830 AM Mia
It had been raining all morning. At four thirty, when Mia woke up jet-lagged and confused, a heavy storm had already settled on the city.
For a while she lay in bed and listened to it.
Then, as she brushed her teeth, she watched it gather strength from the single window of her hotel room.
As dawn broke, cresting over the East River, puddles captured slivers of sunlight.
Glass facades turned from black, to purple, to a weak, watery orange.
But now the rain had stopped. Bits of blue spring sky forced through the clouds, and the air was lighter.
Walking across West Seventieth Street, Mia opened her palm to see if she could feel anything, and when she didn’t, she folded her umbrella, shook it twice, and looped it around her wrist. At intervals along the sidewalk, trees were starting to grow new leaves, their branches dotted with buds; small green shoots sprouted from flower beds.
She smelled baking bread and fresh mulch and her mind began to sharpen, pushing through the sludge of time changes and transatlantic flights.
When she reached the restaurant, she stopped beneath its awning to switch the umbrella between her hands and remove her coat.
She looked at her reflection, straightening her dress and slicking down the back of her hair.
Puffing her cheeks, she pushed open the door.
Inside was more or less exactly as she remembered it.
There were the same red banquettes, the same black-and-white-checkered floors, the same rickety wooden chairs.
She was looking around, searching the faces of the other patrons, when a hostess approached her to ask if she wanted to sit down.
Mia draped her coat over her arm. She said, “I’m actually here to meet someone” at the same moment that Lev rose and waved to her from a table by the window.
“Well, hello,” he said.
“Hi, Lev.”
“You look gorgeous.”
“I’ve been up since four. I feel like shit.”
“Okay, but you look gorgeous.”
Mia pressed her cheek against his and felt his hand on her lower back.
A server, a blonde with high cheekbones and thin lips, delivered their menus and filled two cups with coffee.
Mia spread her napkin across her lap; Lev set both his elbows on the table.
He linked his fingers together into a tight knot, creating a small pedestal on which he rested his chin.
“Mia Hoffmann,” he said.
“Yes?”
He smiled. “Nothing at all.”
They had agreed to get together earlier this week, while she was still in London.
On Tuesday, the website Deadline had published an article saying that Daisy Edgar-Jones had joined the cast of Mia’s show, and she had sent the story to Lev.
It was an obnoxious move and transparently rotten, and she knew as much but she did it anyway.
They hadn’t spoken in over a year, and until that point she had been so good, so perfectly well-behaved.
She hadn’t called him to gloat when Warner Bros.
announced the show was getting made, nor when she was added as a producer; she figured the classier thing to do was let him hear it all through gossip.
But on Tuesday when the casting notice came through, she was sitting alone at a bar near her flat in Islington.
She had hardly spoken to anyone that day, and maybe because of everything else that had happened, for the first time since leaving New York she found herself suddenly and achingly homesick.
Drunk and lonely and two degrees too raw, she’d opened up a new email on her phone to Lev.
She attached the link to the story, thought for a moment, and then typed, I’ll try not to let it go to my head.
Chewing on her thumb, she read it over once and clicked send.
Within thirty seconds he had responded: Don’t love her but good for you, and two lines lower, ever back in town?
Mia scratched the space between her eyes and ordered a fourth glass of wine. She typed, Be there this week actually, then put her phone away before he could ask her why.
In the restaurant, Lev squinted at the menu. Reaching into his shirt pocket, he removed a pair of thin silver readers.
“What are you going to get?” he asked.
“I don’t know. The oatmeal? I’m not really hungry.”
“You should eat something. You can’t grieve on an empty stomach.”
“Thanks, Dad.”
He looked up at her. “No need to make it kinky,” he said.
His hair had turned grayer, and two soft jowls were beginning to form on the sides of his chin.
Watching him adjust his glasses to read the menu, she felt a precise and surprising affection toward him, a warmth that made her realize that, despite any reservations she’d had back in London, she was actually very glad to see him.
It was true that he hadn’t been a particularly good partner.
He could be brutish and condescending, and because he had very few practical skills and refused to learn any new ones, taking care of him required a tremendous amount of effort.
