Chapter 15
Chapter Fifteen
Justin was woken the next morning by a soft rapping on the adjoining door.
Judging by the light sneaking in through his blinds, it was mid-morning already.
His muscles ached pleasantly, the way they usually did the day after a performance, but this morning it was more pleasant than ache, a feeling that only increased when he remembered how he and Ivy had spent the evening.
Another knock on the door, which he’d left open a few inches the night before.
He’d fallen asleep within seconds of climbing into bed, his exhausted body winning the fight against his spinning mind.
But he’d fallen asleep knowing that even though they were in separate beds, in separate rooms, there were only a few centimeters separating him and Ivy.
“Are you awake?” she called softly through those few centimeters.
“Yeah, come in,” he said, sitting up against the headboard as the door swung open. She stood in the doorway fully clothed, a takeaway coffee tray in one hand and a brown paper bag in the other.
“Bagels and coffee?” she offered.
“You brought me breakfast in bed?”
“I brought you breakfast. Do you want to eat it in bed?”
“Maybe.” He smiled, and her eyebrows rose in question. “Were you planning to join me?” He looked at the two coffee cups in her hand.
“I’m dressed,” she objected, kicking one of her feet up so he could see her boot. It looked wet. He shrugged, and she grinned, then mimicked his shrug. “But it is really cold outside, and I should probably warm up.”
Which is how he ended up eating a bagel in his hotel bed, naked but for his boxers, while Ivy sipped her coffee next to him, fully clothed but for her boots.
She had pulled her hair up into a messy bun and hadn’t put on any makeup yet, and her cheeks were still a little damp and pink from the cold outside.
She looked sweet and unassuming, the way she probably did to many people who looked at a petite, blondish woman with big green eyes and saw nothing to be intimidated by.
Nothing to catch them off guard or catch them out.
Justin knew better, and he liked that knowledge.
Held it close and cupped it in his hands like a warm cup of coffee on a cold morning.
For one long, lunatic moment, he let himself imagine what it would be like to wake up with her in this city—in the same bed, not just the same adjoining room—and wait until she returned from the bagel shop, hair mussed and face bare, to climb back into bed so they could drink their coffee together.
An insane thing to imagine, since they’d been on one real date, and he could barely stand this city.
As if on cue, someone outside honked their horn loud enough that Ivy startled and choked a little on her coffee.
“I don’t know how people live like this,” he shook his head. “How can you hear yourself think? How can you get a moment’s peace?”
“Libraries. Museums. Parks. I’m sure there are quiet places, if you know where to look.”
“I guess,” he said skeptically.
She might have been right, but New York still felt inescapably loud and chaotic.
Sydney was more than enough city for him.
And as for waking up with her every morning, that was foolish, too.
They’d had fun last night—and had all but agreed to a repeat performance tonight—but it was a bad idea to hope for more.
What happened in New York would likely stay in New York, along with the noise and the chaos and the bagels.
His phone dinged on the nightstand. He reached for it and saw Missy’s photo on the screen as though his thoughts had conjured her text.
He’d texted the link to the Times review to her, and to his mum, along with a selfie of himself grinning and holding the paper copy, looking like some kind of overjoyed hostage.
Missy had responded promptly with a series of all caps exclamations and quotes as she read it.
His mother’s wow, I’m so proud of u! had been accompanied by her usual string of random emojis.
Envelope, apple, ghost, ghost, spaghetti.
But he hadn’t heard from either of them in almost two days now.
“It’s home,” he said, swiping the phone open.
“Now? It’s past midnight there,” Ivy frowned.
Justin looked at the time on his screen and did the quick maths; she was right.
Missy kept to a strict bedtime during the work week, only staying up past 10pm late every so often so she could come watch him perform a few times each season.
If she was awake this late, something was off. And if she was texting him this late…
Hastily, he pulled up her message.
Missy, 10:37am: Just talked to my mum and there are a few fires near the foot of the mountains. Nothing serious so far but she and your mum are prepping their go bags just in case.
Justin breathed out sharply.
“Something wrong?” Ivy asked.
