Chapter 7
FRIDAY, JUNE 18
In addition to getting home later and later, Charles had also started leaving the apartment earlier.
He’d recently developed the habit of getting up early and going to the gym before heading in to the office. It took the edge off sitting down at work all day, he said. And it allowed him to shower and shave and arrive at the office fresh.
It was vaguely amusing to Sawyer at first; Charles used to make fun of the protein-shake-guzzling guys who went to the gym religiously. Now, in a surreal twist, Sawyer regularly woke up to the sound of the blender running in the kitchen, while the windows were still dark and the sun had yet to fully rise. It seemed like Charles never missed a day, and had begun to accumulate copious amounts of gym clothes, gym shoes…a ridiculously expensive gym bag.
And so, that morning, Sawyer woke up twice. Once, when Charles left for the gym, and then the second time, when the summer sunshine began to fill the windows with the honeyed light of a much more reasonable hour. She got up and dressed for work, oddly self-conscious that she was going to meet Nick later that day.
She surveyed her clothes. She had to wear something nice enough for the Yale Club, which she knew had a dress code. What exactly was the correct level of formality best suited to meeting someone at a social club in order to discuss the possibility that your partners might be having an affair?
She opted for a sundress—one that was forgiving in the heat, but could be dressed up to defend against both the rigors of decorum and central air-conditioning with the right cardigan and ballet flats. Once showered, dressed, brushed, and glossed, she set off, unsure what the day might bring.
There was a distinctly “Friday” mood at work.
Johanna was there, but left by 10:30 a.m. She owned a house in the Hamptons (in “Bridge,” as she referred to it) and was an avid gardener. She tied her Hermès around her neck (every day a different one, it seemed), announced something about it being time to dig up the spring bulbs that had finished flowering, then breezed past Sawyer and Kaylee to the elevator, where she vanished for the day.
Sawyer tried to picture Johanna gardening, sweating, kneeling in a flower bed, fending off mosquitoes, dirt under her nails. It was slightly impossible. Sawyer mentally added a costume—Ralph Lauren jodhpurs, Chanel sunglasses, and these Gucci-logo gardening gloves Sawyer and Autumn had once mocked when they’d dared each other to ring the bell and go inside the Gucci boutique on Madison Avenue. That made it somewhat easier to picture, but it was still a stretch.
Free of Johanna’s watchful eye, Kaylee departed for the day soon after.
“I don’t think the phone will ring,” Kaylee said as she hastily packed up her things in a well-advised attempt to hurry over to the Plaza in time for the next Jitney departure, before the noon rush set in.
Sawyer understood. Translation: Will you watch the phone?
“I’ll be here for a while anyway,” Sawyer assured her. “Don’t worry about it.”
“Thanks! You’re the best!”
In a flash, the building had emptied out, and Sawyer was at her desk alone. She’d planned to stay until it was time to walk over to the Yale Club and meet Nick, but had forgotten how abandoned and eerie the office could feel on a summer Friday afternoon. Luckily, she had something she liked working on. Johanna had asked Sawyer to do an editorial pass on Sawyer’s “diamond in the slush,” aka, the unsolicited manuscript they’d recently acquired.
She sat there, reading and marking up the manuscript while abstractly listening to the creak and groan of the elevator shaft, the mechanical thump of the central air kicking on and off. Her stomach growled. Stupidly, she’d also forgotten to pack a lunch—normally she left the office early enough to eat at home on summer Fridays. She went to the kitchenette on their office floor and rummaged through the fridge, finding a yogurt set to expire the next day. It was completely out of character for Sawyer to plunder food, but she hoped that between the expiration date and the fact that the yogurt’s original owner was probably somewhere eating a lobster roll, she might be doing them (and the yogurt) a favor.
She went back to her desk and settled in, spooning bites into her mouth as she continued to read. But as compelling as the manuscript was, her eyes kept drifting to the time, and her thoughts kept drifting to her impending rendezvous. She was surprised that Nick had picked the Yale Club as a place to meet. New York was big on social clubs, but Sawyer had never much liked them. They struck her as stuffy, elitist.
For some reason, Sawyer had assumed Nick was like her: not a social-club type of person. He’d struck her as an outsider, the kind of guy who went against the grain by nature. But she had to remind herself that she didn’t really know Nick, and he was also the cocky, expensive-suit-wearing, junior advertising executive who had been rude to her at the Wexler Gibbons dinner.
