Chapter 3
FRIDAY, JUNE 4
In some ways, it felt like summer had turned up like an unexpected houseguest. Winter had lingered in New York like a bad hangover that year. Balding patches of snow crusted with black city dirt held fast to the shadier, narrower streets of Greenwich Village, all the way through the first week of May. Tiny buds appeared on the trees in Central Park, but remained shut tight against several spells of icy drizzle. The light, too, had clung to its wintery hue, leaning in against the brick buildings and wrought iron fire escapes in a shadowless, bluish haze. But then the seasons had lurched forward all at once, and the cool, reluctant spring had slid into an abruptly balmy summer. The light turned pink; the trees rained blossoms. And just as quickly as the light had turned pink, it turned golden. A canopy of lush, swampy green foliage covered the streets, and the air turned sultry and filled with mosquitoes.
Summertime in New York.
Now, on the first Friday after Memorial Day, Sawyer could feel the office around her mentally bedding down for the drowsy naptime state that the entire publishing industry was about to enter for the rest of the summer. It wasn’t as if business itself would grind to a halt. New beach reads would still come out and line the bookstore shelves like clockwork, every Tuesday. And work would still get done, of course—but mostly by the small army of interns and editorial assistants grinding away at the millstone of entry-level labor. Big decisions were put on hold until the right people came back from Europe or Bermuda…or Vermont, or Maine. As it was, even those who remained in town for the workweek were really only expected to work four days, as Memorial Day also marked the beginning of summer Fridays.
Summer Fridays more or less meant that, every Friday at noon, the city experienced a mass exodus to the Hamptons. The older, more established New Yorkers went by car and helicopter, while the younger, hungrier set climbed aboard the Jitney. The city felt distinctly empty, the streets utterly deserted. Grocery stores, movie theaters, and sometimes even entire subway cars turned into echoing, cavernous spaces, filled only with the brisk chill of fanatical air-conditioning. The few neighborhoods that still buzzed with activity were the touristy spots, like Times Square and the old seaport, where anyone who actually lived in New York never went anyway.
Summer in the city could get a little lonely sometimes. And hot—the subway grates sending up heat so intense it made the air above them shimmer in mirage-like waves, the MTA buses kicking out black exhaust. With Charles busy at work, there would be nothing to break it up—no mini-vacations, no little weekend adventures to Fire Island or the Jersey Shore, or even day trips to Jones Beach. Sawyer knew she was probably destined to spend most of the summer rattling around the muggy urban landscape, alone. Under ordinary circumstances, she would have roped her best friend, Autumn, into hanging out…but suffering from a mixture of wanderlust and indecision about grad school, Autumn had signed up to teach English in Japan. The Japanese school term ran through July, and Autumn planned to spend the entire month of August seeing more of the country.
Sawyer stared at the calendar pinned to the fabric wall of her cubicle and sighed. After a moment, she snapped out of it and scolded herself. There were still things to look forward to—after all, she and Charles were getting married in October, and there was a wedding to plan. Although…for better or worse, Sawyer had less on her to-do list than your average bride. The dynamic had shifted after Charles’s parents insisted on paying for the wedding, and Charles’s mother, Kathy, had enthusiastically begun performing the work of ten wedding planners, leaving little to Sawyer. Still, Sawyer reminded herself, it was the summer before her wedding! And Charles’s big case might lead to a promotion.
When noon rolled around, Sawyer’s coworkers began to take off for the day, gathering their things and dashing for the elevator with a stealthy giddiness, like bank robbers hopping into the getaway car.
“Psst! Happy Friday!” Sawyer’s coworker Kaylee whispered to her from the next cubicle, once their boss had left.
Sawyer and Kaylee were editorial assistants; both of them had been assigned to Johanna Bailey, a senior executive editor who had been with the imprint for twenty years and who pronounced it “Jo-HAWN-nah.” Though she had never said so outright, Johanna had the kind of sophisticated yet stern air that suggested she would find an assistant clocking out before her appalling. Sawyer knew Kaylee had been counting the minutes.
“Have fun, Kaye,” Sawyer said.
Kaylee shouldered her bag with a smile and a wave.
Eventually, Sawyer gathered her own things to go. She hummed a few bars of “Summertime,” stubbornly forcing herself to adopt a holiday mood, in spite of the fact that she was headed home to an empty apartment.
