Girls in Trouble (31 page)

“You got some ink there,” he said. “What are you up to?”

“Taking a walk.”

He checked his watch. “Can I come?”

She didn’t have a clue where they were going, and he didn’t really seem to know, either, but in any case, she didn’t care. Even in her platform sneakers, he was a head taller than she, and she liked the way he seemed to measure his steps with hers, as if he had asked her to dance. She could have walked forever, jet-propelled. She kept looking at him out of the corner of her eye, marveling that he was here, beside her again. He asked her a million questions. How was work? Had she seen any movies?
Read any books he should know about? They were strolling, but everything felt in fast-forward. The pavement was uneven, and she stumbled, but he grabbed her hand to steady her. “All right now?” he said, and she nodded, and when they continued walking, he kept her hand in his.

She began to try and steer him someplace, to the diner she liked on Eighteenth Street, to the bookstore with the great cafe. She pointed to the Joyce Theater and he nodded happily. “I love that place,” he told her. “Last week, my friend Mona and I saw Mark Morris there.”

Sara’s heart tumbled in her chest. She smiled evenly and said nothing. They walked around and around for a while, and were heading back to her apartment.

When they got there, he came to a complete stop, then he let go of her hand and grew silent. She wasn’t ready for him to walk away from her. She tried to imagine what it might feel like to touch his chest, to place his hand against her cheek. Heat rose inside of her.

“I have iced tea,” she blurted. “Would you like some?”

He hesitated, considering. “No,” he said. And then, “All right.”

She led him upstairs. As soon as she opened the door, Scott was studying her floor-to-ceiling windows, so tall she had had to get blinds custom made for them. He pulled the blinds up. “Great windows,” he said. “Bet you get a whole lot of light in here.” He traced a hand along the panes.

He sat on her couch, and she switched on her air conditioner and brought him some iced tea. She felt as if she were in a kind of trance, being pulled toward him. As soon as she put the tea on the table, he reached over and touched one of her ringlets before he abruptly let his hand fall back into his lap.

“I should get going,” Scott said. She sat down beside him and put her hand on his face, and when he didn’t move, she took her hand awav, shamed. “I’m sorry—I thought—”

“What?”

“Are you married?”

“What? No!” he laughed, but she stayed serious.

“I’m not good at reading people sometimes,” she said. Her shoulders rose and she rested her hands in her lap, hesitating. “I like you,” she admitted. “Are we just friends? Am I not your type?”

“Sara,” he said, looking down at his hands. “I guess I need to tell you something.”

She was certain he could hear the sick rolling in her stomach. Whenever someone told you they needed to tell you something, it was usually something you didn’t really want to hear.

“There was this woman,” he said, carefully. “Wren. We were going to get married last year, then a week before the wedding she told me she was in love with someone else.”

“Oh no.”

He rubbed Sara’s thumb. “I saw the wedding announcement six months ago. I still can’t figure it out. We were always together. When had she even had time to meet anyone else, let alone fall in love with him?” He pulled Sara’s hand up and kissed it. “When I met you, I didn’t know what to do, because I liked you instantly. I couldn’t figure out how to protect myself and still see you, so I’ve been trying to play it cool.”

Outside, a siren whined. “Do you still love her?” Sara rested her chin on her knees.

“I’ve still got my wounds. She called me once to ask if I’d renovate their loft in Soho. I couldn’t do it.” He sighed. “What about you? Any secrets I should know?”

Sara looked away.

“Should I have not told you? Did I blow it?” Scott asked.

“There’s no reason to tell anyone,”
Abby had said.
“As soon as people know, they’ll look at you differently. They’ll think different thoughts about you.” Sara
shook the image off.

“Come on, I showed you mine, you show me yours,” Scott coaxed.

She couldn’t look at him while she was telling him about Anne and George and Eva, about Danny. Instead, she looked at her toes, at the square of light by the far window. She had told this story to herself so many times that it felt as if someone else were telling it now. When she dared look at him, he was so silent, she began to be afraid of what he must think of her. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I shouldn’t have told you.”

