Afternoon Delight (13 page)

The captain set off again. “So you're not going to get your nose out of joint if I ask her out.”

One stride caught him up with Jonesy. “You going to ask her out?”

“I might,” Jonesy said, considering. “She's pretty, and she looks like she'd be fun. They're in the park a couple of days a week, right? I'll swing by another time, see what's what.”

The time to say something was now. For a moment the words trembled in his throat.
Yes, I'm going out with her. Don't talk to her, don't look at her, don't think about her.
But saying something like that meant staking a claim in the future. They'd agreed to . . . well, they'd agreed to nothing. One afternoon delight turned into a few more, but that didn't mean anything other than spring chemistry.

He followed Jonesy into the station, the words he wasn't saying burning worse than any chili sauce ever would.

***

“I told you your friend was connected,” Trish crowed. She held out her phone. Sarah scrolled through a tweet stream containing a picture of a stuffed bear getting shoved in a locker.

“They're still teasing Tim with the stuffed bear?”

“Not that,” Trish said impatiently, and scrolled up. “That!”

It was a picture of the EMS personnel from Tim's station sprawled on the park benches, eating Symbowl. The truck was in the background, and the tweet attached to the picture read
Good sauces + good food = happy paramedics
.

“Nineteen thousand followers,” Trish said with a fist pump. “Nineteen thousand! Yes!”

Sarah just laughed.

***

Sarah spent her Saturday doing her second-favorite thing: wandering, getting to know New York on foot, putting recipes on the back burner and letting her subconscious work away at them. Her grasp of the city was improving, because she only had to check her laminated map twice to get from Brooklyn to Grand Central. She strolled through the main space, peering at the constellations on the ceiling, then made her way under a cloudy sky to the famous lions guarding the library on Fifth Avenue and a quick peek at the Rose Reading Room.

She got lunch at one of the vendors in Bryant Park, then began walking through the Midtown streets. They were an interesting combination of fashion notions, shops dedicated exclusively to buttons or ribbon or fabric, restaurants on the edge of the theater district, and apartments. Over an hour disappeared in a discussion about the history of buttons, and another in ribbons. She sketched out a couple of designs for boxes to hold her version of the Brooklyn Blackout, then set off again.

Down a side street, in an unremarkable building flanked by equally unremarkable buildings, she stopped in front of a window that was truly astonishing. Under the word
IRRESISTIBLE
in gray script, the mannequin in the window wore what her mother would call a peignoir set suited to spring: green and flowing, sheer fabric trimmed with wide silk over a paler green satin corset and panties. It was absolutely gorgeous, the kind of thing she never wore. She was a cotton hipster panties and supportive bra kind of girl, reflecting both her personality and the realities of her figure. She was curvy, not thin, in love with food, at the upper end of a healthy weight for her height; the challenge of losing weight to meet an arbitrary ideal body image was one she steadfastly refused to take.

She tried the door, found it locked, and pressed the buzzer beside the shop's name.

“Welcome,” a voice said, then the door release buzzer went off. Sarah climbed the stairs to the second floor and opened a door into another world. Hardwood floors stretched through the main room into what was probably the next building. An enormous four-poster bed with elaborate scrollwork on the posts and headboard served as a display space for beautiful silk and lace creations draped on the quilted satin duvet. Three completely enclosed dressing rooms stood at the back of the space, the doors solid, oval wooden signs hanging from brushed nickel hooks indicating
PRIVACY PLEASE
or
AVAI
LABLE
.

A woman sat on a high bar stool behind the counter. She had long red hair curled in loose waves, blue eyes, and pale skin dotted with freckles. “How can I help you?” she asked, her English lightly accented with a French lilt.

“I don't know,” Sarah admitted. She looked around, taking in shelves of panties and bras, mannequins dressed in outfits as stunning as the one in the window, a selection of pillows and throws. The fabrics were all natural and exquisite, silks and cashmeres, cotton so delicate she could see through it, embroidery in the colors of the rainbow. “The window display was so gorgeous, I had to come inside.”