As Sawyer scraped the last bits of yogurt from the container and licked her spoon clean, she suddenly froze. Nick’s words came back to her: Nothing sadder than a chick sitting at her desk during lunch eating a yogurt. She couldn’t help but laugh aloud. She looked around to see if anyone had heard her…then remembered she was alone, and laughed aloud again.
When the hour finally approached two o’clock, Sawyer left the office on foot.
At Grand Central, she entered the food hall and crossed through the terminal and out the other side—partly to cool off a little, and partly because she simply loved historical New York. The Main Concourse, with its gilded clock, marble staircases, and grand arched ceiling painted with a sky full of constellations, always took her breath away.
Once back out on the street, she was a stone’s throw from the Yale Club. She spotted the giant white-and-blue “Y” banner fluttering in the crosstown breeze. She made her way toward the navy awning and pushed through a brass revolving door. Inside, she was immediately met with a very imposing yet dignified sign atop a brass pole that read “GUESTS MUST BE ACCOMPANIED BY A MEMBER.”
She spotted Nick sitting in an armchair in the lobby, reading what appeared to be a copy of Rolling Stone, and made a beeline. It wasn’t until she was standing directly in front of him that Nick looked up and blinked in recognition.
“Oh, hey.”
He stared openly for a brief moment. Sawyer felt his eyes taking in the sight of her, from head to toe. Her skin prickled, and she became suddenly and very acutely aware of how opposite she and Kendra were in terms of appearance. Sawyer was slight and dark, with big eyes and neatly trimmed bangs that she considered vaguely arty; when people gave her compliments, they usually made Audrey Hepburn comparisons.
Finally, he cleared his throat, then closed the magazine and stood. Sawyer wasn’t sure how to greet him. After their online chats, a handshake now seemed too formal.
“Should we, uh…?” Sawyer said, holding her arms open.
He flinched with surprise (or was it a wince?) but quickly cleared his throat again nonchalantly. “Sure. Why not?”
They embraced. Stiffly, awkwardly.
He was tall, Sawyer realized. He also smelled like fresh laundry—which seemed at odds with the impossibly humid day. It occurred to her that he might have chosen the club on purpose in order to get there early and change into a fresh shirt prior to meeting her. But why go to the trouble? This was not a date.
After the awkward greeting, Nick showed her the way to an elevator.
“The roof gets a nice breeze,” he said. “That work for you?”
“Sure,” Sawyer replied. “Anything’s fine.”
Whereas other social clubs were often full of dark wooden paneling and stone fireplaces, the Yale Club was quite bright and new-looking, everything in shades of white, pale blue, and cream, and decorated in the neoclassical style reminiscent of the White House. Sawyer suspected Nick had led her off the elevator a floor early so they might walk through some of the more impressive lounges and public rooms.
Finally, they reached the rooftop terrace, which indeed delivered on the promise of a pleasant breeze. It was as if the air molecules were suddenly freer up there. Sawyer felt stray wisps of her hair lifting from her shoulders, moving drowsily around her head.
As they sat down, a waiter came over to take a drink order, then hurried away again.
“Wow,” Sawyer said, admiring the view.
A sea of buildings surrounded them, vibrating with the muffled, echoing sounds of the streets far down below.
“It’s funny how, up close, concrete and glass can be so depressing,” she continued. “But when you see them like this—like a landscape—it suddenly seems pretty…all those different shades of concrete turn into a mountain range, all that blue and black glass turns into a sparkling, bottomless body of water.”
Nick looked at her. He studied her face, then looked at the view.
“There’s that instinct for poetry, I guess,” he said.
“Oh—no…I wasn’t…I mean,” Sawyer stammered, blushing. “You’re the one who took me up here. You don’t like the view?”
He shrugged. “I’m a simple guy. What I like is being outside on a summer day anyplace you can go and not sweat your balls off.”
“Oh.”
He looked at her again with that direct gaze. “Your words just made the view more interesting and beautiful than it ever occurred to me it was.”
Sawyer felt a blush creeping back into her cheeks again.
“Were you waiting long?” she asked politely, squirming under his direct gaze.
“Nah.”
“I saw that you were reading Rolling Stone. Did your company do one of the ads in the issue?”
Nick arched an eyebrow at her.
“I do know how to read,” he joked. “Although I know magazines about pop culture hardly qualify as literary material.”