“Home” was a fourth-floor brownstone walk-up on the Upper West Side. When she and Charles first found the place, Sawyer had loved the historical aura of the building, the oddly narrow yet open railroad layout, and the creaky wood floors. They’d had fun settling into the place, awkwardly wrangling their hand-me-down furniture up the narrow hall stairs and cooking their first few dinners together—cozy makeshift meals served up on mismatched plates.
But now, as she rode the subway uptown, she tried to think of how she might occupy herself. There was always more reading to be done for her job. Sawyer was passionate about becoming a full-fledged editor…but even she knew she couldn’t read the entire afternoon and evening away; there was such a thing as overkill, burnout. Vegging out in front of the TV held limited appeal—not because Sawyer had any moral or cultural snobbery about watching television, but rather because she and Charles hadn’t sprung for cable. If there was nothing good playing on the five basic channels, Sawyer wound up doing what plenty of other New Yorkers did: turning to NY1 and letting the TV play in the background, until the segments looped back around after the thirty-minute mark, giving her déjà vu. There weren’t many other options besides books, snacks, and TV. She hadn’t built up much of a social life since moving to the city, mainly because she and Charles had been settling in, then getting engaged, and were always pinching pennies.
When she keyed into the front door, the apartment was hot and stuffy, having trapped the heat of the early morning and afternoon. Sawyer quickly scurried around, struggling with each window in turn until it budged from its ancient sash. Once the windows had all been thrown open and she had cranked on an electric fan, the phone began to ring.
She froze, thinking of who it could be.
“Hi, Kathy…!” she said, when she finally picked up.
“Oh! I didn’t know you would be home. I thought I would just leave a message,” Charles’s mother responded, flustered but chipper.
“I have summer Fridays,” Sawyer explained. “I’m home for the afternoon.”
“Ooo—summer Fridays!” Kathy enthused. “Well, I won’t keep you, but of course it’s just a little something about the wedding planning…”
Sawyer listened as Kathy chattered away, a little awed, as always. From centerpieces to aisle runners to stemware to string quartets to the exact kind of vanilla used in the cake (only Tahitian would do)…no detail was too small for Kathy to scrutinize, plan, and arrange.
Sawyer genuinely liked her future mother-in-law…although it was true that Kathy had a way of bowling people over. Sawyer’s own parents had been forced to take a back seat in the wedding planning—but with little complaint; they were professors who lived modestly, and were inherently a little skeptical of the “wedding industrial complex.” They would have never planned the kind of ceremony Kathy was cooking up, and the amounts of money Kathy thought it was perfectly OK to drop on caterers and tea roses and live swans (live swans!) would have given them sticker shock—or even a literal stroke.
Truth be told, the money gave Sawyer a queasy stomach and sweaty palms, too. But Charles insisted that it was important to his parents. Besides, he persuaded Sawyer, who didn’t love a big wedding? Let’s get married like we mean it, he’d cajoled, grabbing her and tipping her into a corny dip, then kissing her until they both collapsed onto the rug, laughing.
So far, with Kathy making all the arrangements, it was shaping up to be the kind of wedding that took up an entire page of coverage in the Sunday New York Times, which had Sawyer biting her nails.
Sawyer had never wanted a big wedding.
But she also hadn’t not wanted a big wedding.
She didn’t know quite what she thought.
“So, what do you think?” Kathy asked now.
Sawyer snapped to attention. Kathy had just played a few samples of music from three different bands by holding the phone up to her home stereo speakers.
“Hmm…I’m not sure which one I like better,” Sawyer answered truthfully of the bands. “We should ask Charles. He’ll probably be fine with any of them, as long as they can play our song.”
“Remind me—what’s your song again?” Kathy asked.
“?‘Fly Me to the Moon,’?” Sawyer replied.
“Aha!” Kathy said, satisfied. “I knew Charles was fond of that song, but I didn’t realize you are, too. You’re such a compatible couple!”
The main reason Charles liked “Fly Me to the Moon” was because it was a way to show off his singing voice at karaoke bars. He was far from a professional musician, but he’d perfected singing that one song in particular; he had it down pat. Sawyer suspected he’d performed it for a few other girlfriends before they met, but he’d sung it to her with such heart on their third date that she was happy to go along with it when he officially declared that it was “their” song. After all, when he sang it to her, it always made them both smile.
