time, set to deliver it on cue with a face full of rueful honesty.
“Have you ever been in a crowd—at a concert, maybe, or on the street—and noticed the way all the faces seem to blend together? But when you pick out a single person, suddenly he’s not this anonymous guy anymore. He’s somebody. An individual. You know?”
Jack nods.
“Well, I became sort of fascinated by that. I’d ask myself questions about the guy. Like, I wonder where he lives. I wonder what’s in his refrigerator. Or his sock drawer or DVD collection. What’s his name? How strong are his glasses? What’s in his medicine cabinet? It was a game. But after a while, I started to wish I could check my guesses to see if they were right.”
“So you started breaking in.”
“Yeah. I knew this girl once who taught me how to get into houses. Where people hide their spare keys, how to break a window quietly. She could get in anywhere.”
“Who was this?”
“Just someone from the foster system. I roomed with her at the Center for a while. She’s a wizard, smart as hell. Anyway, I discovered that it’s actually really easy to get in and out, provided no one’s around.”
“You never got caught before?”
“No.” I raise my chin. “And I wouldn’t have with you, either, if you hadn’t picked that day to forget your phone or whatever.”
He looks at me skeptically. It’s impossible to tell which part of my story he isn’t buying. I pretend not to see the doubt in his eyes. I’m locked into my bluff now and need to ride it out.
“And is it only men who interest you?” he says.
“Yes.”
“Never followed a woman?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“I already know about women.”
“Hmm. So what did you find out?”
“That most men are perverts. That they collect weird things like agates and toy race cars and Asian porn. That every guy has at least one picture of his dick—God knows why.”
He laughs, and I find an odd, sagging comfort in the sound.
“That they always hang their pictures too high—present company excepted—are strangely attracted to futons and can’t keep their houseplants alive.”
I take up my chopsticks.
“That’s it?” he says.
“Pretty much.”
“And what do you leave with?”
“Just the box.”
“Not the stereo, not the TV. Just the box?”
“Right.”
He tips back in his chair, watching me eat.
“You’re an odd little chick, Alice Croft.”
I shrug. “Everyone’s odd.”
“So how long were you following me before I found you in my closet?”
“I don’t know. Two or three weeks, maybe?”
The corner of his mouth twitches. I feel his gaze on me and a tumbling fullness in my stomach.
“So for three weeks,” he says, “I’ve had this gorgeous little thief following me around, just dying to get into my bed, and I didn’t even know it.”
I set down my chopsticks and wipe my mouth. Take a sip of tea.
“Your bedroom, maybe. Not your bed.”
His gaze slides from my face, down the front of my Pink Panther T-shirt and up again.
“My mistake,” he says.
By the time we leave the restaurant, the ever-present clouds have dissolved into rain. Jack opens his umbrella and pulls me underneath, his arm around my waist. His sweater feels comforting against my cheek, a nubbled cushion over the firm bump of his shoulder. The city around us vibrates with the energy of a million lives, with ten million boxed-up secrets. I feel myself at the center of them, small but protected, my feet slapping the rain-sluiced sidewalk and Jack’s falling into step as he shortens his stride to match mine.
“My friend has a boat,” he says. “Would you like to see it? We could walk there.”
A warm, fragile bubble of happiness swells inside my chest.
“Yes, I would.”
* * *
The boat turns out to be a small motor yacht, moored in a slip at the end of a long wooden dock. With a long sleek nose and shining chrome rail, it bobs on the dark water like a shard of wet ice.
“You have some fancy friends,” I say as Jack reaches out to help me on board.
He grins. “This one thinks so. I keep having to remind him about the time he pissed his pants in second grade, just to keep his ego in check.”
I turn in a slow circle on the wooden deck, looking around. The rain has subsided, leaving a blanket of fat raindrops over the seats and metal railings. Jack unlocks a metal box under one of the benches and takes out a rag. He wipes down a seat and part of the railing, then tosses the rag back where he’d found it.
“I have some weed,” he says.
“So do I.”
He laughs and pulls a plastic-wrapped joint from his pocket. “Well, make yourself comfortable.”
We settle on the vinyl seat, half facing each other. The seat is too high for me and my feet dangle, so I curl one leg up and tuck my foot behind my knee. He gives me the joint and lights it with a yellow Bic. We pass the weed back and forth as we talk.
“Where did you grow up?” I ask.
“Upstate New York. My dad owns a chain of liquor stores in the city. I came out here to go to school.”
“Do you have brothers and sisters?”
“A brother. Much older than me. He was already in high school when I was born.”
“You were an afterthought.”
He squints at me through a curl of sweet-scented smoke. “Yeah. Thanks for noticing.”
“I’ll bet you were spoiled.”
“The hell I was. My dad was a hardhanded son of a bitch.”
“But your mother stuck up for you, didn’t she. A middle-aged Italian lady with a baby? Don’t tell me.”