“That’s not what I was getting at. I just thought…” Sawyer began, but trailed off. She thought, This is going badly. Already.
The waiter returned with their drinks—a beer for Nick and a glass of white wine for Sawyer, both glasses beaded with condensation. He set them down and disappeared.
Sawyer took a breath and tried again.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I think I’m nervous. It feels weird meeting you like this.”
Nick looked at her. He picked up his beer and took a long, deep sip, then set it back down again.
“You make it sound like we’re the ones having an affair,” he said.
Sawyer blanched. She still couldn’t wrap her mind around it…or perhaps, her heart.
“Do you really think they’re having an affair?” she asked. “Like, definitely?”
Nick cocked his head. “What do you think?”
“I don’t know,” she confessed. “I guess there have been a few things to make me…well, wonder.”
He didn’t speak. She felt the pressure to keep talking.
“I guess I didn’t want to jump to any conclusions. To tell the truth, you’re the first person I’ve talked to about this. I haven’t even told my best friend, Autumn. I mean, part of that might be because she’s off in Japan teaching English, but also…I just haven’t told her…”
She knew she was rambling and stopped. He still didn’t speak.
More timidly, she asked, “What…what made you think something might be going on?”
Nick took another long sip, then wiped the corners of his mouth.
“The night of the Wexler Gibbons dinner. It just seemed so obvious,” he answered, blasé. “And then a couple of days later, when I put it together that he was the same guy as her quote, unquote ‘workout partner’ at the gym she was always raving about…I was like, well, that’s sketchy as hell.”
Sawyer’s blood ran cold.
“They…they work out together?” she asked, still blinking in surprise.
Nick nodded. “Pretty sure it’s an everyday thing.”
Sawyer thought back to all the mornings she’d woken up to the sound of the blender, the rustlings of Charles packing up his gym bag, and felt her stomach twist itself into a knot.
“Still,” she insisted, trying to keep a level head. “It’s not like they’re having sex at five a.m. in the gym.”
“No,” Nick agreed dryly. “They’re probably having sex in the middle of the afternoon during a quote, unquote ‘working weekend.’?”
Sawyer recoiled as though Nick had said something obscene and offensive…which he had.
He saw her expression and shrugged.
“Hey—you asked what I thought. That’s my gut,” he said.
They both sat there in silence for a moment.
“Anyway—what about you?” he prompted in return. “You said you’d noticed a few things that made you ‘wonder.’ What did you pick up on?”
Sawyer thought back over her recent interactions with Charles.
“Chinese food…” she murmured.
“Come again?”
“Chinese food,” she repeated, and proceeded to tell Nick the story of the receipt she’d found, how they’d had four beers, and how it was time-stamped 9:28 p.m…. despite the fact that Charles had told her it had been lunch. As she spoke, she noticed Nick physically recoiling—much as she had moments earlier.
“I’m sorry, Nick,” she said. “It…it could be nothing.”
He stiffened. A veil dropped over his expression.
“Nah,” he said, his voice suddenly callous. “Don’t feel sorry for me.” He paused, then added, “Feel sorry for yourself.”
His tone was rude—disdainful, even. Like how he’d acted toward her on the night of the Wexler Gibbons dinner.
“What do you mean?” Sawyer pushed.
Nick shrugged. “If Kendra’s got something going on with Charles, then it’s pretty simple for me.”
“It’s ‘simple’?”
“Sure. If that’s the case, then it’s time for me to break it off and move on.”
Sawyer shook her head at him, incredulous. “Sorry—stupid question here: Do you actually like Kendra?”
The question didn’t faze him. He shrugged. “You’ve seen Kendra,” he answered, matter-of-fact.
“So…she’s hot, but replaceable?”
“Or maybe I am. She likes attention—she needs a lot of it from guys, but she’s not interested in getting that deep.”
“Then…why be with her?”
At this, he laughed. It sounded a little like a scoff. “You’ve seen Kendra,” he repeated.
Sawyer frowned.
“Look—I wouldn’t be with her if I didn’t like her. Like most guys, I think Kendra is pretty spectacular. Plus, she’s uncomplicated. Any time I’ve taken a step back, she’s always…you know—made it worth my while to stick around.”
Sawyer rolled her eyes.
“Not sure I want to hear about this,” she said.
“Girls never do.”
“What are we doing here, then? Why ask me to meet?”
“Two reasons.”
She waited.