“I’m just glad you two appreciate the classics,” Kathy said in approval. “Everyone likes Sinatra! I don’t know where I’d even start if I had to find a band to play, I don’t know, say…Ricky Martin!”
Kathy laughed, and Sawyer joined in with a chuckle, sympathetic that Kathy had likely dug deep to come up with what she believed was currently hip.
“So,” Kathy continued, back to business. “These bands get booked up quickly and I think we should make a decision as soon as possible—when will Charles be home? I’d love to play them for him.”
“Well…” Sawyer bit her lip. “To be honest, he’s been pulling some pretty long hours lately…”
“Oh, of course,” Kathy hurried to reply. “That big case! Ed and I are so proud of him. You must be, too!”
“I am,” Sawyer agreed. It was true. Or—at least, it was what she believed was the correct way to feel. She just wished the situation didn’t also make her feel a little like a housewife, always waiting for her husband to walk in the door in his suit and tie.
“How late is too late to have Charles call you back?” Sawyer asked, in an attempt to refocus her attention on the subject at hand.
“Oh, he’ll be tired when he gets home, I’m sure. Tell you what I’ll do,” Kathy decided. “I’ll go back to all three bands and tell them I need to hear their renditions of ‘Fly Me to the Moon.’ I’ll see which one plays it best, and then I’ll report back to you!”
Sawyer thanked her, genuinely meaning it and still feeling a little intimidated by the fact that Kathy was doing so much.
“As long as you’re not putting yourself out…” Sawyer meekly tried to insist.
“Nonsense!” Kathy replied. “I’m having a ball with it. And I’m counting the days until you officially become our daughter!”
Sawyer blushed and grinned.
After they’d hung up, Sawyer felt freshly aware of the empty apartment. The thought of trying to fill up the rest of the afternoon and evening alone had her feeling lonely and agitated at the same time.
She and Charles had decided to cut corners when it came to cable TV, but they had sprung for dial-up. Sawyer went to the desk wedged in a small alcove in the kitchen near the open arch of the living room and powered on the computer. She opened AOL and listened to the familiar song of the computer logging on—the dial tone, the high-pitched squeal and twang, the rushing hiss and spit of the connection establishing itself.
“WELCOME! You’ve got mail!”
Sadly, it was all junk mail, but Sawyer clicked on the new-message icon and began composing an email to Autumn, unloading her thoughts and feelings about the summer ahead. Autumn always understood; they were the sort of friends who—ever since the moment they’d met, freshman year of college during orientation week—had always spoken their own private best-friend language.
She tried to picture her friend in Japan. Autumn had sent postcards of Kyoto—narrow historical streets lined with traditional teahouses. On the other hand, Autumn had described the internet café she frequented as “super trendy and futuristic.”
Sawyer wrote the email and sent it, vaguely wondering when Autumn would check her inbox next.
She logged off and sighed. Charles had been getting home later and later each night. Seven o’clock had turned into eight…and then nine. Then nine thirty. Then, closer to ten.
For an hour or so, Sawyer puttered. She tidied the apartment and folded laundry. She dutifully studied some bridal magazines Kathy had sent. Then—when all the white dresses began to blur together and look the same—she put on some music, and got out some manuscripts she needed to read for work. Eventually, the late summer dusk glowed blue in the windows.
She was idly contemplating dinner, flipping through a Spanish cookbook she had bought mainly for its beautiful photographs of the Spanish countryside, when the phone rang and made her jump.
“Hello?”
“Sawyer!”
“Autumn?” Sawyer blinked with total surprise. “What time is it there?”
“Eight a.m. Tomorrow, of course,” Autumn replied. “What would you like to know about the future?”
Sawyer laughed at the joke, then sighed. “I’d settle for what time to expect my future husband home this evening.”
“Yeah, sounded like that in your email.”
“That bad?”
“You sound a little, I don’t know…lost.”
“This call must be costing a fortune,” Sawyer said, worried.
“Nah, we’ll talk until my phone card runs out.”
“Doesn’t your mom buy you those to phone home?”
“And for emergencies.”
Sawyer felt bad. “Oh, no. I’m not an emergency! I’m just…ugh. I don’t know what I am.”
“Well, for starters, you’re my best friend,” Autumn reminded her. “Now: spill. Is the wedding part of it? I know you didn’t think Charles and his family were going to be in such a rush.”
Sawyer bit her lip; it was a little bit true. She’d always assumed they’d have a long engagement, not less than a year.
