“I’ll try.”
“And no chatting up the receptionist, okay?”
“I wasn’t chatting up anybody,” he protested.
I thought about this while I was pulling on my yoga pants and hoodie in the changing room. “I think I’ve found your fatal flaw,” I said, as we walked to the elevator a few minutes later.
“Which one?”
“You’re smug. You know exactly what kind of effect you have on women, and you don’t have any problem using it.”
“Is that what you think?”
“Oh, I’m so right. Come on. You used it on me. You knew I was a sure thing.”
“Not for the reason you think. Anyway, it’s hardly a fatal flaw.” He glanced impatiently at his watch. “Let’s just take the stairs. It’s only three floors.”
We found the stairwell doors and tripped down to street level. “So what reason, then?” I demanded, annoyed he’d admitted it. “Why did you know I was a sure thing?”
He pushed open the door to the building lobby and motioned me through before him. “It’s hard to explain. Let me put it this way: when I saw you, in that conference room, I felt as though I already knew you. And it seemed to me that you felt it, too.”
“Did it?” I frowned, trying to remember the details of our meeting. I’d been so addle-brained, so distracted by attraction, it was hard to pin down my emotions.
“Well, perhaps I was wrong about that.” He shrugged, following me through the revolving doors onto the bustling pitted sidewalk of Eighty-sixth Street. “It only felt natural to me, that you would feel the same attraction I did. It was like something falling into place.”
“Oh, is that how it works for guys like you? You just feel this attraction, and the girl follows?”
“You’re deliberately misunderstanding me. Where do you want to go, by the way?” We stood on the corner of Eighty-sixth and Lexington, facing west toward the park.
“Well, I guess I should go home and change, right?”
We turned left to walk down Lexington. The pleasant weather had returned after a rainy interlude yesterday, and now the sidewalks were cluttered with people and baby strollers and sudden blinding shafts of sunlight between the cotton-ball clouds.
“You seem to have this idea,” he said, picking up the thread of our conversation, “that I’m some sort of… of playboy, I believe, is the term.”
“I didn’t say that.”
“You accused me of consorting with models and actresses…”
“I never accused you! I just thought they were, you know, kind of in your line. As a successful, attractive man, I mean.”
“What I’ll never understand about the modern era,” he said, “is this fascination with—what’s the word—celebrities, I suppose. Every age has its fixations, of course, but it’s as though vanity has suddenly been transformed from a sin to a virtue.”
“But we’re all vain,” I pointed out. “I mean, we all buy into it, don’t we?”
He walked along silently for a block or two, eyes fixed somewhere on the sidewalk, a few feet ahead. “Kate,” he said finally, “I daresay it’s rather a cliché, and in some ways a sort of left-handed compliment, to prattle on about inner beauty. And I don’t mean in any way to diminish your own looks, which frankly take my breath away. But I can’t imagine feeling this way about a mere pretty face. It’s everything else, the… the Kateness of you.”
I tried to speak, but my throat had closed like a vise. We both stopped, and he pulled me into the little recess next to a bodega fruit display. “You always have some fresh surprise for me, Kate. Some new aspect I never suspected. This dancing of yours.”
“Oh, come on. I’m honestly not that good.”
He shrugged. “You’re talking about technical skill,” he said, “about which I’m no judge at all. I only saw the way you held yourself, so naturally graceful; or perhaps poised is a better word. You possess a certain innate dignity, darling, which expresses itself in ways that fascinate me.”
Up until that point, I’d been trying to keep a lid on this infatuation with Julian Laurence. I knew my own weaknesses, my susceptibilities; any romantic illusions had been long ago crushed under the brutally efficient heel of college life. I’d met the first one in the library, as late bloomers do, right after Thanksgiving break: the charming and confident senior of my dreams, handsome, sleepy-eyed. We’d flirted for a week or two before he asked me to the movies with a group of friends—all his, of course—and followed that up with an invitation to watch the Packers game at his house off-campus. Later, I’d realized this was pretty generous wooing, as standards went.
