Chapter Fifteen
Elle
I left him to keep delicately sweating in my living room while I grabbed a shower and got dressed.
I could feel a bubble of excitement, that kernel of anticipation that meant something was going to happen and that it might be just the answer I needed to get my writer’s block dissolving.
Stephen was full of potential – his story, his attitude – it was all fuel beneath the bubbling cauldron of my imagination.
I grabbed my hat and bag – packed with my notebook, cell phone and keys – and joined him again.
He’d been scrolling on his phone, a look of intense concentration on his face, and was quite something to see sitting on my little couch, one ankle resting on the knee of his other leg, in his tan chinos and white polo shirt.
Still somehow giving Vogue spread despite the background props of sequinned cushions and empty boxes of saltines.
‘Wow,’ he said when he looked up.
‘Am I to take that as a compliment?’
‘I’m not allowed to compliment you, am I?’ His mouth ticked up at the corner and he may as well have licked his finger and drawn a tally mark in the air. ‘I was referring to your hat. It’s…large.’
Huh, I knew it was my rule but it was disappointing nonetheless. ‘Yes. Yes, it is. All the better to avoid sunburn, my dear.’
‘Have you tried sunscreen?’
‘Says the man with an olive skin tone and dark hair.’
‘Maybe a hat with a smaller radius than a tractor wheel, then?’
‘If you don’t like my hat, you can just say so—’
‘I don’t—’
‘But I tell you now, it means I will wear it at any and every opportunity when we’re together.’
He clamped his mouth shut and stood up abruptly. ‘Well, let’s hope we can find this man sharpish, then.’
I shooed him out of my apartment, and we began our walk to Little Italy.
Sunday morning meant it was crowded with people going out to brunch as well as all the usual tourists and shoppers.
I was fairly impressed that he didn’t need to consult his phone to find the place again.
I pulled a bottle of water out of my bag and took a swig.
Stephen walked fast; he had that cut-through-the-minions stride typical of Wall Street.
Time is money and all that, and he wasn’t slowing down for me in my decidedly un-streamlined hat.
When he stopped on Baxter Street, I nudged him, offering him my bottle of water and he shook his head and pointed across the road at an entrance to a parking lot.
‘That. There. Was supposed to be where he lived. Or used to live. Now what?’ His tone was grim but also kind of smug, like he knew it was a dead end.
There were two markets, one either side of the entrance. On the left was a butcher and on the right, a Korean bodega where an old woman was sitting in a white plastic chair, her feet resting on an overturned wooden crate, knitting.
‘Bingo.’ I tugged on his sleeve and pulled him across the road with me. ‘Hi, excuse me.’
‘Yes.’ She continued knitting, looking down at her needles as they moved swiftly, creating a long green shape.
‘Are you related to the people who own this market?’
‘You think I get to sit outside like this because my pretty face encourages custom?’ She looked up at me then, properly, pursing her mouth so wrinkles lined her face.
‘Always a possibility.’ I tried a warm smile.
‘Hmph.’
Stephen shifted beside me, as though he was having to make a concerted effort to stay quiet.
‘Has your family owned it a long time?’
‘Who are you? ICE? We are Americans and we have all the paperwork to prove it.’ She lowered her needles into her lap.
My stomach dropped in horror and heat rushed up to my cheeks as I stuttered out an apology. Way to go, Elle.
‘It’s nothing like that at all. I’m sorry, we should have explained,’ Stephen took over smoothly, his voice full of some magical mix of reassurance and contrition, while I considered curling into a ball beneath my hat like a tortoise.
‘We’re looking for someone, a friend of my mother’s, and had an address for this road, but it appears to be a parking lot now. ’
‘What kind of friend gives you an address which is wrong?’
‘One from a very long time ago. Twenty to thirty years, maybe? I know it’s a long shot asking, as you couldn’t have been more than a school girl.
’ Stephen flashed her a smile that would rival any Hollywood star’s.
She gave him a dubious look at his obvious compliment but it had clearly worked to soften her, somehow creating a little joke between them, the corners of her mouth lifting, like she couldn’t help it. Damn, he was good.
‘It was apartments back then.’
‘I expect a lot of the residents would’ve shopped in your market?’ Stephen asked. So, he wasn’t so clueless about gathering information either – or he was a fast learner.
‘Sure, sure, some.’
‘Would you mind looking at a photo and telling me if you recognise him at all?’
A photo? This was a new one on me. The plot was thickening. Why wouldn’t Stephen have told me he had a photo of the man and who he had gotten it from?
‘Show me.’ She wrapped up her knitting tightly and pulled some wire-frame glasses from a case resting on top of a newspaper by her feet.
Stephen slipped a photo from his pocket and crouched down in front of her, showing her the picture. I tilted my head, trying to get a look myself, but she took it from him and held it up to her nose. Then she nodded and handed it back.
‘I remember. He was English like you, yes?’
Stephen nodded and slid the photo away quickly again in the back pocket of his pants as he stood up.
‘Peanut butter and plums,’ she continued. ‘He came in every week for them. Tried to ask my daughter out once or twice. She wasn’t interested, more sense than that. Always polite though. Very polite.’
Stephen smiled again but it was tighter. ‘Thank you. I really appreciate your help.’