“Maybe…but I feel like I should be flattered that Charles is in a rush? And glad that he isn’t one of those guys who act like a woman is supposed to drag a man down the aisle, kicking and screaming. It’s a little romantic, even. Right?”
“Sure,” Autumn agreed. Then, after a brief pause: “If that’s what you want.”
Sawyer closed her eyes and thought for a moment. She had a flash of Charles doing that corny dip. Let’s get married like we mean it.
“Yeah,” she said to Autumn over the phone. “It’s what I want.”
Autumn was quiet for a moment.
“Why?” Sawyer asked. “Does it not sound like what I want?”
“Hmm, I guess it’s just that, between the two of you, it’s easier to tell what Charles wants.”
Now it was Sawyer’s turn to be quiet.
“I don’t mean anything bad by it!” Autumn rushed to qualify. “Only that Charles has always been…well, Charles. And you’re more go-with-the-flow. In college, you were like this whimsical, arty book nerd, and he was, like, the man with a plan. It was cute to see how you balanced each other out. Opposites, but totally united as a team. Remember how we used to call you guys ‘Mom and Dad’ as a joke?”
Sawyer smiled faintly at the memory. It was true; back in college, she and Charles always showed up to everything as a couple. When they didn’t agree on something, people used to affectionately tease, Ooo, Mom and Dad are fighting! But they were never “fighting.” Not really. As a freshman, Sawyer had immediately gravitated to Charles, the older upperclassman already applying to law school, and the two of them had formed a couple so naturally, it was hard to pinpoint the exact moment they’d become official; it was as if they had always been together. That she and Charles planned to stay together was one of the few sources of consistency in an otherwise mercurial collegiate scene. Sawyer might worry about her grades, her parents’ approval, the relative future employment opportunities for English majors…but her worries were Charles’s worries, and vice versa. They were solid, steady.
Autumn interrupted Sawyer’s reverie, clearing her throat and adding, “I guess I’m just saying…I hope it’s still an equal balance.”
Sawyer paused, and seriously mulled this. She’d never really second-guessed how much of the plan was Charles’s plan, versus theirs together. She’d finished her undergrad as he had graduated law school; they’d both been excited about the move to New York. While it was true that she hadn’t expected to plan a wedding so soon, or spend so much time home alone as Charles’s career took off, she hoped she hadn’t given Autumn a negative impression of the relationship itself.
“Look,” Autumn continued. “It’s just an observation. Mainly, I called because I love you! I was worried that you sounded lonely.”
“I probably just have to get used to the whole adult-jobs-mean-we’re-busy thing.”
Sawyer grinned, then added, “And, of course, I’ll never get used to not having my best friend around.”
“Don’t,” Autumn agreed.
They talked for a little while longer, until the connection abruptly dropped just as Autumn was recounting a story about a cool lantern festival and how she’d met a quirky French guy who was in Kyoto teaching French but how she didn’t speak French and he didn’t speak English and they’d spent the evening comically trying to communicate in Japanese. Sawyer wished she’d gotten to hear the rest of the story. But she was grateful to have heard Autumn’s voice, period.
She went back to skimming the cookbook, and more puttering. The light in the windows turned navy…then black.
Finally, Sawyer heard the sound of Charles’s key in the front door. She glanced at the clock: 9:52.
“Hey.”
“Hey.”
“Are you hungry?” she asked. “I made some gazpacho.”
Charles smiled at her in puzzlement. “You make gazpacho?”
Sawyer grinned. “Did you know? There are two great things about gazpacho. One: the ingredients are super cheap. And two: you don’t have to warm it up to serve it. If that’s not shabby chic, I don’t know what is.”
“We’re doing ‘shabby chic’ now?”
Sawyer shrugged. “It has a better ring to it than ‘federal student loan chic.’?”
Charles laughed, then turned to go get undressed in the bedroom. Sawyer followed him. She perched on the bed as he sat down to take off his pants.
“I could get it out of the fridge, fix a nice bowl with a dollop of sour cream in it and some toast. It came out pretty decent.”
“Oh—no, thanks,” Charles replied. “They feed us when we work late.”
By now he was down to his undershirt and boxers. He got up to toss his socks into the hamper and hang his tie back on the tie rack nailed to the back of the closet door. Sawyer picked up his pants and dress shirt from the bed.