I’d sat on a couch in the living room, surrounded by his roommates, eating stale Tostitos and salsa, sipping from a bottle of Bud Light. When halftime came up, he’d stood and walked down the hall, and his voice had floated out a minute later: Hey Kate, come to my room, I want to show you something. I’d heaved upward from the sagging sofa, felt the eyes of his friends shift away, walked down the narrow hallway with its bachelor smells of old beer and old laundry overlaid by the stickiness of a Glade PlugIn. I’d thought, so this is it. Not what you’d dreamed of, maybe, but this is how it’s done in the real world, don’t be a prude, don’t be a coward, get with the program.
Once our clothes were off, I’d blurted—embarrassed, really—that I was a virgin, and he’d said Oh that’s okay, we don’t need to go all the way, and we hadn’t, technically. But as I’d cycled through the frozen starry night to my dorm an hour later, my hands still stunned and burning, my flesh strangely raw against the pressure of the bike seat, I knew I was no longer innocent.
He’d asked me over a few more times—I’d never heard the term booty call, at that point—until Christmas break arrived and he forgot all about me. Sometime that spring, he’d called up again, out of the blue, because some friend of his had claimed that I was bragging all over the dorm about having had sex with him. I’d stammered my innocence, reeling to recall the melancholy Friday evening I’d confided some part of the story to a trusted friend, and hung up the phone and cried. Not because he’d scolded me unjustly, or because I still cared about him, but because he’d once touched my body so intimately and yet had never known the smallest thing about me: had never understood that, to me, having sex wasn’t something to brag about.
And now I stood here with this man, with Julian Laurence, in the shadow of a grubby storefront, surrounded by fruit crates and flattened cardboard boxes, powerless again, my eyes cast down to the crumbling gum-blotched pavement. I felt his hand slide into mine, firm and certain, turning me, urging me forward.
“Tell me something,” he said. “Why ballet?”
I shifted my throat. “Oh gosh. I don’t know. I guess I was looking for something else besides running. You know, cross-training. My friends were into yoga and Pilates and whatever. I was about to sign up. And then I was walking past this ABT poster one morning on the subway, this dancer just hanging there in midair, just unbelievably strong and graceful, both at once, and I thought, that’s it. That’s how I want to be.”
“It suits you.”
“Well, I danced as a child. Until I was thirteen or so, and it started cutting into the rest of my life. The whole teenager thing. Here’s my building.”
He waited in the lobby, chatting with Joey, while I raced upstairs and changed into date clothes—silk tank, cardigan, skinny black pants, kitten heels—and loosened my hair from its tidy ballet knot. It swung with an unfamiliar freedom about my shoulders as I came off the elevator; Julian, turning from Joey, seemed to start at the sight, though his voice was casual enough. “You look lovely. All set?”
“All set. Where to?”
“My car’s parked across from the house; I thought we’d drive.” He stood back politely, allowing me through the revolving door.
“You two have a nice time,” Joey called after us.
We started the short walk down Park Avenue just as the lowering sun began to wash the blue out of the sky
. The sidewalks were shadowed now, only the rare streak of light finding its way between the buildings, and the fragile spring air had already begun to cool. I felt Julian’s hand slip around mine and thought I should say something. “A beautiful evening,” I began, but my words were lost in the shriek of a taxi’s tires, as it flung around the center median and swerved to the curb next to us.
A man jumped out and started toward us. “Jeez!” I exclaimed, but Julian tugged urgently on my hand, pulling me along the sidewalk.
A voice called up from behind. “Ashford! Ashford, by God!”
“Come on,” Julian muttered, pulling me again.
“Ashford!”
I heard footsteps running up behind us. “Ashford! Stop!”
“Does he mean you?” I hissed. My right heel caught on the subway grate, sending me swooping downward. Julian’s arm snagged under me just in time.
The man caught up. “Ashford! I never thought…”
“Sorry, man,” Julian said, in a flawless American accent. “I think you have the wrong guy.”
My mouth dropped open.
