Replay (3 page)

“Seventy-two. I was getting to that. ‘He retired from his position as Editor-in-Chief at the age of seventy-one after a remarkable career, and the following year he was . . . ”

“ . . . arrested for first-degree murder after he’d bored his best friend to death.”

“You’re not being very sympathetic.”

“Why do you need sympathy?”

“I’m having a weird moment, Simon. Loneliness is getting to me, which isn’t normal, because I’ve never loved life more than when I’m single.”

“You’re approaching forty.”

“I still have a few years before I turn forty, thank you. The atmosphere at work is asphyxiating,” Andrew continued. “It’s like there’s a sword hanging over our heads. I just wanted to cheer myself up. So who was this Kathy Steinbeck of yours?”

“My philosophy teacher.”

“Really? I wouldn’t have imagined that the girl who marked your adolescence was a grown woman.”

“Life’s strange. When I was twenty, I fantasized about women fifteen years older than me; now I’m thirty-seven, it’s girls fifteen years younger who catch my eye. Tell me more about this Valerie Ramsay of yours.”

“I bumped into her last week on my way out of the Marriott’s bar.”

“I see.”

“No, you don’t see. I was crazy about her in high school. When she left our hometown without a word, it took me years to forget her. To be honest, I wonder if I ever totally did.”

“Big disappointment seeing her again?”

“No, quite the opposite. There’s something different about her that gets to me even more now.”

“She’s become a woman—I’ll explain the mechanics to you one day! So are you telling me you’ve fallen in love again? ‘Andrew Stilman falls head over heels on West 40th Street.’ What a headline!”

“I’m trying to tell you I’m confused, and that hasn’t happened to me for a long time.”

“Do you know how to get hold of her?”

“I’m having dinner with her tomorrow evening. I’m as nervous as a teenager.”

“I don’t think you ever get over those nerves. Ten years after mom died, my dad met a woman in a supermarket. He was sixty-eight at the time. The day before his first date with her, I had to drive him into town because he was absolutely set on buying a new suit. In the tailor’s fitting room, he told me word for word what he was going to say to her during dinner, and asked me what I thought. It was pathetic. Moral of the story: you’ll always lose your cool around a woman you’re attracted to, whatever your age.”

“Very reassuring. Thanks.”

“I’m just warning you that you’re going to say one wrong thing after another, you’ll think your conversation is boring—which it probably will be—and when you get home you’ll curse yourself for being so pathetic the whole damn evening.”

“Please don’t stop, Simon. It’s so good to have real friends.”

“Hey, stop complaining. I just want you to remember one thing for tomorrow: sit back and enjoy the evening. After all, it’s a date you never thought you’d have. Be yourself. If she likes you, she likes you.”

“Are we that powerless in the matter?”

“Just look around this bar and you can see for yourself. I’ll tell you about my philosophy teacher another day. We’re having lunch on Friday—you can give me the rundown on your reunion then. Oh, and try not make it as detailed as your obit.”

The coolness of the night air took them by surprise when they left Fedora. Simon jumped into a taxi, leaving Andrew to walk home.

On Friday, Andrew told Simon that his evening had gone as he’d predicted, maybe even worse. It had started off disastrously—on the way to the restaurant, Andrew suddenly realized he hadn’t specified whether they were to meet at the Midtown location or the one in Chinatown. He panicked for half an hour thinking that Valerie might go to the wrong location and think him a fool for not being more specific. But she showed up in Chinatown smiling, and Andrew did his best to hide his relief. Andrew thought he’d probably fallen back in love with Valerie Ramsay, which was inconvenient because she’d mentioned once again that she was seeing someone, though she hadn’t offered any details.

She didn’t phone him the following day, or the following week, and Andrew was starting to feel pretty low. He spent all day Saturday at the office. On Sunday he met Simon at the basketball court on Sixth Avenue and West Houston, where they exchanged a few passes, but not many words.

