and going back to sleep for a few hours, but it would be impossible with him in the house. He will turn on the television or bang the dresser drawers. Run the coffee grinder. He will shake me gently to ask me where to find his socks, his keys. “No, don’t get up,” he’ll say. “I can make my own breakfast.” But I know he wants me to do it, because I’m here and because he’d much rather not do it himself.
I leave my husband in the bed. In the bathroom, I run the water and splash my face. It’s cold, and I swallow it greedily, feeling the chill slip down my throat and hit my too-empty stomach. I fill a paper cup from the dispenser and take it to him.
Ross looks at me as if I’m crazy. “What’s this?”
“I thought you might want a drink.”
“No,” he says with a shake of his head. “I’m not thirsty.”
He pats me on the ass when he passes. I hear the shower running, and I sit on the bed with my paper cup of water still in my hands, and I close my eyes against a sudden sting of tears.
From behind me, cradled in its dock, my phone buzzes with an email message. It will be Naveen, I think, emailing me to remind me about the shipments due to the Philly gallery later today. Or it could be my brother’s wife following up on summer vacation plans. Or it could be junk mail that has slipped through my carefully constructed set of spam filters and is now clogging my in-box. But the message pinging so cheerfully isn’t any of those.
It’s from Will.
Chapter Four
Will takes pictures of buildings.
I’m here to carry things or hold them while he points and shoots. Skyline shots, he tells me, are really popular for stock photography. At home, he’ll manipulate some of them in Photoshop.
“Post apocalyptic scenes,” he tells me with a grin. “Make the city look deserted. Ready for zombies, that sort of thing.”
I’m holding his tote bag over one shoulder, an extra-large cup of coffee in one hand. “Uh-huh.”
“You don’t like zombies.” It’s not a question. He says it as if he already knows me. He points his camera. Takes a picture. Doesn’t even look to see how it came out, just takes another. And another.
“Not really.”
He gives me another grin, his eyes narrowing in sunshine that’s too bright for this time of year. “Vampires that sparkle?”
“No.” I laugh. Shake my head. “Not a horror fan.”
“What do you like, Elisabeth? Chick flicks? Rom-com?” Point. Shoot. He aims the camera in my direction and clicks before I can look away.
Sneaky.
“I like action movies. Lots of shooting and muscle cars. Science fiction, too.” I’d put a hand in front of my face, but that would be too obvious. I hate it when women protest with squeals and cooing about getting their pictures taken, as if the world will end. Or their souls will be stolen. It’s worse than the ones who pose and pout and primp anytime a camera’s within range.
I don’t want him to take my picture because then there will be proof I’m here with him. Not that I have any reason to deny it. I’m in the city on business. I had breakfast with Naveen. Stopped by the gallery to handle some things. I met with Will for coffee, that’s all. And now to follow him through the city as he takes pictures for his stock work. There’s nothing wrong in what I’m doing.
He takes me to a park. We stare together at the giant Easter Island–looking head in the middle of it, neither of us saying much. Just beyond it, a line of people waiting for milk shakes from a stand stretches nearly all the way around the park.
“Those must be some pretty fucking amazing milk shakes,” Will says after a minute or so.
I burst into laughter. It’s loud. Raucous. Unfettered, that’s a good way to describe it, and I stifle it with my hand when he smiles at me.
The weather’s so much nicer today than it was the night we met. The air light and clear and warm enough for me to understand why someone might wait half an hour for a milk shake. I want to stretch out on a blanket in the grass and stare up at the sky.
Will takes a picture of the statue, then looks at the digital image on his view screen. “...Art,” he mutters. “Jesus.”
“You don’t like it?” I follow him along the path toward the street again, but spy something that stops me. I bend to pick it up, already grinning. “Oh!”
“I’m just jealous. What’s that?” Will says, leaning over me.
The shiny piece of gravel’s been broken into a misshapen heart. I lay it flat on my palm to show him. I trace the outline. “See?”
“Cool.” He sounds as if he means it.
“I collect them.” I study this one for a second or so, then look at him. “Silly, I know.”
“It’s not silly.” Will takes a picture of the rock on my palm. “It means you have a creative eye. Most people would’ve passed right by that. Never looked twice. I wouldn’t have.”
His praise warms me. My fingers close over the rock. I feel the press of it against my flesh. Impulsively, I hold it out to him. “Here.”
He looks surprised. “What? No. It’s yours, for your collection.”
“I have a lot and I always find more. You have it.” I hold it out again. “Now that you’ve seen this one, I bet you find them all over, too.”
Will takes the rock and keeps it in his hand for a second or so before tucking it into his pocket. We stare at each other the way we’d both looked at the giant white statue of a head. Pondering.
“What else?” I ask him when I can’t look at his face any longer.
“I have a commission for some underground stuff. You up for it?”
I can take the train into and out of the city, and I can find my way around once I’m there, but I always take cabs. I’ve never mastered the subway. I have a secret, not-unfounded fear of getting on the wrong train and ending up lost, and the smells can be overpowering. The sound of the subway, the clatter-clatter, echoing, hurts my teeth and coats my tongue with the taste of gray.
“Of course.”
It’s easy for me to imagine H.G. Wells’s Morlocks down here under the city, creeping along the tunnels and snacking on innocent tourists in I Love NY T-shirts and fanny packs. Will is serious as he takes shot after shot of the escalators, the curving tile walls, the dirty concrete.
Watching him, I say nothing. I hand him his bag when he asks for it, and hold it when he doesn’t. Every so often, he shoots me a grin, and every time he does I’m surprised again that I’m here.
“I’m all done for today,” he says at last. “C’mon. Let’s go back to my place, see what I got. I’ll make you dinner.”
“Oh...I...”