The woman smiled. “Thank you.”

Needles, thread, and a pair of silver scissors sat on the counter next to the sleek gray computer. Midnight-blue satin lay in a rumpled pile on the desk. “Did you make the set on display in the window?”

“I did,” she said. She flipped the satin over the edge of the counter, transforming it into a bodice made of midnight-blue satin and embroidered with silver threads. The pattern wasn't yet clear, but the stitches were tiny, tight, and precise.

“You can touch it,” she said, her smile widening. Sarah finally placed the slight accent: French. “It's not for a client. It's for me.”

Sarah traced the embroidery. “What will it be?”

“A representation of geese flying. I think. I can't say until I'm finished.”

The odd phrasing struck Sarah. She looked up, but the woman just smiled at her, and something in that smile triggered something in Sarah. “I'm going to look around,” she said, “but I'll be honest, I probably can't afford anything in here.”

“You're most welcome to look. Let me know if you'd like help.”

Sarah wandered between the racks and changed her mind almost immediately. Aunt Joan wanted her to live again, and she wanted something from this shop, something beautiful and out of the ordinary, something that just might surprise Tim. “On second thought, I would like some help; I don't normally wear things like this. I want something different, but not outrageous.”

The owner slipped off the bar stool and gave Sarah a more encompassing once-over. “Hmmm. A silk basque with matching stockings is out of the question.”

“Yes,” Sarah said, relieved by the savvy assessment.

“You, but a bit more saucy.”

“Exactly,” she said, and filed the line away to use in Symbowl's marketing materials. “I'm a chef, so I'm hot most of the day. I've tried fancy sets before, but they just feel uncomfortable. To be totally honest, I've always thought it was a little artificial.”

The shop's owner didn't seem to take offense at this observation. “But today is special?”

Sarah thought about it. What was today for her? Today she was a competitor in her running challenges with Tim. Today she was a tourist. Today she was in the flow of life, enjoying a changeable spring day in Manhattan, anticipating a surprise, hoping not to be disappointed. Not caring if she won or lost, falling for the game. “Normally, I'm this,” she said, and gestured to her simple cotton skirt, clogs, and T-shirt. “Today I want to surprise him.”

The woman smiled. “I can work with that. I'm Simone.”

“I'm Sarah,” she said, and held out her hand.

“When was the last time you had a bra fitting?”

“When my mom took me shopping in high school. I just try them on until I find the one that fits.”

Simone muttered something under her breath that was too fast for Sarah's high school French, then pulled a tape measure from a drawer behind the counter. After taking her measurements, Simone went without hesitation to the shelves holding lace and silk in a seemingly infinite range of colors and designs, where she chose several simple bra and panty sets, all of the highest quality silk and lace. “Levers lace,” she said, then held out another set. “Chantilly lace. Either is so finely made, it won't itch against your skin.”

In the dressing room Sarah stripped to her functional cotton panties, then tried on the bras. The gray push-up bra accentuated her rounded shoulders, not the curves she wanted to show off. The T-shirt bra in a deep garnet was made of cotton and highlighted with fine lace, so points for comfort, but it gapped oddly at her underarms. She hooked the demi bra with black lace cups and a nude satin band and straightened.

“Oh,” she said.

The fit was perfect, the square neckline far more sultry than she would have expected. Her nipples were dusky shadows behind the black lace, not obvious, just tantalizingly hinted at. She found the matching bikini briefs, the narrow inset of nude satin drawing attention to her mound while the black lace stretching over her hips revealed the lower curves of her bottom.

Feeling only slightly ridiculous, she tugged her hair free from the loose French braid and fluffed it with her fingers. The curls corkscrewed even more wildly in the humidity, but somehow she didn't look like a woman who'd just survived months in the jungle. She looked like herself and yet rather sexy.

Sold.