But he also reminded her of parts of her life that now struck Mia as important and meaningful, even if she hadn’t realized they were important and meaningful at the time.
Besides, having to do Lev’s laundry wasn’t her problem anymore.
The chore of taking care of Lev now belonged to someone else.
“What are you thinking?” she asked.
“An egg white omelet with a side of fruit.”
“Look at you.”
“I’ve got my cholesterol down from two-forty to one-thirty.”
“What finally inspired you?”
“I want to live longer than Christopher Hitchens.”
“I think that’s an admirable goal, Lev.”
The server returned to take their order.
Mia asked for her oatmeal, and then watched with a familiar embarrassment as Lev flirted with the woman, angling his chair toward her to ask if she’d ever considered becoming an actress.
Mia looked out the restaurant’s window. Exactly one week ago, she had been riding up the escalator of the tube stop in Covent Garden.
That afternoon she had a meeting in Holborn, and she remembered being determined to get there without getting lost or consulting directions.
For five minutes she’d walked with a purposeful stride, but then her confidence waned; breaking her own rule, she stepped into a Pret a Manger to see where she was on her phone.
She opened Google Maps and zoomed in on where she was standing.
The blue dot was not where it was supposed to be—she’d been walking in the wrong direction on Long Acre.
Sighing, she put her phone away, left Pret a Manger, and walked the other way.
At that point she had no plan to return to New York.
Now that she was here, though, she supposed it was nice to be in a place where she knew her way around.
Yes, despite everything else that had happened, at least there was that: she knew her way around.
Her hotel was down in Chelsea, and when she’d left it this morning to come meet Lev, she had made the journey entirely by instinct.
She’d caught an uptown-bound number one train at Fourteenth Street and ridden it to Seventy-Second Street.
Her feet had led her around corners and down stairs and to the most strategic end of the train without her having to think about it.
The feeling was pleasant, sort of like listening to an old song she’d liked as a teenager and realizing she still remembered every lyric.
She walked past a bar on Broadway where she and Marco had planned a vacation to the Dominican Republic that they never took, and a bench where she’d cried after being passed over for a promotion.
She found herself remembering a long list of mundane meals, and mediocre parties, and pointless arguments.
Of busted apartments, and promising first kisses, and disappointing breakups, and drunken afternoons, and painful mornings.
She thought about how strange time was—the sly way it had of making things precious.
Her memories were boring and had become less truthful every day, and the friends she’d made them with she hadn’t spoken to in years.
But that didn’t change the fact that those memories belonged to her.
It didn’t change the fact that she knew how to get to Café Luxembourg without having to look at her phone.
Lev said, “You’re telling me you’re not related to Michelle Pfeiffer?” and, blushing, the server collected their menus. Once she was gone, Lev angled his chair back toward the table. Mia raised one eyebrow.
“What?” he said.
“You’re incorrigible.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.” He sipped his coffee. “So, tell me how it’s all going.”
“How all of what is going?”
“You know”—Lev made a circular motion with his hand—“all of it.”
Mia tucked her hair behind her ears. She straightened her fork and took a sip of water. “I think it’s going well? I mean, I have absolutely no idea how to make a television show, but that doesn’t seem to bother anyone.”
“No one knows how to make a television show, and yet they keep getting made. What about the book?”
“It’ll be out this July. It was going to be last month, but Knopf moved it at the last minute.” Mia took another sip of water. “I guess they’re hoping that there’s another catastrophic heat wave or some other major weather event that they can use to help with publicity and push sales.”
“That’s smart.”
“I think it’s kind of gross.”
“No, no.” Lev shook his head. “It’s smart.”
The server returned with their food. For a few seconds Mia watched Lev eat.
He still chewed with his mouth open, and attacked his food like it had insulted him or was about to run off his plate.
Using the edge of his fork, he took a large bite of his omelet and swallowed it without chewing.
A fleck of egg white clung to a corner of his lips.
“What about you?” she asked. “How’s life?”
“Oh, fine. It’s all perfectly fine.”