Chapter 7 #2
By noon they had done the wharf walk-and-talk for the campaign blog (Cass had flown up from Boston to do it; Cass had brought her own thermos, which Cass guarded with her life).
By one they had done the lunch at a chowder place, where Marin’s social-media manager had filmed a six-second slow-motion clip of them clinking spoons.
By two they had walked back to the hotel for a brief reset.
By three they were back out at a craft cooperative on Exchange Street, where they had been asked to admire local pottery in a way that translated to camera-friendly hand-holding for ninety seconds in front of a window full of mugs.
Ada was very good.
Wes had not realized, until they were halfway through the wharf walk, how professionally good Ada was.
She had a public face that was nothing like her private face.
She could deliver a quote on demand and laugh at the right beat and turn her head at the right angle and her voice did not change pitch even when her hip was complaining and he could feel her doing the work of not letting it.
By four she was tired.
He noticed without commenting. He noticed because at four she stopped, in front of the craft cooperative window, and asked Cass — politely, easily, as though it was nothing — whether they could take the next two photos sitting down.
Cass said yes. Marin’s social-media manager looked, briefly, like she wanted to argue, and then looked at Marin, who had not arrived but was always somehow present in the room, and did not argue.
They sat. They drank a coffee. They posed for two more photos. They held hands. They let go. Ada’s hand, this time, was warm. So was his.
At five they were released back to the hotel.
In the elevator, going up to their separate floors, Ada said quietly, “You know what we forgot.”
“What.”
“Dinner.”
“We are scheduled for dinner at seven. The donor thing.”
“That is not dinner. That is small plates.”
“I know.”
“Berglund.”
“Yes.”
“Do you know any place to get food before I have to put on a dress and stand on a small carpet in a small room and answer questions from people who own boats.”
He thought.
“Diner,” he said. “Around the corner. Behind the parking garage. I went there in juniors. They do a fish sandwich the way fish sandwiches were done in 1973.”
“Fifteen minutes.”
“Yes.”
The elevator dinged at her floor.
She got out. She paused, as the doors started to close, and turned around.
“Berglund,” she said. “Do you have any opinions about the fish sandwich.”
“Two opinions.”
“Tell me.”
“Order the tartar on the side. Ask for cheese. They will tell you they don’t put cheese on it. Insist.”
The doors closed before she answered. He heard her laugh through the door.
He did not, all the way up to the eleventh floor, allow himself to think about what her laugh was doing to his chest. He thought, instead, about whether he was going to be able to put on a tie. He thought, very specifically, about the knot.
By the time the elevator dinged on eleven, he was thinking about the knot.
That was good.
That was the right thing to be thinking about.
They ate the fish sandwich at six. They walked the four blocks to the donor reception at seven.
He was in his suit, the dark gray one his mother had bought him for Henrik’s funeral, which he had had taken in twice since.
She was in a dress the color of a winter sky, long-sleeved, knee-length, with a small high collar, and she had put her hair up in a way that left two pieces loose at the side of her face.
She had put on lipstick the color of a russet apple. She wore flat ankle boots.
She did not pretend to be taller. She did not pretend to be anything.
At the door of the reception, he offered his arm.
She took it.
She did not, this time, ask hand or arm.
She had decided. She had thought about it, somewhere on the way from the diner, and decided that an arm was the version of public touching that would let her keep her hip out of the conversation.
He understood her decision in the half-second it took her to take his elbow.
Inside the reception, Marin Pell was wearing a black suit and shaking the hand of a man with a white beard.
Pete was nowhere to be seen, because Pete had not been allowed at the donor event.
Cass was off to the side with her camera.
The room was full of people who had given Tidemark money over the last ten years and were now being introduced to the Real Harbor People campaign in person.
Wes and Ada walked the room.
She was, again, professionally good.
She introduced him as Wes, never as my boyfriend; she had decided on the wharf that the word was unnecessary and that the photo was enough.
He followed her lead. He shook hands. He laughed at the appropriate beats.
He answered, when asked, a single question about the youth program at the rink, in his usual flat goalie voice, and watched a woman in pearls say oh, my.
He fielded one question about his career trajectory from a tall man with an opinion, and answered it in seven words. He let Ada do the rest of the talking.
At eight-thirty Marin Pell appeared at Ada’s elbow.
“Ada,” she said. “There is a man in the corner who is enormously important to me and who I am about to introduce you to. I want you to know in advance that he will ask you about your skating career, because he is a romantic of a certain age and a sponsor of two regional rinks. I will not bring up the injury. He may. If he does, you are allowed to deflect.”
“Marin.”
“Yes.”
“Thank you.”
Marin nodded once and steered them, very smoothly, toward a man in a tailored navy blazer with a head of impressive white hair and a glass of bourbon.
The man’s name was Howard. Howard sponsored two regional rinks.
Howard was, in his way, charming. Howard talked to Ada about figure skating for ten minutes.
Ada answered him in the bright, careful, generous tone she used with strangers who meant well, and Wes stood at her elbow with his hand at the small of her back — gently, light — because at minute three of the conversation she had reached for it.
He had not engineered the touch. She had reached.
He kept it there as long as she needed.
At minute eleven, when Howard turned to gesture toward another man across the room, Ada’s hand came down, briefly, and squeezed his fingers through the fabric of her dress.
It was not a public squeeze. It was small. It was the size of a thank-you.
He squeezed back.
Two seconds.
He let go.
By nine, the reception was winding down.
Marin gathered them at the door. Cass took two final candids in the lobby of the hotel.
They went up in the elevator, separately.
They said goodnight from opposite sides of the door at her floor — goodnight, Berglund, goodnight, Halloran — and Wes went up to his own floor and into his own room and stood for a long time in front of the window with the curtain pushed back, looking down at the wet street and the parking garage and the harbor lights on the far side of the city.
He did not call anyone.
He did not text anyone.
He took off his suit jacket, hung it on the chair, and sat on the edge of the bed.
In the room directly below him, two floors down, Ada Halloran was taking off her dress and her boots and her lipstick and going to bed in a hotel her sponsor had paid for, and his hand was still warm where she had touched it.
He looked at his hand for a beat. He turned the light off. He went to sleep.
He had a fish sandwich for breakfast at six.
It was, as promised, the way fish sandwiches were done in 1973.