She used the scissors on the small Swiss Army knife on her key chain to snip off the tags, then tugged on her T-shirt, skirt, and fitted denim jacket. Now she felt like a stealth operator, a Mata Hari dressed for casual sightseeing but underneath dressed for seduction. She quickly rebraided her hair, then scuffed into her clogs, gathered the rejected sets, and left the dressing room.

“Ah,” Simone said with satisfaction.

“You can tell?”

“Yes,” she said. “I can tell, and not just because you're carrying your old underwear.”

Sarah caught sight of herself in a full-length mirror and did a quick check to make sure no lines were visible. Tim wouldn't expect this at all. The thought of him discovering her little secret, finding another reason to slow down and savor the moment, made her smile.

Simone rang her up and provided a small plastic bag to hold Sarah's discarded undies. She signed the credit card slip without a hint of regret, then checked her watch. She'd planned to walk to the intersection Tim had specified, but she was running short on time, so she hurried to the A C E line and caught the train to 14th Street.

A light drizzle misted the air when she emerged from underground to find him waiting for her at the intersection of 14th and Eighth. He lifted an arm in silent greeting, a move that made her smile. He was the tallest person in any room not filled with basketball players, but he took that and his astonishing good looks for granted. He wore jeans, a dark blue T-shirt, and a blue cotton canvas utility jacket.

“Hi,” she said when she crossed the intersection.

“It's raining,” he said.

“Maybe you New Yorkers think it's raining, but to those of us from San Francisco, this is a bit of mist.”

“It might keep the crowds away,” he mused. “As long as you're not cold.”

“I'm not cold,” she said, touched by his concern.

“Where are we going?”

“You'll see,” he said.

They set off through the rain/mist/fog. “What have you been up to?”

“A little sightseeing, a little shopping,” she said. “Cleansing my palate.”

He lifted an eyebrow. “Not that palate,” she said. “My mental palate. I needed to set the sauce problem aside for a few hours. It's reached the point of diminishing returns.”

He didn't say anything to that. They had almost reached Tenth Avenue when he steered them toward a set of stairs leading up to a black metal overpass.

“An elevated train?” Sarah hazarded as she leaned back and peered up, but grasses and trees spilled through the tracks overhead and over the black-painted railings.

“You'll see,” he said, and guided her up the stairs.

The sign attached to the iron girder supporting the tracks read
THE HIGH LINE
. They climbed the stairs and walked into an elevated world. The leaves of the budding trees fairly glowed against the pale gray sky, and flowers bloomed extravagantly between tapered concrete planks that formed the pathways.

“It's beautiful,” she said.

“The trains used to run at street level, but so many people died in accidents that city officials decided to elevate the tracks. They were designed to run right through the buildings to make it easier to unload freight. Once Eisenhower built the interstates, trucks took over a lot of the freight delivery. In the eighties the trains stopped running and the tracks were abandoned. They became a vacant lot, lots of homeless, lots of sex workers. People wanted to dismantle the tracks, but another group got together and lobbied to have it included in the Rails-to-Trails program.”

“It's really cleverly designed,” Sarah said as they set off. Tim was consciously slowing his pace to match hers. The park didn't run in a straight line, but rather zigged inward to provide space for a thicket of small trees, then zagged back outward again, opening into a seating area with views of the Hudson. Ahead she could see where the planks split to either side of a green space, the tracks still visible among the grasses. “Part promenade, part garden. I like it.”

“Want to see more of it?”

“Absolutely.”

Her T-shirt and skirt were beginning to cling to her abdomen and thighs, which caught his eye. She looked down at herself, and sure enough, the lace on her new bra was visible under her shirt, not the color but the texture. Her denim jacket wasn't yet soaked, but the button placket gapped, revealing the deep V of her T-shirt and her breasts pushing against the edges.

They strolled along the increasingly empty promenade until they came to a wider spot. Lining the east side of the pathway were lounges made of wood, big enough for two, facing west and the Hudson. “That's Chelsea Market,” Tim said. “We can get a coffee or something at one of the vendors.”

Transfixed by the design elements, Sarah shook her head. “Are those the original tracks?”