9. Julian #2
She turned back to the bar. She lifted her wine. She took a sip. I watched her throat when she swallowed.
I drank my whiskey.
Declan stood at 9:40 p.m.
He tapped the side of his glass with a fork until the room came down. He stood at the head table with Thea beside him, her hand at the small of his back, Lena asleep on her shoulder.
"Alright. Two minutes. I promise."
"He's lying," I said, into Claire's ear.
She almost laughed.
"Two years ago I gave a toast at this woman's birthday in a restaurant in Brooklyn. I was so nervous I drank an entire glass of water before I started talking and forgot her name halfway through."
The room laughed.
"I have learned. Tonight I have notes."
He held up a folded napkin. The room laughed again.
"I am not going to use the notes."
The room groaned.
He talked about Thea. He talked about the year before they got married, when she had told him to leave her alone and he had not.
He talked about Lena, who was now drooling on his wife's shoulder.
He talked about second chances and the people who showed up when it mattered. His eyes found mine across the room.
I raised my glass.
Nolan, on Claire's other side now, raised his and nodded once.
Claire's shoulder touched my arm.
She did not move it away.
Declan finished in twelve minutes. The room applauded. Thea kissed him on the cheek with the baby still on her shoulder. The quartet had been replaced by the eight-piece swing band and they came in low and warm with something I did not recognize.
I took Claire's hand.
She looked at our fingers.
"Dance with me."
"I don't dance, Julian."
"Neither do I."
I pulled her onto the floor anyway. We were not the first couple on it. Declan and Thea were already there with Lena handed off to Thea's sister. Nolan and Soleil were 3 ft. away, and an older couple I did not know were doing what looked like an actual foxtrot.
I put my hand at Claire's waist. I lifted her right hand in my left. She put her left hand on my shoulder.
We did not move.
We stood with the music around us and her fingers pressing the smallest amount into the wool of my jacket, and after a few seconds I pulled her in tighter and her cheek almost touched my jaw. She let me. Her hand on my shoulder went from a hold to a grip.
I turned my head a fraction. My mouth brushed her temple.
She closed her eyes.
She exhaled against the side of my neck.
I held her there for the rest of the song.
The music changed to something slower. I took her hand and led her off the floor, past the bar, past the table where Soleil was now feeding a piece of cake to a tired Lena, and through the glass doors at the back wall onto the terrace.
The terrace was empty.
The city was below us in long lit lines down to the river. The wind was low and warm, coming off the building — lifting her hair off her shoulder and dropping it again. The music went muffled the second the door swung closed behind us.
She walked to the railing. She put both hands on it and looked out.
I came up behind her. I stood close enough that the line of my chest was a half-inch from her bare back.
"Your friends love you, Julian."
"They tolerate me."
"That's not what I saw."
"What did you see?"
She turned to face me.
"A man people trust."
The wind lifted a strand of her hair across her cheek.
I put my hand on her waist. She did not stop me. She stepped closer. Her free hand came up and rested flat against my chest.
I kissed her.
It was not the river kiss. The river kiss had been the first kiss, the unfolding, the asking.
This was the second one. I knew what her mouth would do when mine came down to it.
I knew how her lips would part and how her hand would curl into my shirt and the small low sound she would make at the back of her throat when my hand moved to her hair.
Her hand slid from my chest up to the back of my neck. She pulled me in.
My hand moved from her waist to her hip. The sound came out of her — quiet, almost not a sound — and I pulled her closer to me with my back against the railing. My other hand came up the side of her ribs through the cool silk of the dress and her breath hitched.
She pulled back. Just enough.
Her gray eyes were dark. Her lips were parted. The pulse was visible in her throat.
"Julian."
"Tell me to stop."
She did not.
I kissed her again. Harder this time. Her fingers curled into my hair. My right hand slid around her waist to the bare skin of her back where the dress dipped low, and her skin was warm under my palm as she arched into me.
I pulled back.
We were both breathing hard. My forehead came to rest against hers. Her hand was still in my hair.