“First, I work on a system of risk and reward,” he answered. “And right now I’m simply doing my due diligence.”
It was her turn to scoff.
“You’re doing your ‘due diligence’ on…the risks involved in loving Kendra?”
Nick gave a casual nod. “On the risks involved in maintaining a boyfriend role in relation to her,” he corrected slightly.
“Don’t you think that sounds a little”—she struggled for the right word—“I don’t know…um, clinical? Detached?”
Another shrug. His propensity to shrug in response to her every question was beginning to annoy her.
“What about love?” Sawyer asked.
“Love is a feeling.”
“Yeah…” Sawyer replied. “And?”
“And feelings are not my thing,” Nick said, tossing back another sip of beer. The glass was almost empty now.
“You don’t have feelings?” she asked, unable to help the sarcastic tone creeping into her voice.
“Sure, I have feelings,” Nick replied. “But feelings are irrational stuff, so I don’t factor them into my math.”
“Your math?”
“The math I do when I make decisions.”
“It’s impressive you can keep your feelings completely out of it,” Sawyer said, with another eye roll.
“Well, I keep things separate—the rational versus the irrational. The tangible versus the intangible. I just remind myself: feelings aren’t real.”
“Aren’t real?”
“Nope. They’re a distorted reality. They come and go. Hence, not real.”
“Wow, I guess you’ve got it all figured out, then,” Sawyer said.
“You’re being condescending now,” Nick replied. “But I got what works for me.”
Sawyer relented. She was quiet a moment. She lifted the wineglass to her lips and took a deep sip of her own. She remembered something.
“You said there were two reasons you wanted to meet and discuss Charles and Kendra,” she said. “What was the other reason?”
“Oh—that,” Nick replied. “The other reason is…I don’t know. You seem nice.”
“I seem nice?”
“Yeah: nice. You belong in the category of ‘really genuine person.’?”
Sawyer didn’t respond, unsure what to make of this.
“There’s something about you. You’re a real rarity.”
Despite her irritation, Sawyer felt a flicker of flattery. But in the next second, Nick’s words snapped her out of it.
“Your problem is that you don’t stick to the pure math.”
“My problem?” Sawyer said, dumbfounded.
“Yeah. You’re one of those chicks. I bet you make it all complicated,” Nick continued. “You think feelings matter. So, for you, one plus one equals three. Or maybe one plus one equals twenty-seven billion. I don’t know—whatever you decide those feelings are worth. Which, PS, probably changes day by day.”
Sawyer blinked at Nick, tongue-tied and thoroughly insulted.
“That’s why I say, don’t feel sorry for me; feel sorry for yourself,” Nick concluded. “Like I said, your kind of math makes the world complicated for you.”
Sawyer’s jaw had dropped again, but she made no attempt to hide it.
“Who’s being condescending now?” she volleyed back at him. “You don’t know the first thing about me.”
A sly smile played on Nick’s lips, infuriating her. He looked smug.
“I’m pretty sure I know a few things,” he said.
Sawyer was irritated by the way he made things sound patronizing and flirtatious at the same time.
“I seriously doubt it,” she said with a snort. “Anyway—who are you to judge? From where I’m standing, it sounds like all you’ve figured out is how to keep your distance from someone you might love, out of fear of getting hurt.”
Nick rolled his eyes. “Please. Your judgment of me is based on an assumption that I want the same things you do.”
“Oh yeah?” Sawyer said. “What do I want?”
He held her gaze for a moment, then cocked his head and nodded at the engagement ring on Sawyer’s finger.
“When’s the wedding?” he asked.
Sawyer detected a taunting tone in his voice. She frowned.
“October,” she replied.
“Congratulations.”
She only gave him a cold look.
He smirked, and continued. “And you’ve booked the—let me guess…” He paused and pretended to look her over appraisingly. “The Boathouse? The Pierre?”
Still frowning, Sawyer crossed her arms. “The Plaza.”
Nick fixed her with a smug, self-satisfied look, and didn’t reply.
Sawyer glared at him, feeling the hot flames of indignance burning under her skin.
“Look,” she said, trying to calm down and take a different tack. “I’m really not one of those girls. I wouldn’t care if we got married in a barn.”
“But you’re not getting married in a barn,” Nick challenged.
“OK, fine,” Sawyer conceded. “But to me, it’s not about the wedding, it’s about…well, the marriage. The commitment. The love.”
