Chapter 11 #6
She stops abruptly, the way people do when they realize they’ve accidentally been talking for too long. A flush creeps up her neck, a deep, panicked pink that matches the faded roses on the bedsheet above us. She returns to the stray thread wrapped around her finger again.
I can’t help it. I feel a smirk tugging at the corner of my mouth. “Well,” I say, shifting my weight so as not to crush Emma’s discarded stuffed rabbit. “If that’s the criteria, you’ve picked the right place to be.”
She glances up at me, her eyes wide and confused. “What?”
“New York City. Eight million people pinned to a rock in the Hudson. Statistically, it’s a veritable buffet of profound, song-worthy soulmates.”
“Oh. Right.” She considers this for a moment, her eyes narrowing as she probably starts to calculate the grim reality of today’s dating scene. “Though, let’s be honest, half of them are probably already married or have deeply concerning opinions about jazz. We’re down to four million, tops.”
“Four million is still a healthy sample size,” I counter. “Most people in the Midwest settle for whoever’s left at the end of the high school dance. You’re spoiled for choice.”
“Am I? Once you subtract the age gaps, lack of shared interests and the fact that fifty percent of the men in Manhattan believe a pinstripe suit and a pager make them some sort of god…”
“That feels pointed.”
“I live in the East Village. I’ve seen things, Leo. Dark things.” A small, reluctant smile finally breaks through the earnestness. “So, realistically? We’re looking at a few thousand viable candidates. A stadium’s worth of potential heartbreak.”
“A few thousand people who might make you understand the poets?” I tsk. “I’d take those odds. Most people live and die in a dating pool of maybe six people they went to school with.”
“I suppose. Although I have officially blacklisted anyone who forcibly removes women from taxi cabs. That thins the herd significantly.”
A laugh escapes me before I can pull the drawbridge up. “That was one time. A momentary lapse in chivalry.”
“One time is all it takes to establish a pattern of behavior.”
“A pattern requires at least three instances. That’s basic statistics.”
“Oh, so you need to drag me out of two more cabs before I’m allowed to form a jaded opinion of your character? Good to know. I’ll bring my elbow pads the next time we’re on Broadway.”
“There won’t be a next time,” I say, watching the shadows of the pillow fort dance across her face. “I’ve been thoroughly humbled.”
“And what was the lesson, exactly?”
“That you fight like a street urchin and I should just let you have the cab for the sake of my own shins.”
She laughs—a genuine, unvarnished sound that seems to vibrate through the sheets. “See? There’s hope for you yet.”
“I’m a slow learner. Evolution takes time.”
Her laughter lingers, hovering in the small, warm space between us. “So what about you? Eight million people. Surely one of them is currently waiting for you to walk into a bookstore and drop a heavy hardback or something.”
I shake my head, the cynic’s armor clicking back into place. “I’m not in the market for a great love. I’m looking for a basic level of administrative competence. Someone who won’t lie about their whereabouts and actually likes my daughter. The bar is practically subterranean.”
“That’s bleak, Leo, even for you.”
“It’s pragmatic. It’s adulthood.”
“You’re a neuroscientist,” she says, shifting her weight, the floorboard beneath her hips creaking a little. “Shouldn’t you be more optimistic about the human condition? You literally study the machinery of hope.”
“I study the human brain,” I say, looking down at Emma, who is currently snoring against my thigh. “That’s exactly why I’m a cynic.”
She laughs again, and I find myself realizing, with a quiet, inconvenient jolt that I’ve been aiming for it.
I’ve been tailoring my sentences and playing the grouch just to see her nose scrunch up in that specific, ridiculous way it does when she laughs.
It’s a dangerous thing to notice, the way her face lights up in the dark.
I’d spent the night arguing that New York was a city of millions, but looking at her now, I realize the math is shaky.
If I’m looking for this specific laugh, this specific person, this specific face—then the city isn’t crowded at all. It’s actually quite empty.
I like the friction of this. The way she refuses to let me hide behind my own cleverness. The way she doesn’t let me get away with being too serious or too self-deprecating, and how she pushes back. It’s been a while since I’ve had a conversation like this with anyone.
Between us, the architecture of the fort begins to fail. Emma stirs, the blankets shifting like a slow-moving tectonic plate. Her eyes flutter open, glassy and unfocused in the way of a four-year-old who has just returned from a very distant planet.
“Can we watch The Little Mermaid now?” she mumbles into her pillow.
Annie and I both let out a quiet, synchronized laugh—an accidental harmony that usually makes me feel incredibly self-conscious. I reach over and brush a stray hair from Emma’s damp forehead. “I think it’s time to move the party to your actual bed, kiddo.”
Emma makes a noise of weary protest, but she doesn’t fight it. She goes limp, her body turning into that strange, heavy-gravity lead that children become when they’re truly exhausted.
“But I wanted to see if Ariel got her voice back,” she mumbles, her head falling against my shoulder.
“She does,” Annie says, leaning in close. “She gets the prince, too. Remember?”