His Sunday evening was as gloomy as Sunday evenings get: he’d ordered Chinese takeout, then sat flicking between a movie he’d seen before, a hockey game, and yet another TV series in which police scientists were getting to the bottom of grisly murders. Basically, a depressing evening in. Until around 9
P.M.
, when his cell phone lit up. It wasn’t Simon texting him though, but Valerie, who wanted to meet up ASAP.

Andrew texted back immediately to say he’d love to and ask when.

Now
, the next message told him.
9th and A, across from Tompkins Square Park.

Andrew glanced in his living room mirror. How long would it take to get himself looking halfway decent? The shorts and old polo he’d kept on since his basketball game with Simon weren’t exactly stylish, and he really needed to shower. But the urgent tone he’d detected in Valerie’s message worried him, so he slipped on a pair of jeans and a clean shirt, grabbed his keys out of the dish in the hall and raced down the three floors of his apartment building.

The neighborhood was quiet: not a taxi in sight. He began running towards Seventh Avenue, spotted a cab at the light at Charles Street and caught up with it just before it drove off. He promised the driver a generous tip if he could get him to his destination in under ten minutes.

Tossed around in the back seat, Andrew regretted his offer. But the driver earned his tip, and he arrived sooner than planned.

Valerie was waiting for him in front of a shuttered café called the Pick Me Up. The name made him smile briefly. Only briefly, when he saw how haggard Valerie was looking.

He walked up to her. She slapped him hard across the face.

“You made me come across town to slap me?” he asked, rubbing his cheek. “What did I do to deserve that?”

“My life was just about perfect until I bumped into you outside that damn bar, and now I don’t know what the hell is going on.”

Feeling a wave of warmth wash over him, Andrew thought to himself that he’d just received the most delightful slap of his life.

“I’m a nice guy, so I’m not going to hit you back. But you took the words right out of my mouth,” he whispered, not taking his eyes off her.

“I haven’t stopped thinking about you since we had dinner, Andrew Stilman.”

“When you ran away from Poughkeepsie, I thought about you day and night, for three, four years . . . If not longer.”

“That was then. I’m not talking about when we were teenagers, I’m talking about now.”

“It’s the same, Valerie. Nothing’s changed—not you, and not the way I felt when I saw you again.”

“What if you’re just saying that? Maybe you just want to get back at me for what I put you through.”

“Where do you get such warped ideas from? You can’t be all that happy in your almost perfect life to be thinking that way.”

Before Andrew realized what was happening, Valerie had put her arms around his neck and kissed him. Hesitant at first, her kiss soon became bolder.

She broke off and looked at him with tears in her eyes.

“I’m screwed,” she said. “What are we going to do, Ben?”

“Be together. For now, maybe for a while longer. If you promise never to call me Ben again.”

T
o be together, all that remained for Valerie to do was leave her boyfriend. Breaking up after two years of living together wasn’t something she could do in one evening. Andrew waited eagerly, but knew that if he hurried things she wouldn’t stay.

Twenty days later, in the middle of the night, he received an almost identical message to the one that had turned his life upside down that other Sunday. When his taxi stopped in front of Café Pick Me Up, Valerie was waiting for him, a black smear down each cheek and a suitcase at her feet.

Back at his place, Andrew set down the baggage in his room and left Valerie to unpack her things. When he returned, she’d slipped under the sheets without turning the light on. He sat down by her, kissed her, then walked back to the door, guessing she needed to be alone to mourn the relationship that had just ended. He wished her goodnight and asked if she still liked hot chocolate. Valerie nodded and Andrew left the room.

That night, from the sofa in the living room, where Andrew had trouble sleeping, he heard her crying and ached to go and comfort her, but stopped himself. Only she could help herself get over that kind of grief.

In the morning, Valerie found a breakfast tray on the coffee table in the living room. On it was a bowl containing cocoa powder and a note:

I’m taking you to dinner tonight.

It’ll be our first time.

I’ve left you a spare set of keys in the hall.

Love,

Andrew

Valerie promised Andrew she’d only stay as long as it took her ex to move his things out of her apartment. If her best friend Colette didn’t live in New Orleans, she’d have gone to stay with her. Ten days later—much to Andrew’s regret, as having her around was making him happier every day—she packed her suitcase and went back to her place in the East Village. Seeing Andrew’s saddened face, she reminded him they’d only be fifteen blocks away from each other.

