7. Julian
SEVEN
JULIAN
The vinyl had been spinning for an hour when Declan called.
Coltrane. "A Love Supreme," side two. The morning sun was doing the thing it did this time of year, coming in hard through the floor-to-ceiling windows and laying long bright bars across the floorboards.
I was at the kitchen counter in joggers and a gray T-shirt I had owned since college, two days of stubble at my jaw, my hair still pushed back from sleep.
The phone rang. I picked it up without looking.
"Talk to me, Dec."
"It's 6:58 a.m."
"I'm aware."
"I have been awake since 5:00 a.m. Thinking about napkins. Get a pen."
I had a pencil between my fingers already.
The leather sketchbook was open on the counter beside the espresso cup.
I had been drawing a building — narrow, twelve stories, a ridiculous number of windows, a building no one was going to commission, and I was going to file it in the kitchen drawer with the others by the end of the morning.
"I have a pen."
"The venue is locked. The Carlyle Ballroom, August 14. The caterer's the one we used for the firm anniversary, the woman who did the lamb. The florist is doing white peonies and the green stuff that looks like baby's breath but isn't. What is it called?"
"Hellebore."
"Hellebore. Quartet for the cocktail hour, eight-piece swing band for after dinner. Open bar. We're at one hundred and twenty-two on the guest list and I would like to keep it under one hundred and thirty. Do you think one-twenty-two is enough or am I going to get yelled at?"
"Dec."
"Tell me."
"It's enough."
"You're sure?"
"I'm sure. Thea's not going to count the guests."
"She's going to count the guests."
"She is not going to count the guests."
"Jules. I cannot have her find out about any of this.
I cannot. Last year I tried to surprise her with the trip to Paris and her sister called forty-eight hours before asking what flight we were on.
Thea picked up the call, and I had to lie to my wife about a trip I had been planning for three months. I am not doing that again."
"I won't say anything to Thea."
"You're the worst secret keeper I know."
I lifted the espresso cup. The pencil was still between my fingers.
"Untrue. I'm excellent at secrets."
I let the line sit.
"You're terrible at secrets."
"I'm very good at secrets."
"You once told a six-year-old at a Christmas party that Santa was a tax-deductible business expense."
"Children should know the truth."
"His mother cried, Jules."
"She was overdramatic."
"He cried."
"Briefly."
He laughed. I laughed. The pencil had moved while we were talking — three more windows on the building, a small balcony on the eighth floor, a tree at the base. I turned the page.
"Send me the seating chart," I said. "I'll look at it."
"Done."
"Get some sleep."
"I am not sleeping."
"Get some sleep, Declan."
He hung up.
I set the phone down. I stood at the counter for a long second with the espresso cup in one hand and the pencil still in the other.
The vinyl had moved to the next track. Coltrane was deep in "Pursuance," the bass running under everything, the drum coming up from somewhere far back in the studio nobody had recorded in for sixty years. I had three rows of records on the shelf against the far wall. Alphabetical.
Nobody had come over and been impressed in a long time.
I closed the sketchbook and slid it into the kitchen drawer with the other twenty-two.
I went to the bathroom to rinse my face.
The toothbrush holder by the sink had two slots.
There was a toothbrush in the left one. There had been a toothbrush in the right one until Anna pulled it out, put it in her overnight bag, walked out of my apartment, and didn't come back.
That was a long time ago. I bought a new toothbrush six months later, put it in the right slot, and threw it away.
I went back to the kitchen.
I thought about Claire.
Specifically I thought about her leg against mine under the table at the restaurant.
The line of her thigh through the navy of her dress.
The warmth of it through the cotton of my trousers, the half-second on the sidewalk afterward when her gray eyes had dropped to my mouth and stayed there.
The car horn. The breath she had let out when Declan honked.
The half-inch lean toward me she had not stopped herself from making.
I thought about the man on the sidewalk before that. Someone from a long time ago. She had not said that to me. I had said it to myself in the car on the way home from the restaurant, again in bed that night and again at 5:00 a.m. today when I’d given up on sleep.
I rubbed the back of my neck.
I grabbed my jacket off the chair by the door.
I needed to get out of this apartment.
The coffee place on the corner had a line out the door because it was Saturday, and the Saturday crowd was the slowest one.
I waited eight minutes. Mara at the counter recognized my order and made it without asking — a flat white, no sugar, in the cup with the green logo I always took because I liked the weight of it.