The man was in his mid-thirties, round-faced, dark hair. He’d sounded British, though it was hard to tell; he was out of breath from running up the sidewalk after us.
“I’m sorry, mate.” His eyes swerved back and forth between the two of us, and then settled back on Julian. “You look just like a… a chap I used to know. Back in Blighty. I could have sworn…”
“Sorry, buddy,” Julian said again. “Wrong guy.”
“You’re sure, mate?” the man said. He peered one last time. “My name’s Paulson. Andrew Paulson.” He sounded as if he were pleading.
Julian shrugged and shook his head, looking regretful. “Doesn’t ring a bell. I must have one of those faces. Sorry.”
“Your pardon, then. Good… good evening.” The man walked away, so downcast I wanted to run after him, but Julian, who hadn’t let go of my hand, turned back and practically jerked me along with him.
“Um, wait a second,” I said. “That was really weird. Are you going to tell me what was going on?”
“Obviously it was just some idiot, thinking I was his long-lost friend.”
“But why did you use that accent?”
“He was British. I thought if I sounded American, he would give up sooner.”
“Oh,” I said. We were approaching the curb; I looked automatically down the street to check for traffic. We waited for the cars to pass by, and then dashed across against the light.
“Kind of funny, though,” I said, as we continued rapidly down the sidewalk. “I mean, he was British. Just like you.”
“New York is full of us,” he said.
We didn’t say anything more. The parking attendant at the garage retrieved the car, and Julian set me inside absently, almost as though he’d forgotten who I was and why I was there. As soon as we pulled out, he reached over with one hand to pull an iPod out of the center console. He plugged it deftly into the port on the dashboard and clicked through the menus until he reached some music. Mozart, from the sound of it.
“So,” I said, clearing my throat. “Where to?”
He rubbed his forehead. “I’ve spoilt the evening, haven’t I?”
“Not totally, but it’s only eight o’clock. You still have plenty of time to rip it to shreds.”
He tapped his finger on the steering wheel and turned right on Park. “Perhaps I should just take you home.” He sounded saddened, not angry; it gave me hope.
“Whoa. Wait. Stop. What happened, Julian? It’s like… it’s like Christmas all over again! And I swear I won’t let you get away with it this time. What’s wrong?”
“Christ, Kate,” he burst out, pounding the steering wheel, “you don’t know anything about me. I shouldn’t have… I’m the most selfish bastard alive, aren’t I?”
“Stop it! What does that even mean? Julian. Julian, will you listen to me a moment? Pull the car over.”
“No. I’m taking you home.”
“You’re not. I won’t leave.”
“I don’t want you to stay.”
“Yes, you do. You need me to stay. Julian,” I said, more softly, “you promised. The other night, you promised me you cared. So prove it. Don’t let me down, here.”
That penetrated. He drove silently down Park, toward midtown. I remained quiet too, not wanting to disturb the truce too soon, letting him work things through in his mind, talk himself off the ledge. Mozart’s clarinets wandered nimbly in the stillness between us. Outside the tinted windows of the Maserati, as we waited for the light to change, a fortysomething couple propelled a sport-wheeled twin stroller across Fifty-ninth Street, arguing, gesticulating.
I turned to Julian. “Forget the date. You’re taking me back to your place, and we’re going to talk.”
JULIAN DROVE THE CAR BACK to the garage and took my hand to lead me to his front door. The windows were all darkened, except for a glimmer from some distant corner of the first floor. He allowed me in first, closing the door behind us, and punched a few numbers into the alarm keypad.
I turned to face him. “I’m hungry,” I announced.
He laughed, unexpectedly. “I expect you are. All right. The kitchen’s downstairs.”
“Can you make an omelet?” I asked, making my way down the staircase.
“Not well.”
The kitchen was at the back, modern and well-fitted, with marble countertops that glowed in the warm incandescence of a dozen recessed lights. It was about eight times as large as the kitchen area in my shared apartment. “Do you even use this thing?” I asked, staring at the spotless stainless-steel gleam of the Wolf range.