“I’m not going anywhere, Sara,” he said quietly. “I’m glad you told me. And I’m so sorry.” And then he reached for her hair again, and he pulled her to him, kissing her full on the mouth. She put her arms about his neck
and leaned toward him. She liked the way he smelled, like wood. She licked his shoulder and found she liked the way he tasted, too, salty and warm, and then he held her tighter, and they rolled onto the floor.

She slid out of her clothes, and then he touched her again, and her lids floated shut.

Afterward, lying there, his eyes on her, she felt suddenly self-conscious. Her stomach had flattened long ago, and her stretch marks were faint, silvery webs you wouldn’t notice unless you looked as intently at her as Scott was doing. She shifted position away from him. She glanced at Scott. If he said anything at all to her, she knew she’d feel undone. He was looking at her now as if he were memorizing her. She reached for her blouse and his hand stopped her. “No, don’t. I love to look at you,” he marveled.

She was so warm that her hair lay damply on her body. “I’m a little chilly.”

“I’ll warm you, then.” He leaned closer to her and gently rubbed her hands, her legs, the tips of her toes, and she felt her body relaxing, so she scooted closer to him, finally taking his arms and wrapping them about her.

“I wasn’t sure you liked me this way,” she said happily.

“I liked you the second I saw you sitting on the bench. I liked you even more when I saw you hide your food in your napkin.”

She flushed. “You saw that!” she said, and he grinned.

“I just wanted to take things really slow. Then I realized I couldn’t.”

She lay beside him, his arms about her. “We’ll sleep just like this,” he told her.

He called her two days later to go to the movies, and then the next week to see a play. And once, at the movies, as soon as the lights went out, he gave her a gentle nudge and fit a plastic champagne glass in her hand and slowly, carefully, poured her some wine from a tiny bottle he had snuck in. She got used to seeing him two or three times a week and sometimes he just showed up. One night, she was bounding out of her apartment, a book
she was reading in one hand, and she banged right into a group of tough-looking street kids. She stopped short, but they weren’t interested in her. Instead, they were scowling at Scott, who was crouched down, snapping picture after picture of the building next to hers, oblivious. “What the fuck you doin’, man,” a guy in loose, baggy jeans shouted. Scott took one more shot, stood upright, and then he spotted Sara, and his whole face filled with light, and he snapped a shot of her, standing there, mouth open, dumbfounded.

They walked. “What’s the book?” he asked. Danny had always picked up the books Sara was reading and wanted to read them, too. “It’s all about Paris,” she told Scott, handing him the book. He glanced at it and then handed it back to her. “Want to read it when I’m done?” she asked, and he shrugged. “I guess,” he said.

They went to his apartment on West Eighteenth, a roomy one-bedroom, with big windows. She finished the book that night, and left it on his nightstand, and two weeks later, when it was still there, she brought it back home.

It was Friday and Scott was showing a client the construction site for the client’s new house, and Sara was tagging along. The client’s name was Harry Morgan and he was middle-aged and disgruntled and kept thrusting his hands in his pockets, and the more excited Scott got, the more Harry’s mouth formed a line.

It was just one huge space right now. A few walls had already been built, some ceilings. Scott strode across the floor, beaming, as if he were showing off his child. “Bedroom,” he said, waving his hands. “Kitchen here. Skylight. Gorgeous skylight so the room’s always bright.”

“Skylights are expensive.”

“You’ll save on electricity, I’m telling you,” Scott said.

She saw the tender way Scott touched a beam, how he talked about the fireplace as if it were the most marvelous thing in the world. “I’ll crack the tiles in the bathroom to give them texture,” he said, ignoring the way Harry was shaking his head no.

“Oak door,” Scott said, pointing to the entrance.

“Aluminum,” said Harry. “I mean it.”

That night, Scott put in the oak door himself. When Harry saw the finished section the next day, his jaw dropped open. “If you don’t like it, I’ll take it off,” Scott said, but Harry shook his head adamantly. “I’ve never seen anything so goddamn beautiful in my life,” the client said. He looked at Sara. “He that persuasive with you?” he asked.

“Always,” she said.

But as elated as Scott was about most of his projects, she saw him in a funk over others. He came over one evening an hour late because he had been arguing with a client, a production company. “They’re threatening not to pay me,” he said.

