5
As Stevie and Nate sped at death-race speed away from the airport, down a highway toward the Oz-like clump of buildings in
the distance, it felt like she was traveling through the grubby back lot of a movie set, one lined with cheap hotels and billboards
for watches and perfume. The cold air that seeped in through the vents smelled aggressively like pine air freshener and exhaust
fumes.
“Where are we going?” Stevie asked. Nate had been lost in thought for most of the day, looking at his phone or computer or
out the window.
“East Twenty-Second,” Nate said. “It’s near the Flatiron.”
That meant nothing to Stevie, but she nodded like it did. She put in her earbuds and tried to focus on a podcast to ease her
nerves. This plan—these two weeks in the city—would get her through until the next semester. She would fix the problem of
the failed exam. She would turn this experience into something. What, she didn’t know, but this was New York and things seemed
to happen there.
They reached the end of the road and entered the tunnel that would take them under a river. Maybe it would block reception for a moment, Stevie hoped, because her parents were blowing up her phone. She got four texts on this cab ride alone.
You can always change your mind.
Just come home.
At least text us when you get there, please.
Be careful in New York its dangerous
The cab popped up into the tight tangle of streets. Stevie’s first thought was that Manhattan was shorter than it appeared
from a distance. Lower. From the road, it was all tall buildings and sky, but the street level seemed to be endlessly repeating
blocks of delis, banks, and restaurants of every possible sort. She’d read that people never looked up in New York. The tall
buildings didn’t impress them. Stevie still craned her neck when they got near the Empire State Building, but they were too
close for her to see it.
New York was dressed up for the holidays. They were reflected everywhere, from the decorations on the streetlights to the
red-bowed poinsettias on sale outside the delis. The bus shelters displayed rotating commercials that showed all the wonderful
gifts you could buy, from Range Rovers and diamonds to two-for-one burgers. The displays on top of the other yellow cabs showed
ads for the Radio City holiday show, for restaurants with holiday specials. There was no escaping the festivity of it all.
Her phone was buzzing in her pocket. Her parents were still texting. She finally typed out a reply:
Here safe. Everything is fine.
Was that all? Should she say something else?
I’ll be in touch, she wrote.
Nothing she could say to them met the moment, so that was all she wrote.
The cab came to a stop in front of a bronze-brick building with a green awning that stretched halfway to the sidewalk. The
entrance was nestled quietly between the front of another apartment building on one side and a place called the Sunshine Diner
on the other.
They entered a small foyer with brown marble floors and dark paneled walls. It was a bit like the Ellingham library in this
respect, but the Ellingham library had the rarefied, spacious air of a cathedral, and this place had a small plastic tree
on the built-in desk and smelled like men’s cologne and fryer grease. The fryer smell had to come from the diner next door,
since most lobbies didn’t have deep fryers (which was really a shame). The cologne smell emanated from the uniformed doorman
with an astonishingly square jaw. The desk was high and his chair low, so Stevie could only see him from the chin up; he was
chuckling at something on his phone as they approached. It appeared that he hadn’t noticed them, but he stood as they got
closer, still looking at the phone.
“Who’ya here to see?” he asked.
“I’m Nate Fisher,” Nate said to the doorman. “I’m . . . staying here?”
“Who?” the doorman said, looking up and squinting.
“Nate. Fisher. I’m . . . staying here? Someone sent over my driver’s license?”
“Who’ya visiting?”
Nate turned to Stevie helplessly, but she had no advice to give.
“You’re 8H,” the doorman said suddenly, like the wisdom had been beamed down on him. “You’re in the Garrett apartment. Diana
Garrett?”
“Diana,” Nate said, nodding quickly. “She’s my editor. Diana Garrett, and she’s . . .”
“Sign in.” He pushed a logbook toward them. Nate signed his name and the time of their arrival.
“Both of you,” the doorman snapped. “Eight H. Shoulda said 8H.”
Stevie signed as a key was slid over the edge of the desk.
“You go up to eight. Eight H is at the end of the hall. Left side as you come out.”
They proceeded to the single elevator, which gave slightly under their weight as they got on and groaned and ticked its way
up eight floors, and arrived on a hall in a palette of soft grays—gray carpet, soft white walls, slate-gray doors. There were
four apartments on either end of the hall; on their side, the one next door to theirs had a sticker that read: IN THE CASE
OF FIRE, PLEASE RESCUE MY BIRD.
They entered a silent and swelteringly hot apartment. The lights were off and the blinds closed, so it was also dark and unwelcoming.