“Yes, as a matter of fact,” he said, injured. “Porridge and whatnot. I have a housekeeper who comes by a few times a week, while I’m at work. She makes things up for me.”
“Wow. Must be nice.” I opened up the Sub-Zero and peered inside. A few casserole dishes were stacked in the middle, along with milk and orange juice and ketchup. “Oh good,” I said, “she’s left us some eggs.”
I hunted around and found some fancy artisan cheese and a tomato, closed the door with the heel of my shoe, and began rummaging around the cabinets for a frying pan and a mixing bowl. “You should tell your housekeeper not to leave the tomatoes in the fridge,” I said. “It takes away the flavor.”
“Look, Kate,” he began, “I’m sorry for…”
“Nope. Not now. You can’t have a reasonable discussion on an empty stomach. Find me some butter, will you? I, sir, am going to make you the best darned omelet you’ve ever tasted.”
“Yes, ma’am,” he said humbly. He brought me the butter while I whipped up the eggs into froth and added a splash of water. “You’re enjoying this, aren’t you?” he observed, watching me pour the mixture into the pan.
“I don’t cook much, but I do make a mean omelet. My father taught me. Mom would sleep in on Saturday mornings, and we’d make her breakfast.” I looked up and smiled at him. “Good times. Where are your plates?”
He brought over plates and forks, and when the omelets were done I slid them into place. “Here,” I said. “Eat it and weep.”
We sat down at the counter and began eating companionably, like an old married couple, forks clinking on china. “There,” I said, after a few bites, “is that better?”
“Much. This is a jolly good omelet.”
“Well, if you ask nicely, maybe I’ll make them again sometime.” I reached for my glass of water, and his hand caught my arm.
“Is that from the other night?” he asked.
I turned my elbow. Only a single Band-Aid remained, over the worst of the scrape. “It’s healing.” I shrugged.
His finger ran over the top. “I’m sorry about that. Any other wounds?”
“Bruise or two. I might even show you, if you get lucky tonight.”
He let out a single crack of laughter. “Lucky? At this point, I’d require divine bloody intervention, wouldn’t I?”
&n
bsp; We finished eating and put the dishes in the dishwasher. “Now,” I said, turning around to face him, “take me back upstairs and we’ll talk.”
He stood closer than I thought. I felt the warmth of his body, the tickle of his breath on my nose. He studied me, only inches away, his eyes full of some concentrated emotion. His hands reached up and brushed against my ears, not quite cupping my face, the thumbs caressing the very outermost points of my cheekbones. “What a marvelous woman you are,” he said.
“It’s just an omelet,” I said shakily.
Before I could so much as gasp, he bent and picked me up, bearing me upstairs to the library, where he set me on the sofa and knelt on the rug before me.
“Look,” I said, “I don’t know what happened back there, and I don’t care. I don’t care if we never go out on a so-called date. That’s not important. What’s important is that you don’t shut me out like that again. Ever. For as long as we’re together. If you’re done with me, tell me. I won’t be a pain about it. But don’t go cold on me.”
“I’m British. It’s what we do.”
I struggled upright. “Well, we’re in America right now. And if you’re on my turf, you play by my rules. Oh, Julian,” I said, more softly, lifting my hand to smooth his cheek, “you know, you don’t need to explain. You lived thirty-three years before you met me, and I’m sure there was plenty of stuff in there you don’t want to talk about. That’s okay. But don’t break up with me because of that. Break up with me because you don’t care anymore. That I can take.”
“Kate. Kate. You don’t know what you’re saying. Not care about you? Have you been listening to me at all?”
“Men have been known to change their minds.”
He lifted both hands and ran them through his hair. “If only you knew, Kate. If only I could make you understand. My God!” He caught his breath.
“Well, try, for God’s sake. It’s important.”
He put his hand on my arm. “Kate, listen. This thing in my past. All right, I won’t deny it’s there. But it’s bigger than you could imagine. It’s not just baggage, or whatever the modern term is. It’s essential to who I am.”