"Come home with me tonight."
She opened her mouth.
Past her shoulder, through the glass, I saw it.
Silver hair. A tailored gray suit. A dark navy pocket square. A glass of something amber in his right hand, the signet ring on his fourth finger.
He was standing in the middle of the room like he had been invited.
Conrad Weiss.
My hands dropped from her.
The blood went out of my face. I felt it go.
She saw my face change. Her hand came off my hair and onto my chest and she said, "Julian. What's wrong?"
"Stay here."
"Julian — "
"Stay here. Please."
I crossed to the door. I pushed it open. I stepped back into the warm bright room.
Declan had already seen him.
He was 20 ft. from Conrad with his jaw a hard line and a champagne flute he had already set down on the nearest tray. Nolan was at his shoulder. The two of them looked at me as I crossed, and we converged on each other at the back of the bar without a word.
"How did he get in?" Declan said.
"Doesn't matter," Nolan said. "Get him out."
"I've got it. I'll walk him out," I said.
Declan looked at me.
"I've got it."
Declan signaled the head of security at the door with two fingers. The man nodded once and stayed where he was.
I walked across the room to Conrad.
He turned to face me as I came up. The grin he had worn for sixty years. The cut of the suit. The pale blue eyes, completely steady.
"Julian."
"Walk with me, Conrad."
"Of course."
He set his glass down on the nearest table. He gestured toward the doors. "After you."
But I let him go first.
The walk through the ballroom was the slowest crossing of my life.
Past the table where Soleil was wiping cake off Lena's chin.
Soleil saw us and her hand paused. A look of concern crossed her face.
Past the bar where the bartender's eyes flicked to Conrad and back to the glass he was polishing.
Past the open doors out into the elevator lobby where the hush of the music finally cut.
The lobby was empty. The brass elevator panel. The marble floor. The long mirror at the end of the lobby that gave back our two reflections.
Conrad stopped two steps from the elevator.
He turned to face me.
"She's lovely, Julian. The assistant."
I did not answer.
"The last time we spoke — just the two of us, do you remember? You came looking for closure."
My stomach dropped.
The bar in the Village. Three years ago. I walked into that bar and sat across from Conrad Weiss and said things I did not say to Declan. I walked out feeling like a man whose grief was heard, and then I felt sick about it, and I did not tell a soul.
He had not forgotten.
"You mentioned a name in that conversation, Julian. A judge. I don't think you understood what you'd found at the time."
He paused. His eyes did not leave mine.
"I think you understand now."
I did not move.
"Get your partners in order. Stop digging. What you found is bigger than you, and if you keep pulling at it, the consequences won't be professional."
His pale blue eyes drifted past me. Past the open doors at the far end of the lobby. Through the room where the music was coming back up. Toward the terrace where Claire was still standing with one hand on the railing.
"They'll be personal."
He straightened his cuffs.
He stepped into the elevator.
The doors slid closed.
I stood in the lobby alone.
My hands were shaking. I put them in my pockets. The lobby was empty. The music from the ballroom was a low warm thing through the open doors at the end of it. A waiter passed me with an empty tray.
I lifted my chin.
My face settled into the mask I’d worn for ten years for clients I did not want to lose and for partners I did not want to scare and for women I did not want to keep.
I walked back to the party.
Claire was inside now. She was at the bar with Soleil. Soleil was laughing at something. Claire was laughing too — small and careful.
She looked up.
She saw my face.
I had not hidden it fast enough.
She said something to Soleil and crossed the room to me. The black dress moved around her knees. Her gray eyes were on mine.
"Julian. What happened?"
I looked at her.
The woman I had been kissing five minutes ago. The woman Conrad had looked at when he said personal.
"Nothing. I'm fine."
She did not believe me. I could see that she did not believe me. She had her chin up, the half-inch she lifted it when she did not want to be lied to, and her gray eyes were on mine and waiting.
I smiled.
I took her hand.
"Come on. They're cutting the cake."
We went back to the party.