“They can’t do that!”

“Happens all the time.” He had designed an office for this production company, he had had months of meetings with them, he had been on top of everything, from the conceptional design to the schematics to the design development. “I was just wiped out from overseeing the construction every day, from dealing with the permits, but when it was finished, it all seemed worth it. I just loved the space. But my client took one look and said it was like dating a beautiful girl and finding out she’s wearing dirty underwear.” Scott stood up and began pacing. “The closets weren’t big enough for him. He didn’t like the high ceilings because he said it would cost more than they wanted to heat them. ‘Form has got to follow function,’ he said. Like I don’t know that. Like any architect doesn’t know that. But beauty counts, too.” He threw up his hands.

“This was a great job. I could use it to get more, and he won’t let me in to photograph it. I’d sneak in when he wasn’t there, but even security knows my face.”

Sara suddenly laughed.

“What?” he said. “This is serious.”

“They don’t know my face,” she said. “I’ll do it for you.”

She wore a jacket with pockets, a camera tucked into one of them. “I spy,” she said.

“If anyone asks, say you’re looking for Meyers’ Candies,” Scott told her. “It’s the previous tenant. I’ll be waiting around the corner.”

Scott waited for her a block away, and she strode into the building, walking as if she belonged there, as if she had done this a hundred times before. She swung her arms, she kept her head up. A security guard in a blue uniform was dozing over his newspaper and he gazed up at her. Sara averted her eyes and riffled in her purse. “Oh, great, I forgot my ID card again!” she said. “Can you believe it?”

He drummed fingers on the table, considering. “I only have to run upstairs and get something, I’ll be right down—” Sara said. “I’m so sorry, I don’t mean to be a pain to you.”

The guard considered her and then he pushed a paper toward her. “Sign,” he said, and she did, in a big loopy scrawl, Betty Lou Leverbrothers.

She rode the elevator up two floors, and as soon as she saw the glass doors, she took the camera out. Her pulse was beating in her throat and she was sweating, so her shirt felt pasted to her back. No one was in the office, and each step she took echoed.

Scott was right, this place was beautiful. One curving wall separated the space, a high ceiling made it feel light and airy, and for the first time she understood what he meant by the quality of a space. She felt good in this room. Whisking out the camera, she began snapping away. She was almost to her last picture when a voice behind her said, “Do you need help?” and Sara quickly hid the camera in her pocket. A man in a dark suit was frowning at her. “What are you doing? Did I see you taking pictures?”

“Are you Mr. Meyers?” she blurted and his frown deepened. “Meyers’ Candies?”

“Why, they moved,” he said, folding his arms, puzzling over her. His eyes slid over her. “Who are you?” he asked, and then Sara backed out.

“Wait!” he called, coming toward her, but Sara was running, past the elevator to the stairwell. Two flights and she took the steps two at a time the whole way down. When she got to the first floor, she was panting so hard, the guard looked at her with concern. “Told you I’d be just a minute. I can’t thank you enough,” she said, and he smiled at her.

“It’s okay, Ms. Leverbrothers,” he said.

She ran outside to Scott, who was pacing anxiously by the next building. She dug out the camera and placed it in his hands. “Evidence!” she said gleefully.

He looked at her, delighted.

“Why are you looking at me like that?”

“You’re really as happy about this as I am.”

“Of course I am. Why wouldn’t I be? You and me—we’re like the united front.”

Grabbing her, he kissed her full on the mouth.

She woke in the middle of the night. She had been dreaming she was building a house herself, and suddenly, everywhere she looked there were secret compartments. She blinked and there he was, sitting up, watching her, a funny smile playing on his mouth. “What happened?” she said, rubbing the sleep from her eyes.

“You were singing in your sleep,” he said. “I never knew anyone who did that.”

She laughed. “What was I singing?”

He hummed a bar or two, something jazzy she couldn’t recognize.

“Was I in tune?”

His face grew grave.

“What’s wrong?” she said. He picked up a section of her hair and let it fall through his fingers. “Is this too fast?” she asked hesitantly. “Is it because of what I told you? Do you need to press the pause button for a while?”

“I love you,” he said.