I walked the three blocks to the park.
The trees were full of June leaves. A kid on a tricycle was making a slow loop around the fountain. Two old men were on the bench by the dog run. The running path was busy — joggers, a couple with strollers, a woman walking a beagle that was trying to eat a leaf.
I cut onto the path and started walking the river loop. I did not run. Claire had been right about that, although I was never going to admit it.
I was halfway down the long stretch by the railing when I saw her.
Dark hair down to her shoulders. A black tank top. Black running leggings. White running shoes. Skin flushed at the cheek and at the collarbone where the tank dipped. Her hair was loose and heavy around her face, half-stuck to her temples with the sweat she had run into it.
I had never seen her hair down.
I had never seen her arms.
I stopped walking.
She was running at a pace I would not have been able to hold for a minute let alone the distance she had clearly been holding it. Earbuds in. Her face had the closed-off concentration of a person running away from a thing instead of toward one.
She glanced over her shoulder.
Quick. Sharp. She scanned the path behind her. Her eyes did not stop on any one person. They came back in front.
I jogged twenty yards to catch her.
I came up on her left side and matched her pace and she startled.
She was actually startled. Her shoulders came up.
Her right hand went to her left ribs. Her head whipped toward me and for a half-second her face was one I had never seen on her — hard, alert, the eyes flat, the mouth a line.
Her right hand was halfway to a place on her body where I would not have expected a hand to go.
Then it was Claire.
The shoulders dropped. The hand fell. The face smoothed out one feature at a time, mouth and jaw and eyes, until she was the woman from my office again. She ripped the earbud out of her left ear.
"Mr. Cross."
"It's Saturday, Claire. Julian."
She slowed down to a jog, then to a walk. I did the same.
She glanced over her shoulder again.
"Are you waiting for someone?"
"No."
"Because you keep looking behind you."
"I'm just aware of my surroundings."
"That's a very specific way of putting that."
She did not answer.
We walked.
The river was on our left, slate-gray, the chop catching the morning light. A man on a bicycle clipped past us with his bell going. Claire pulled her other earbud out and wound the cord around her phone and slid the phone into the small pocket at the back of her leggings.
"You should go," she said.
"I should go?"
"Yes."
"It's a public park."
"It is."
"You don't get to send me off the path, Claire."
"I'm not sending you off the path. I'm telling you you should go."
"I live three blocks from here."
"You don't run."
I looked at her sideways. She was still not looking at me.
"How do you know?"
"You eat croissants for breakfast. You take the elevator to the second floor."
I grinned.
I could not help it. The grin came up at the corner of my mouth and stayed there and I let it.
"You've been watching me, Claire."
"You're hard to miss."
"That's almost a compliment."
"It's not."
The corner of her mouth moved. Not a smile. The place a smile lived before it became one. She did not look at me when she did it.
"Walk with me."
"I'm done. I'm cooling down."
"You're walking. I'm walking with you."
"I'm busy."
"You're done. Your cooldown started two minutes ago. Your breathing changed."
She stopped.
She turned her head. Her gray eyes came up to mine, and she looked at me.
I knew it was the wrong thing to have said.
I had been watching her. I knew the rhythm of her breathing. I had no business knowing that.
"Walk with me, Claire."
She walked ahead and I followed.
The path curved toward the water. A jogger came past with a yellow lab. Two kids on scooters. The bench at the bend where an older couple was sharing a paper bag of something — bagels, by the smell of it, sesame.
"What do you listen to," I said. "When you run."
"Nothing."
"Nothing?"
"I like hearing my own breathing."
"That is the most Claire Kent answer that has ever been said."
"What would you listen to?"
"Jazz."
"That's not jazz. What you play in your office is a cat being electrocuted."
I laughed.
A real one. Out loud. The lab's owner glanced at me on the way past.
Claire looked at me sideways. Something moved in her face — softer, a fraction of an inch, the wall slipping. She did not look away. I caught the look and did not push at it and she let it stay.
We walked another twenty yards.
"So the man on the sidewalk."
She did not break stride.
"What about him?"
"Not a boyfriend."
"No."
"Old friend? Brother? Particularly handsome Uber driver?"
She shook her head.
"Someone from a long time ago."
I let that sit.
"He looked at you like it wasn't that long ago for him."
She did not answer.