7. Daniel
DANIEL
The weeks after that are a blur with room service receipts.
The deal becomes louder. Welling sends a public relations consultant from New York. Linden wants a joint announcement. The board wants me on two calls a week. My mother wants to know if Nora is coming out for the closing dinner, and I read the message so long the screen dims.
Nora's not coming. Nora's barely answering me.
I don't love that. I also don't panic. Not yet. Because in my head, this is still a hard season. Not the end of anything.
A season.
I call. Sometimes she answers. Most of the time she doesn't.
When she does, she's polite. Polite from your wife is a bad sign.
I know this because Nora has never been polite when she feels safe. Safe Nora is bossy and funny and slightly mean about expensive salads. Safe Nora steals bites of food off my plate while insisting she doesn't want any. Safe Nora tells me when my tie is terrible.
This Nora says things like, "Glad the project is going well."
Glad. I hate glad.
And when I get home, I'll make it up to her. Properly.
I'll take her away for a month if she wants. Paris. Napa. I'll buy her the building on Newark Avenue, not rent it — buy it, put it in her name, fund Honey & Rye until it's bigger than it was before.
I'll spoil my wife until she has no practical reason left to be lonely.
That sounds like love to me. It sounds like a plan.
I set a reminder for our anniversary four days before it happens.
This is the kind of thing that sounds worse when written down. I shouldn't need a reminder. I know the date. June nineteenth. I know it like I know the sound of her voice in the dark.
But time in Singapore has started folding in on itself. I wake up, work, eat, work, call, work, sleep badly, do it again. Days pass in chunks of deadlines instead of names.
So I set the reminder because I'm not willing to miss this.
Call Nora properly. Anniversary. No excuses.
I put it on my calendar for the morning in Singapore, evening for her, then turn my phone facedown and go back to work.
That night, back in the flat, I can't sleep.
It's after one. The harbor lights move over the ceiling. My body is exhausted and my mind is mean.
I think about Nora in the kitchen the morning after our wedding, wearing my shirt and nothing else, blonde hair messy from my hands, looking at me like I could do no wrong. Before Welling got this big. Before every conversation between us had a clock running under it.
I open my photos. This is pathetic. I do it anyway.
Nora on a picnic blanket in Central Park, laughing with her head thrown back. Nora in my old Columbia sweatshirt. Nora asleep on my sofa with a paperback open on her chest.
Nora looking at me.
I lie there with my phone in one hand and miss my wife so much it turns into want, because apparently the body has a limited vocabulary.
I slide my hand under the waistband of my boxers and think about the last night before I left.
Her under me. Her thighs around my hips.
The way she took me bare and deep. The way she looked after, wrecked and soft.
I come with my teeth clenched, Nora's face bright on the screen.
It's not satisfying. Not really. It's release. Those are different things.
After, I lie there breathing hard and feeling empty. A married man. A wealthy man.
Maybe a billionaire now, depending on which piece of paper you believe.
Alone in bed with his phone and his hand and a wife who will still be awake in a few hours.
Then I do the thing that feels like reaching for her. I text her.
Me: Found the Central Park photo.
I attach it. Nora laughing on the blanket, blonde and young and mine in the easy way she used to be.
Then:
Me: You were trouble.
I send another one because I want her back in the room with me, even if it is just on a screen.
Me: Send me a picture?
The phone shows delivered. No read receipt.
I set it on my chest and watch the ceiling.
"Idiot," I say.
This time nobody's there to ask what I mean.
The next morning, she hasn't answered. I tell myself she is making a point.
Fine. She can make a point.
I tell myself I'll call after the legal session. Then after the board call. Then after the press prep.
By evening, I've got the nagging sense that I've missed something.
It follows me through dinner. It follows me into the lobby. It sits on my shoulder while Davis talks about dispute reserves and Marcus explains why I need to stop saying "no comment" to friendly press.
Something. Something personal. Something with Nora.
I open my calendar. Meetings. Calls. Press prep. Linden close.
The reminder I set is gone.
For a second, I stare. Maybe I put it in the wrong calendar.
I check personal. Nothing. Project. Nothing.
My stomach tightens.
"Charlotte," I say.
She looks up from across the table.
"Hmm?"
"Did something happen to my calendar?"
"What do you mean?"
"I had a personal reminder in here."
"Oh." She glances at my screen, then back at her laptop. "I moved some non-urgent personal reminders out of the critical path when we rebuilt the closing schedule."
I go still.
"You moved them."
"Only the ones that were interrupting work blocks. Nothing time-sensitive."
"How would you know?"
She looks at me then. Not offended. Patient. That's worse.
"Because the time-sensitive ones are travel, legal, board, Linden, or press. Personal pings were creating noise in the middle of negotiated sessions. I didn't delete anything important."
Something cold slides down my spine.
"What was the reminder?"
"I don't remember exactly. Call Nora, maybe?" She softens her voice. "I assumed you didn't need a calendar alert for your wife."
That lands badly. Because she's right. And because she's not.
"I put it there for a reason."
I look back at the blank square where my reminder should be.
Call Nora properly. Anniversary. No excuses.
Anniversary.
My hand tightens around the phone. What day is it? For an awful beat, I don't know.
I tap the date. June twenty-first.
No. No.
I sit still. Two days. I missed our anniversary by two days.
My throat goes dry.
Charlotte says something, but I don't hear it.
Nora didn't text me. Didn't call. Didn't remind me.
Of course she didn't. Why would she?
She has spent years reminding me of the soft parts of our life while I treated them like flexible appointments.
Maybe she stopped. Maybe I taught her to.
"Daniel?" Charlotte says.
I close the laptop. The sound is too sharp for the lobby.
Davis looks over from the bar. Shen wakes up halfway in the armchair.
"What did you move?" I ask.
Charlotte's face goes still.
"Daniel."
"What did you move?"
"I told you. Non-urgent personal reminders."
"My anniversary is not non-urgent."
There's a silence. Short. Deadly.
Charlotte blinks once.
"I didn't realize."
I want to believe that. I do believe that. Mostly. I think. I'm too tired to know the difference between a lie and a mistake when both have the same result.
"Nora probably needs space anyway," Charlotte says.
Something about that lands wrong.
I dislike the sentence before I understand why.
It's too intimate. Too certain. Like she has a right to diagnose the silence in my marriage.
"Don't speak for my wife."
Her mouth parts.
"I wasn't."
"You were."
"I'm sorry."
My phone's in my hand. I should call Nora now. The thought comes sharp and clean.
Then the next one comes right behind it. Not like this.
Not from a hotel lobby with Davis at the bar, Marcus waiting, Charlotte sitting three feet away with the closing schedule open.
This needs a proper call. A real one.
Marcus appears at the edge of the table.
"Daniel, we need you on the board prep before New York comes online."
The machine opens its mouth.
I look at my phone. Then at the closed laptop. Then at Charlotte. She watches me, careful.
"I've got your reminders handled," she says.
The sentence sits wrong in my chest. Everything sits wrong.
The missed anniversary. The blank calendar. The photo I sent my wife that she never answered. The urgent text weeks ago. The phone in Charlotte's hand. The hotel lobby. The tower. The money. All of it.
I close my hand around the phone and stare at the calendar until the numbers blur.
I've got the feeling I've forgotten something. Not just the anniversary. Something else. Something I should be able to name if I could get one uninterrupted hour and a working phone and my wife on the other end of the line.
Charlotte reaches for her tablet.
"Really," she says. "I've got your reminders handled."