Even in the low light, Stevie could see it was neatly but sparsely furnished. A temporary place.
“So hot,” Nate grumbled. He went to one of the windows and pulled open the blinds, then lifted the sash window. There was no screen, no bars, nothing to keep you from falling to the street below.
A quick scan of the layout revealed an open-plan kitchen and dining room, with a breakfast bar separating the two. There was
a bathroom off the entrance hallway where they dumped their coats, and one bedroom with a small en suite.
“So,” Nate said, “there’s one bedroom . . .”
“This is your apartment,” Stevie said quickly. “The couch is mine. Calling it.”
Nate gave no argument and wheeled his bag into the bedroom. Stevie looked around the living room, where she would be staying.
A hanging light with a tire-sized rattan shade cast insufficient light on two large cream-colored sofas that were rendered
almost useless by sixteen (Stevie would later count them) throw cushions in various shades of buff and beige. Tidily folded
throw blankets that looked like they had never warmed human skin hung from a three-tiered decorative ladder made from knobby,
bleached wood. Miniature chairs sat up against the wall, awaiting mysterious small visitors who apparently liked to linger
in corners. This was an editor’s apartment, though, so it had books. Mostly, though, they were of the large coffee-table variety—pictures
of famous swimming pools, Polish art of the 1960s, revolutionary posters from 1970s Germany, Andy Warhol Polaroids, a David
Hockney retrospective.
Stevie didn’t understand coffee-table books.
Her books were small enough to lift and were meant to be read, carried, reread, pressed face down on kitchen tables, carried into bathrooms, and stuffed into bags.
Loved. These books were heavy and expensive and probably had interesting information inside them, but nothing about them suggested an invitation to open them.
Books were not objects to Stevie; books were as practical and necessary as skin.
She moved her suitcase to the side of the room under the window and opened it, revealing the little nightmare of mostly unwashed
clothes and tangled wires that she had hurriedly thrown together the night before. She put in her earbuds and listened to
a podcast as she tried to make busywork for herself, unpacking, separating the really dirty things from the passably dirty
ones. This only took a little while. Nate had partially shut his bedroom door and had headphones on, so Stevie knelt on the
floor, surrounded by her stuff, alone with her own thoughts, which was the last place she wanted to be. She was startled but
grateful when she heard a polite little knock on the door.
“Nate!” she called.
Another knock.
He didn’t reply. She was going to have to deal with this door situation. She peered through the peephole and saw a man who
looked to be in his sixties with gray hair, exceedingly neatly trimmed. He wore circular, frameless glasses, a maroon cardigan
over a rose shirt patterned with tiny leaping deer, khakis, and comfortable-looking but shiny oxfords.
He knocked again and leaned toward the peephole, staring back at her. There was nothing else for it. She opened the door.
“Hello,” he said. “Helen said you were here. Are you the author?”
“No,” Stevie said. “That’s my friend. Nate. He’s . . . in the bedroom.”
“I’m Arthur Henz. I live in 8A. Diana asked me to look after you. And you are . . . ?”
“Stevie.”
“Ste-vie.” He tasted the word and considered the girl who matched it. “Well, I came by to tell you that we’re having a holiday
gathering down at Mitzi and Lance’s at the end of the hall. We’d love for . . . you both to come down.”
Stevie was unsure if this was a request or a command.
“Just a second,” she said.
Stevie gently shut the door on him and hurried over to the bedroom, startling Nate, who was humming to himself and pacing.
He slapped the headphones down to his neck when Stevie appeared in the doorway and looked strangely guilty.
“What?”
“There’s a guy at the door who wants us to go down the hall with him for some kind of holiday thing,” Stevie said. “His name
is Arthur. Helen said we were here.”
“Who the hell is Helen?” Nate asked.
“How do I know? The guy said Diana asked him to look out for us.”
“He mentioned Diana? Shit.” Nate leaned against the feature wall, which was papered in an inoffensive gray leaf pattern. “Maybe
if I don’t go she’d be upset, like I was being rude to her neighbors. Does that mean I have to go?”
“I barely know why we’re here,” Stevie said. “But he’s outside the door, waiting.”
“I guess we have to go,” he said.
She hoped that perhaps Arthur might get tired of waiting and wander off, but no. When she opened the door, he was still there,
and he was thrilled to see them both.
“Oh, good!” he said. “Diana texted me to say you were coming and that I should make sure you feel welcome and check in on
you.”