Summer arrived. During the weekends, when the heat in the city became unbearable, they took the subway to Coney Island and spent hours on the beach.

In September, Andrew left the States for a ten-day trip, refusing to give Valerie the slightest bit of information about it. He used the word “confidential” and swore she had no reason to doubt him.

In October, when he went on another trip, he promised to take her on vacation as soon as he could so she’d forgive him. But Valerie didn’t like consolation prizes and told him he could screw his vacation.

As fall drew to a close, Andrew was rewarded for the work that had taken up all his time and energy. Weeks and weeks of research and two trips to China to gather evidence and verify the credibility of his sources had allowed him to uncover the details of a child trafficking racket in Hunan Province and put together an investigation demonstrating just how corrupt and horrific human behavior can be. His article was published in the Sunday paper, the most-read edition of the week, and caused a real stir.

Sixty-five thousand Chinese babies had been adopted by American families over the previous ten years. The scandal was that hundreds of them hadn’t been abandoned, as their official papers claimed, but forcibly taken away from their birth parents and placed in an orphanage that was paid five thousand dollars per adoption. The lucrative trade had greased the pockets of corrupt police officers and civil servants who had set up the trafficking ring. The Chinese authorities moved quickly to cover up the scandal, but the damage was done. Andrew’s article forced a large number of American adoptive parents to grapple with the tragic implications of his investigation.

Andrew was the buzz of the
Times’
editorial offices, and even got mentioned on the evening news. He was congratulated by his peers, though some of them were clearly jealous, and received a personal email from editor-in-chief as well as numerous letters from readers who’d been deeply moved by his investigation. Three anonymous death threats were sent to the newspaper, though such threats were nothing new.

Andrew was on his own for the holidays. Valerie had gone to visit Colette in New Orleans. The day after she left, Andrew was attacked in a parking lot by someone with a baseball bat. It could have turned nasty if the tow truck guy he’d had an appointment with hadn’t arrived just in time.

Simon had gone skiing in Beaver Creek, Colorado, to celebrate the New Year with a group of friends. Andrew spent Christmas and New Year’s Eve sitting at the bar of Mary’s Fish Camp with a plate of oysters and a few glasses of dry white wine.

2012 got off to a promising start, apart from a minor accident in early January, in which Andrew was hit by a car as he was passing in front of the Charles Street police station. The driver, a retired cop revisiting his old workplace while on vacation, was mortified that he’d hit Andrew and relieved to see him get back up unhurt. He insisted on treating Andrew to dinner at the restaurant of his choice. Andrew wasn’t busy that evening, and a good steak sounded better than filling out an insurance claim form. Besides, no journalist can refuse a meal with a garrulous old New York cop. The inspector told him his life story and the highlights of his career.

Valerie had kept her apartment, which Andrew nicknamed her “safe house,” but from February on she slept at his place every night, and they started thinking seriously about finding a bigger place and moving in together. The only hitch was that Andrew refused to leave the West Village: he’d sworn to himself he’d live there till the end of his days. He knew the stories associated with those charming streets by heart and took pleasure in retelling them when they went for walks. Like the Greenwich Avenue intersection where the diner that had inspired Edward Hopper’s famous painting
Nighthawks
once stood, or the house where John Lennon had lived before moving to The Dakota. The West Village had played a role in nearly every American cultural revolution and was home to the country’s most famous cafés, cabarets and nightclubs.

“I mean, Joan Baez got her start here,” Andrew told Valerie.

“Who?”

Andrew was indignant. How could someone not know who Joan Baez is? But when he turned he saw in Valerie’s face that she was teasing him. He smiled. “That’s reason enough to live here, right?”

“Oh, sure,” said Valerie.

One afternoon, he came home early from the office, emptied out his closets and transferred most of his belongings to a storage unit. That evening, he opened the wardrobe doors for Valerie and announced that there was no longer any hurry to find a new place; she now had all the space she needed to move in properly.