Nick leaned closer to her and pointed, as though he had just won the argument. “And that’s why I say don’t feel sorry for me—feel sorry for yourself,” he said, wearing a maddeningly bemused smile.
Sawyer stared, cut to the core, incensed.
“If Kendra and Charles are having an affair,” Nick continued, “I already know what I’ll do.” He gave one of his maddening shrugs. “I’ve been single before. There are perks.”
She declined to comment. He continued.
“You’ll be the one who has to decide to call off an entire wedding, an entire marriage—as you say.” He paused, as if taking into account an afterthought, then added, “Or, not.”
She took a moment and gathered herself. Finally, she cleared her throat, ready to put him in his place once and for all. But just as she opened her mouth to dish out her reply, a knock sounded on the glass that separated the club restaurant from the outdoor terrace.
Nick turned to look, and the smile dropped from his face. Two young men about their age smiled through the glass at Nick. He nodded at them, then glanced at Sawyer, suddenly jumpy.
“Couple of guys I work with,” he explained in a low voice to her.
They waved to Nick from inside the restaurant, then hurried over to the door in order to come around.
“Hey—Nick!” the guys called as they approached.
Nick stood up and turned to greet them, taking several steps across the terrace to intercept them.
“Hey! What’re you doing here? I thought all you guys on Kirkham’s team went in on a summer place in Montauk,” Nick called.
“Yeah, but Jeff and I have some time to kill while we wait for our ladies to get off work,” said the taller of the two guys. “He thought we should wait and all drive up together.”
The one evidently named Jeff shrugged.
“What’s the point of going to a beach house if we don’t bring along the girls in bikinis?” he said rhetorically.
“Fair enough,” Nick replied.
“Have a drink with us?” the tall one invited.
“Sure,” Nick replied affably. “I was just about to see my friend out. You guys start without me. I’ll be right up.”
The two guys blinked in Sawyer’s direction, as if seeing her for the first time.
“See you inside?” Nick nudged them.
“Yeah—sounds good,” the tall one agreed.
They turned and went back through the open door.
Nick saw Sawyer back down the elevator, to the lobby. She felt oddly rushed out—like he’d been embarrassed to be seen with her, or else was eager to ditch her.
“Sorry this was so brief,” he said, as though reading her mind.
“Hah. I’m sorry it wasn’t briefer,” Sawyer retorted.
Nick raised his eyebrows.
“I’ve offended you again,” he remarked. After a pause, he added, “I told you, I’m not good with people. I can’t help it; it’s the way I am. I try—I really do. But even on my best behavior, I’m always blunt, frank.”
“Maybe what you are is opinionated and superior,” Sawyer countered.
He smiled. “I’d love to stay and argue—I actually really would. I like talking to you. But we’ll have to pick this up another time.”
“Whatever.”
Sawyer rolled her eyes at him, and turned to go. Over her shoulder, she called a chilly “bye.” There was no second hug.
She decided to skip the subway. It was a long walk home to the Upper West Side, but Sawyer was agitated and suddenly felt she had energy to burn.
The idea of Nick pitying her was an irritating thorn, burrowing deeper and deeper under her skin. She was annoyed at herself for having been so open over email, and during their online chat sessions. She’d told him about her slush-pile discovery, her poem—what an idiot! Sawyer took it as further proof that her loneliness was making her strange, that the growing distance between her and Charles was making her do strange things.
She walked along Fifth Avenue. The bells were ironically ringing for someone’s wedding as she passed St. Patrick’s Cathedral. She glanced up the stone steps to where the large doors stood slightly ajar but couldn’t make out anything in the gloom of the cathedral’s interior, contrasted by the bright summer day. She had decided she would make her way north on Fifth and then walk most of the rest of the way through Central Park. It was only a little after 3 p.m., after all, and not the worst way to spend a summer Friday. She was counting on the park to calm her down and allow her to better parse her thoughts.
At first, all her anger was directed at Nick. Who did that guy think he was?
But then…as she walked along, her irritation at Nick receded, and other, bigger feelings began to come into focus.
Pretty sure it’s an everyday thing, Nick had said, about Charles and Kendra working out together at the gym. Sawyer thought it through carefully. If true, it meant that every morning, when Charles rose and hurried out the door to go to the gym, he was also hurrying to meet Kendra there.
He had never once mentioned this fact to Sawyer, not even in passing.
Ifit was true.