I caught hold of the side of his shirt because for some reason I thought he was getting ready to walk. The heat of his ribs through his clothes against my knuckles made my stomach flutter. ‘When did the apartments get turned into a parking lot?’
‘About ten years ago. But he left before that.’
‘Any idea where he went?’
‘Oh, sure, he left me a forwarding address.’ She rolled her eyes as she removed her reading glasses. ‘No, of course not. But he used to work for an Italian restaurant around here, delivering food. Might still be there.’ She shrugged. ‘All I know is, he doesn’t shop in our market anymore.’
‘That’s great, thank you so much.’
‘If you’re grateful, why not go buy something from my family’s market?’
We both nodded obediently, and I herded Stephen towards the double doors on the corner of the building.
‘Good luck, young man,’ she called after us. ‘I hope he’s worth finding.’
‘I doubt it,’ Stephen muttered under his breath, but he smiled again and waved his thanks to the woman.
‘Why d’you doubt it?’ I asked as we got inside the blessedly air-conditioned market.
He rubbed his hand along his jaw, his short beard making a soft rasp and turned quickly down the fruit and vegetable aisle. ‘After all this effort, it’s likely to be a two-minute conversation.’
‘You want more than that?’ I pretended to be focused on picking a carton of strawberries, while watching him from the corner of my eye, but he was pretending just as hard to be interested in the peaches.
‘No.’ He grabbed a punnet, took my strawberries, and we headed to the cash desk, the squeak of his shoes on the shiny tiles making the pause in his answer all the more apparent. ‘I just want it sorted.’
‘Well, so far so good. One conversation and we already have two – no three – important bits of information.’ I got out my notebook and started scribbling in it as we queued.
‘And what would they be? He liked peanut butter and chatting up women?’
‘Not where my mind was going but no information should be discounted. You never know when it might become helpful.’
‘Should we need to bait a trap?’
I laughed, then bit my lip to stop myself.
I wasn’t sure if finding him funny was permissible in our dynamic.
Did that mean he’d scored a point or, worse, that we were moving away from point scoring?
I couldn’t let myself be beguiled by his charms. Looks weren’t the only tactic he deployed to get women into bed.
‘We’ll keep that idea as a back-up plan, yeah?’ I retorted.
‘To have a back-up plan, surely we need an initial plan.’
‘Which I am formulating. Once you’ve paid, I’ll tell you all about it.’
I waited outside under the awning in the shade, scrolling through my cell phone messages.
My sister Lucy had sent me some photos of the baby that were just too cute.
Little Brigid was only three months old and they’d been giving her some tummy time.
Her tiny face as she arched her back and tried to look around her was so sweet.
She was like a little turtle straining to get out of the nest down to the ocean.
When the automatic doors slid open behind me, I looked back to see Stephen exiting the store, my smile at my niece’s gorgeousness still firmly in place. He blinked, like he’d forgotten I would be waiting here and surprised him. ‘Good news?’
‘Family pics,’ I explained, tilting my screen towards him as he joined me. He bent his head to see. ‘My niece. She’s a sweetheart, right?’
I appreciated the effort he made to lose the grumpiness as he looked at the baby. I was sure she looked just like any other baby to him, but he nodded and offered: ‘Beautiful big blue eyes.’
I scrolled down to the next photo, which wasn’t much different to be fair, but he politely continued looking.
And while he was distracted, hands full of fruit, I tilted my head to see if that photo was still in the back pocket of his pants.
I could just see the top corner of it…and the very fine curve of his ass; firm and infinitely grab-able.
Was it genetics or exercise that made it that perky and…
‘Noelle? Noelle, are you checking out my butt?’
‘What?’ I snapped to attention again and almost lost my grip on my phone.
‘No. No way.’ I fussed with my bag, dropping my cell phone back into it, the screen of which I belatedly realised had gone to sleep, tipping him off that I was otherwise occupied.
I’d been well and truly busted and his grin was so genuinely joyful at my mortification, I could’ve kicked him.
‘I was trying to get a look at that photo you have. Why don’t you want me to see it? ’
That wiped the smile off his face, but he lifted a shoulder with manufactured casualness. ‘You can see it if you want. It’s very old. I didn’t think it’d be helpful. The focus is awful, and it’s faded.’
‘You must’ve thought it would be some use, else you wouldn’t have brought it. It helped jog that woman’s memory.’
He shrugged again. ‘We don’t need it at the moment though, do we.’
‘It will help with my plan, actually.’
‘Fine.’ His dark eyes pinned mine, daring me. ‘You want it, you can grab it. My hands are full.’
I hated that the idea was so tempting. I narrowed my eyes at him and took hold of the fruit instead. ‘Problem solved.’
With a half-smile, like he’d won but wasn’t particularly pleased about it for some reason, he reached back and pulled it from his pocket. ‘There.’ We exchanged goods again. ‘Does any part of the plan involve loitering here all day?’
‘No—’
‘Do we have anywhere else we can go today to move this search along?’
‘No—’
‘Then I’ll walk you home and you can explain your plan on the way.’ With that he strode off into the sunshine again and I had no choice but to tuck the photo away and hurry to catch up with him.