“Bushfires,” Justin said vaguely, rereading Missy’s words and thinking, his cozy morning sluggishness suddenly replaced by a prickling unease.
This summer had been hotter than usual in Sydney, which meant it had been infernal at home, where there was no ocean air to take the edge off.
Inland, the country baked for months on end every year, longing for the southern fronts that brought pounding rain to the coast once a week or so.
Bushfire danger had been a fact of life growing up in Hillstone; the summer before he started kindergarten, hundreds of acres of bush in the Blue Mountains had burned, the oil in the eucalyptus trees turning entire forests explosive as the fires swept through.
Justin still remembered the sight of ash falling from the sky, tiny dark grey flakes drifting down and coating the grass in the backyard of Aunt Steen’s house until the lawn looked dusty.
Now, anyone who lived out there knew how to take precautions, keeping trees from growing too close to their houses and storing rainwater from the winter so they’d have something to soak their lawns with if a fire ever came close.
In Hillstone, residents with money to spare had bushfire shutters installed over their windows, and Shane cleared the gutters religiously all spring and summer long.
It had been decades since a bushfire had threatened the town, though.
Still, Hillstone wasn’t that far from the base of the mountains.
And he’d never known his mum to pack an evacuation bag before.
Just in case, he thought. They were just taking precautions, like Shane did when he trimmed the branches on the trees at the side of the house.
Better to be safe than sorry, after all.
“Looks like it’s going to be another bad season,” Ivy said from across the bed, and Justin glanced up from his phone. For a moment, he’d almost forgotten she was there.
He gave Missy’s message a thumbs up, then texted her back, telling her he was sure everything would be fine and telling her to get some sleep.
He half expected her to reply with a sarcastic Yes, sir and a salute emoji, but no reply came.
Again, unease crawled at the back of his neck, but he put the phone on the bed, screen down.
Ivy drained her coffee and set the empty cup on the nightstand, then stretched and yawned.
Again, that idiotic thought of her doing that not in her coat and street clothes, but in her pajamas or her underwear.
He cleared his throat, banishing the thought, and finished his own coffee. “What have you got planned for today?”
Ivy took a deep breath. “It’s not that fun. For you, anyway.”
“Oh, a musical.”
“No, it’s Monday. The theaters are all dark,” she reminded him.
“My favorite day of the week,” he said, and she rolled her eyes. It was as endearing this morning as it had been last night. “What is it then?”
“You don’t have to come,” she said quickly. “I don’t think Peter will notice or care if you’re on your own for a few hours, and it’s kind of personal, so…”
“What is it?” He shifted so he was facing her, intrigued and a little concerned now.
Ivy fiddled with the edge of the sheet for a moment. “I want to go to the Jewish Museum.”
“Oh.” That was far less concerning than he would have guessed. “Then let’s go.”
An hour later, they were wandering the permanent collection of the museum, which was housed in an enormous former townhome on the Upper East Side, not far from the edge of Central Park.
There was more contemporary art here, as well as jewelry, furnished rooms, and more traditional oil paintings collected from all over the world.
It was still early in the morning, and they had the place mostly to themselves, especially in the smaller rooms. As they had at MoMA, they drifted in and out of rooms separately, but inevitably found themselves standing together before one piece of art or another.
Justin found Ivy standing in the viewing area of a furnished room of a lavishly decorated furnished room, all gold-trimmed furniture and lush pale pink carpet.
An enormous oil painting of a pastoral scene hung over the marble fireplace, whose mantel was lined with gold ornaments and porcelain statuettes.
In the corner, an immaculately polished piano stood open, several plush velvet chairs around it with equally glossy string instruments lying on them as though their players had just set them down and stepped out of the room for a brief moment.
Justin looked over Ivy’s shoulder at the little sign describing each of the items in the room.
Langer family music room, Leopoldstadt, Vienna, 1932, the title at the top.
The sign explained that the contents of the room had only been spared the Nazi plundering that began in 1938 because the Langer family had left Vienna several years before and had reconstructed their living room in New York just as it had been in their home country.
They had bequeathed all the items in it to the museum on the condition that they be displayed precisely like this.