“Good,” Emma sighs, her eyelids losing the battle. “I like it when people get what they want.”
“Me too,” Annie whispers. There’s a certain weight to it, a flicker of yearning, and for a second, I want to look at her, but she’s busy tucked into the shadows of the duvet.
“I should go,” she says after a moment, and the spell of the fort breaks. She sits up, shedding blankets like a butterfly leaving a very messy cocoon. “It’s late.”
I feel a sharp spike of panic. “It’s too late for you to be wandering around Manhattan by yourself.”
“Leo—”
“You can stay here. Really. Take the futon—though, full disclosure, it has a rogue spring on the left side that’s basically an instrument of torture. Or take the guest room. I can clear out the LEGO minefield in there in ten seconds, I’m a professional—”
“Leo,” she says, and she’s smiling now. “It’s fine. I’ll call a cab and wait in the lobby.”
“Are you sure?”
She elbows me, a sharp, playful jab to the ribs. “If I can take you in a fight, I think I can handle a ride to the East Village by myself.”
I want to argue. I want to tell her that New York at one in the morning is a different, grittier animal than it is at noon, but I don’t want to be that guy. The overbearing, pinstriped-suit guy. So I just nod, hoist a sleeping Emma into my arms, and tuck her into bed before hovering in the kitchen.
I find my wallet and pull out two twenties and a ten. It’s too much—the fare is fifteen, tops—but I have this sudden, irrational need for her to be safe, to be armored in small bills.
She’s by the door when I get back, her jacket on, looking like she’s already halfway back to her own life. I take her hand—her skin is warm, a startling contrast to the cold brass of the doorknob—and press the money into her palm. “Take it. I’m not asking.”
She starts to recoil. “You don’t have to—”
“I know I don’t have to. I’m doing it for my own peace of mind. It’s purely selfish.”
She looks at the crumpled bills, then up at me, her expression softening. “Thank you. For this.” She gestures back toward the living room, toward the ruins of the fort and the empty pizza boxes. “For letting me crash your Friday night.”
“You didn’t crash anything,” I say. “You made Emma’s night. This was exactly what she needed.”
“I like hanging out with her,” Annie says, and there isn’t a hint of the ‘polite-neighbor’ performance in her eyes.
“She’s a special kid, Leo. She’s smart and funny and she asks questions that actually make me have to think.
I know you’ve had a rough time with nannies and teachers lately, but I hope you know how genuinely wonderful she is. Because she really, really is.”
Something in my chest pulls tight. I’ve spent months being the recipient of a slow, diplomatic parade of failure.
Emma’s too high-energy. Emma doesn’t sit still.
Emma’s a lot to handle. Emma has a hard time keeping her hands to herself during circle time at pre-school.
I’m used to people telling me that my daughter is a problem to be solved.
And here is Annie, who’s barely been on the payroll, telling me how wonderful she is.
I want to say something profound. I want to tell her that hearing that feels like finally being able to take a full breath after a year underwater. But the words feel too big for this hallway, too heavy for one in the morning.
“Thank you,” I manage, and it’s the most honest thing I’ve said all night.
Annie smiles at me. “Goodnight.”
She steps out into the hallway, the fluorescent lights of the corridor catching the messy highlights of her hair. I watch her walk toward the stairs and I realize I’m not quite ready for the silence of the apartment to rush back in.
“Annie,” I call out.
She pauses and turns around. “Yeah?”
“Will you call me?” I ask, and I can hear the sudden, unpolished edge in my own voice. “Just when you’re home so I know you haven’t been abducted by a rogue mime or whatever it is that wanders around Manhattan this late.”
She laughs. “You know, you’re remarkably prone to worrying.”
“I’m a father,” I say, leaning against the doorframe, trying to look significantly more relaxed than I feel. “It’s my job to worry.”
“I’m not your kid, Leo.”
“No, but you’re Emma’s favorite person,” I counter, my brain scrambling to find a more cynical, less vulnerable footing.
“Which means if anything happens to you, I’m back in the interview circuit.
I’ll be trapped in a room with people who want to discuss their Montessori-certified organic snack budgets and their feelings on finger-painting as a form of self-actualization. It’s a terrifying prospect.”
She’s grinning now, a wide, beautiful look that makes my own chest feel a little too tight for my ribs. “Ah. So this is purely about your own convenience.”
“Completely selfish motivations. I am, as previously established, a terrible person.”
“I’ll call you,” she says, her voice softening just enough to make me believe her.
“Thank you.”
She gives me a little wave—a brief blur of a hand—and then she’s gone. The door clicks shut with a finality that feels heavier than it should.
I stand there for a beat, listening to the fading rhythm of her footsteps down the hall, then I turn back to the living room.
The apartment is a graveyard of our Friday night: grease-stained pizza boxes, a lukewarm crust, and the blanket fort, which looks less like a cathedral now and more like a pile of laundry.
I should clean up the mess. I should tackle the dishes. I should be a productive, functional adult. I should do a hundred different things.
Instead, I sit on the edge of the sofa in the dark, waiting for the phone to ring.