“Dry cleaner?” she asked.
Charles nodded appreciatively. He shook himself and let out a comical grunt of desperate relief. “God, I can’t tell you how good it is to finally be home with my fiancée!”
He crossed back to the bed and gave Sawyer a kiss.
“Makes it all worth it,” he added, grinning.
Sawyer kissed him back.
Why had she let his late hours get to her?Clearly, the overtime was for her…for both of them.
“Your mom called,” Sawyer remembered. “It was about the bands she’s considering booking for the reception. She even played samples of their demo CDs over the phone. I told her they all sounded good to me. And that you probably just wanted one that can play ‘Fly Me to the Moon.’?”
“Perfect,” Charles approved.
Sawyer hesitated. “Do you ever feel a little funny?” she asked. “That we’re not doing more…you know, more of the planning? I mean, your mom is pretty much handling everything.”
And choosing everything, Sawyer also thought, but didn’t add.
Charles shrugged. “It makes her happy. Besides, we couldn’t hire a better wedding planner if we tried.”
“We can’t afford to hire any wedding planner.”
“Well, exactly!” Charles quipped. He laughed. “It was so hot and gross on the subway today. I’m going to jump in the shower and then probably hit the hay.”
“OK.”
Charles disappeared into the bathroom, but left the door open. Sawyer listened to the squeak of the taps being turned, the pitter-patter of the shower sputtering to life. She turned back to the shirt and pants draped over her arm, and frisked the pockets in preparation for drop-off at the dry cleaner.
Her hand was met by some loose change and a crinkled slip of paper, all of which she extracted and dumped on the dresser for Charles to go through later. She turned to get some wire hangers but paused, glancing again at the slip of paper. She picked it up and unfurled it, curious. It was a receipt.
A dine-in receipt for a restaurant called “Golden Dragon Palace.”
She absent-mindedly dropped Charles’s pants and dress shirt back on the bed and wandered through the open door of the bathroom, still staring at the receipt clutched in her hand.
“Hey,” she called to him through the drawn shower curtain, over the white noise of running water. “Did you get Chinese today?”
“Uh—yeah,” Charles answered from the other side of the curtain. “I popped out for lunch today.”
“By yourself?”
“No, I went with Kendra—I owed her a lunch.”
“Oh. That’s nice. I…I thought you said you guys were so busy you never got to leave for lunch.”
“Yeah, most days that’s the way it is,” Charles replied. “But we had some unexpected downtime while the other team was reviewing our notes, and we snuck out.”
“Oh.” Sawyer was quiet for a moment, deep in a state of consternation. She shook herself. The last thing she wanted to be was an uptight, irrational ball-and-chain. “Well, that’s cool,” she said, slightly impressed by her own ability to muster such a breezy tone.
She wandered back out of the bathroom, and went to add the receipt back to the pile of coins on the dresser. But before she laid it down, she took one last look. She wasn’t sure why, or what she was looking for—was she curious to know more about Kendra? Whether or not Kendra liked pot stickers, or moo shu pork? She couldn’t say what she was hoping to decode.
Her eyes ran over the receipt. It listed all of Charles’s favorite dishes. Either Kendra didn’t have much of an opinion on Chinese food, or else she shared Charles’s taste exactly. Sawyer did notice they’d ordered two Tsingtao beers, and then another two…which was a bit bold for a work lunch. But even this wasn’t proof of anything at all, really. Sawyer sighed, suddenly tired. She moved to set the receipt down.
Then, the very second she placed the receipt back on the dresser, she saw it—
A time stamp.
9:28 p.m.
Sawyer stood staring at the numbers, their slightly blurry shapes printed in purplish carbon-copy ink. She felt a strangely hot sensation, like a bee had just stung her in the face. What if Charles hadn’t been working late—or, at least, not as late as he claimed—but when he’d left the office, instead of coming home to spend time with Sawyer, he’d opted to go get beers and Chinese food with Kendra? Why had he said it was lunch?
Sawyer took one last lingering look at the receipt. The time stamp could be wrong, of course. But Sawyer felt a twinge at the back of her brain, suggesting that wasn’t the case.
They didn’t need to go outside to smoke, that guy, Nick, had insisted at the Wexler Gibbons dinner.
She frowned, then left the receipt on the dresser and went back to prepping Charles’s shirt and trousers for the dry cleaner, listening to the sound of the water still running in the shower.