visibly. She unbuckled her seatbelt and moved over next to Jacob, cuddling up to his chest. “This is why I love you, you know; because you are the kind of a man who meets a woman who has lost a child and then immediately goes to pay his respects.”
Jacob nodded his head. “Ya, Catherine, Ya. This is why I love you too.”
She sniffled and looked up. “What do you mean?”
“Because you also are this kind of woman.”
She wanted desperately to point out the damning evidence to the contrary, but she held herself back. “Thank you,” was all she said as she kissed him on the cheek and settled back into his arm. In just a few minutes they were home, and the delivery man as waiting for them. Katie paid him in the lobby and together they went upstairs.
They fell back into their easy pattern of conversation, and Jacob compared the food he was eating to some that he’d had in Nepal when he visited Everest. Katie, for her part, just talked about similar restaurants that she knew of, both here and in Chicago, and how hard it was to cook with the constant coming and going.
After lunch she took a quick power nap, then announced that she was heading to the rink to work out. Jacob asked if he could come and watch. She agreed. She thought it would be good for him to see Pete outside of the moody mess he’d met him in this morning, plus get a sense of some of the friends he’d met last night as professional athletes.
The athletic center that Katie worked out in was state of the art. The rink itself was kept cool, but the rest of the building set at an ordinary temperature. She went to the locker room and changed into a sports bra and shorts, and then worked for a time, first on the treadmill, then the elliptical, and then on some weights. After that she changed again, this time into a speed suit, and went out on the ice. Each time Jacob was forced to move from place to place. She had given him her smartphone so that he’d have something to read if he wanted, but he didn’t seem to know how to use it. He had picked up a copy of The Village Voice somewhere, but it really didn’t seem like his kind of reading, and he finished it early. She realized that he wouldn’t be coming all of the time, but she wanted him to meet people.
He did, of course, make an excellent impression on everyone who met him. He was charming and funny and genuine in a way that New Yorkers seldom encountered, except when people first moved from the Midwest. Katie wondered if she’d ever been like that when she first moved. But she couldn’t think about that now—she had work to do.
Her weeks in the Alps had kept her in shape but off of her game. Easily the best athlete of the crew, she kept coming in third place, which made her visibly angry. She’d change up technique, adjust her uniform, and swear like a sailor every time she got beat. The other girls, for their part, teased her pretty hard about her sluggishness. They were with her the night before, so she knew they were just razzing her, but in front of Jacob it hurt nonetheless.
Eventually Jacob walked over to the ice. He said something to Pete, who between rounds came over to Katie.
“Cat, your boy says that you have some sort of alarm on your phone that won’t go off.”
She rolled her eyes and thought about making a joke about the Swiss and technology, until Pete held the phone out to her. She swore again and excused herself, then ran into the locker room. Two minutes later she and Pete were out the door. Despite the length of his legs he was having a hard time keeping up.
“I don’t understand, Catherine, what’s the rush? Did this Abelardo friend of yours get hurt?”
“No, no, Sweetie,” she explained. “We just got reservations at a very, very trendy restaurant. I’d tried to get in for months before I left, and here I am, my second day back and it’s worked. But we have to be there in an hour and a half.”
“Alright, so is it nearby?”
“Well, I have to go home and change first.”
“Ya, okay, and I can change into my suit and..”
“Nope. Here.” She reached into her wallet and pulled out a credit card. “I’m going to have him drop me off at home. I’m going to shower and change. Meanwhile he’s going to run you up to Brooks Brothers and find you something decent to wear. They won’t let you in with the suit that you’ve got.”
There it was. She’d said it more bluntly than she’d meant to, but that was the truth of it.
Jacob tried to protest but she shushed him as the car pulled up to her apartment. She leaned over and kissed him as she exited the car.
“Don’t worry, Sweetie. It’ll be grand. I’ll see you in an hour.”
It took slightly longer than that, but Katie’s plan basically did work. A little over an hour later her driver reappeared, and allowed her, now dressed elegantly in an evening gown into the car where Jacob sat, perfectly fitted into a grey blazer and slacks with braces. He looked like a slightly craggy-faced model. They chatted pleasantly enough on the drive over, and actually arrived a little early for their reservation. They went to the bar and ordered drinks, which again were ridiculously overpriced, and Jacob took to people-watching.
They were surrounded by a Who’s Who of New York’s elite: movie stars and singers, athletes and politicians, even a few famous criminals dotted the crowd; all were dressed to the nines, and all were paying out the nose for food which, when it came, Jacob admitted was good, but worried couldn’t possibly be worth what they were paying.
Katie was sympathetic to Jacob’s concern. This was a fight she had with her parents every time they would come to visit. Her dad would always say, “Why would I pay fifty of a hundred bucks for a steak out I can cook better at home for myself for less than ten dollars?” Katie would counter that what they were paying for was the presentation, the ambience, and the experience, and her dad would reply that the experience of getting screwed out of his money wasn’t really worth the hundred dollars.
Jacob’s concern was similar, but differed slightly. He was very touched by the homeless that were everywhere in New York, and was especially bothered by paying so much money for food in a restaurant when there were people begging outside. He wasn’t eating much of
his steak, which Katie was sure meant he would ask for a doggie bag, which she was equally sure would go to the first homeless person he saw.
Jacob’s mind, however, was on other thing. As they waited for dessert he sipped on his coffee and smiled. Then, leaning forward with that conspiratorial air that he had, like he was letting you in on a great secret, he asked. “So, at the rink today, did you have fun?”
You could’ve knocked Katie over with a feather. That was literally the last question she thought he would ask. She’d thought through answers concerning her teammates who were gay, the swearing, the money-spending, but she hadn’t prepared herself for this one. She was so shocked she answered more honestly than she meant to.
“No, I guess not.”
“I didn’t think so.” He leaned back, sipped his coffee again, then pierced her with those eyes again.
“So why do it?”
“Pardon?”
“Why work so hard at something if you don’t enjoy it anymore, if you don’t love it.”
“I do love it,” Katie protested. “I’ve given my whole life to it: blood sweat, and tears, and more than a decade of training an competition and…”
“But you aren’t excited talking about it anymore, are you? It no longer stirs a fire in your belly? Then, why bother?”
She sat on that one for a while. Eventually she answered. “The money, I guess.”
“The money.” It was the closest she had heard him to sounding bitter. “And what does the money get you?”
“What does the money get me?” She was incredulous. Who did he think was paying for all of this? His meals, his clothes, the car he’d ridden in? The money gave her everything. Maybe that’s what this was all about—jealously. She’d always make more money than him.
“The money gets me what I want. It provides a life I like living for myself, and better prospects than I ever would have had in Kansas.”
“Kansas,” he said firmly, smiling a little. “I like Kansas. Is like Switzerland, but more flat. But your parents, like my parents, simple people, hard-working people.”
