by Erin McRae
Eliza nodded. “I can work with that,” she said.
Cody was saying the right things, which she appreciated. Even if all publishing in Boston was academic publishing and she wanted nothing to do with it. But he was showing a willingness to have a conversation which had, until this moment, not felt guaranteed. She could wrestle with her conflicted feelings and point out the inadequacy of his solutions at another time.
CAN I HAVE FIVE MINUTES of your time? Eliza texted Harry on Monday morning as she walked to work. Given the note they’d parted on the last time they’d spoken, she wasn’t sure what Harry’s response would be. Or whether he would respond at all. That moment had been so odd.
But he did respond as she was entering the lobby of the building. Of course. Work-related or otherwise?
Otherwise, she confessed.
Unfortunately I have meetings this morning. May I come to your office at one?
Always so polite. Those perfect manners that were a hallmark of his upbringing and yet, there seemed to be such real warmth to them. Such kindness. Harry could say he’d grown up with girls like Eliza, but she had never known a man quite like Harry.
Yes. Please, she replied.
Good. I’ll see you then.
Eliza spent the rest of the morning in a meeting with Celia, author of the extreme dog-grooming books, as part of her ongoing campaign to get her on board with a mobile game tied to said books. Celia feared a digital angle on her living dog art would result in widespread internet mockery, and Eliza struggled to explain how much the internet kindly and sincerely loved kitsch without using the word.
As exasperating as the session was she was grateful for it; any work kept her from dwelling too much on her upcoming talk with Harry. At twelve fifty-eight, she looked up from her desk to see him lounging against the doorframe. He wore his winter coat, a heavy dark-blue wool affair, and a checked scarf looped around his neck.
“Can I take you to St. Pat’s for hot dogs?” he asked with a grin Eliza might describe as boyish.
She laughed in both surprise and relief. “If you want.” She matched his playful tone. “But that feels like tempting fate.” If he was going to confront her about the mess with Cody – which she was still sure he knew about, though he’d let her tell him nothing – he wasn’t going to do so now.
“Indeed. Luckily, I’ve something else in mind. If you will?” Harry said, nodding toward the hallway.
Eliza stood, closed her laptop, and reached for her coat, hanging from a hook by the door. Harry was there first, though. He held it to help her into it, every bit of the gesture that of a considerate gentleman. Never, in all the times someone had held a coat for her, had the hair on the back of her neck stood up in a pleasant frisson as it did now.
Eliza felt a bolt of guilt. She was enjoying Harry’s company in a way she didn’t Cody’s. Not right now, at least. Not with things so unsettled between them. But that was natural, she supposed. She and Cody were used to each other, and facing huge stressors – a wedding, the election, public life. There would be ups and downs. And she was working to fix things with Cody, yes. But that was currently a painful and a precarious situation that was going to need more from both of them before things were fully right again. There was no shame in feeling easier, and happier, with Harry. She needed something easy in her life right now.
Eliza pulled on her gloves and adjusted her scarf in the elevator on the way down. “All I wanted was to talk,” she said. “We don’t have to go anywhere.”
“Perhaps,” Harry said. “But I’ve been cooped up inside all day and need a break.” He looked at her sidelong in the mirrored walls of the elevator. “And I’m going to guess that you could use a break, too.”
From his tone Eliza couldn’t tell if he meant a break from her relationship troubles or from the extreme-dog-grooming game. She didn’t ask. In either case he was right.
“Where are we going?” Eliza asked when Harry took an unexpected turn down a street they hadn’t taken before on their occasional outings for coffee or lunch.
He gave her a small smile. “You’ll see.”
They walked in silence until they reached one of midtown Manhattan’s big glass buildings. Lunch crowds swarmed around them. There was little, as far as Eliza could tell, to recommend this place to anyone, much less anyone who needed a break from work and life.
Harry seemed to suspect what she was thinking. “Wait until you see it,” he said and opened the door for her. Inside was a lobby, just like any other corporate building, but Harry led her past a bank of elevators, around a corner and, suddenly, out into a lush, warm, green space.
A wintergarden, and not one Eliza had known existed. Many stories above, through the glass ceiling, she could see blue sky and the pale winter sun. Down below, trees and plants ringed a pond – complete with a waterfall – that bubbled quietly to itself.
“I didn’t even know this was here,” Eliza said.
“Good. I was hoping you didn’t.” Harry led her along the little path to a bend where one bench was tucked out of sight of the others, but still in view of the little waterfall.
Eliza sat down next to him. She should ask, perhaps, why instead of going and getting a cup of coffee like two normal human beings on a break, Harry had brought her to one of the hidden gems of New York. But that would be treading too close to the danger that always lurked around the edges with them – but wasn’t that what she wanted? The danger that came with the way she and Harry fell into each other and crashed against each other like waves?
“Why wouldn’t you talk to me on Saturday?” she asked.
Harry shook his head. “You didn’t want to talk.”
“I did,” she protested.
“You didn’t. You wanted a solution. Which I was not in the position to offer. Did you two make up?”
Eliza looked at the trees growing indoors. Above them, clouds were moving in, and the bright sunlight faded. She thought about disputing Harry’s statement. But she couldn’t. She even knew the solution she’d wanted him to suggest. At least in the few fleeting moments she’d let it float up from deep in her subconscious where it bobbed at the corner of her eye, faint in her peripheral vision, like a ship far on the horizon that disappeared whenever looked at directly.
“I didn’t tell you we fought,” she said.
“It was rather obvious.”
“I’m sorry,” Eliza said.
“Whatever for?”
She sighed. “I don’t know. Are we friends? Is anything we talk about anything we should be talking about?”
Harry looked unsettled. “We talk about books.”
“Does that mean we’re friends or we aren’t?” she pressed.
“We talk about books we don’t like. That means we’re friends.”
Only friends? Eliza wondered. She wished she were brave enough to ask the question aloud. But then where would that leave her? She’d already put so much work into keeping things solid with Cody. There was no point in overturning that boat. No matter how pleasant the faint scent of Harry’s cologne was, or how much she wanted to press her lips to the hollow of his throat.
“Cody and I did make up,” Eliza said. “For now at least. Most of a woman’s life is cajoling other people for her freedom, though.”
Harry nodded solemnly. “It’s a terrible business. And very much another reason I’ve never been married.”
“Not wanting to be nagged?”
“No. Not wanting to be anyone’s jailer.” Harry paused and then looked at her keenly. Too keenly. Eliza wanted to look away, but his gaze kept her pinned in place. “You don’t need me to tell you to advocate for your own desires,” he went on. “But whoever tells you that you have to give up your freedom to be an adult – or a woman – is lying.”
For a moment Eliza wondered if Harry was going to tell her she should break off her engagement. She wondered, too, if she wanted him to as she had for that moment on Saturday.
But Harry, unperturbed by Eliza’s i
nability to say anything, offered a far simpler suggestion. “I believe we passed a coffee shop on the way here. May I get you something?”
It would have been easier, Eliza thought, as Harry left with a promise to return quickly, if he had come out and told her not to marry Cody. If he had made some proposition or offer instead. Then she could have yelled at him and stormed away. And there would be no reason to come back and make amends, to fold herself up again until she fit into the mold her mother and her husband-to-be had made for her. She could simply be quit of Harry.
There would be freedom in that, to be sure. She would be gone from this job next fall and none of it would matter at all.
But Harry had said nothing of the sort, just brought her somewhere lovely – and been lovely – and then left her alone in peace with her own thoughts. Which made everything more complicated.
Chapter 8
In Countries of Exile
Harry
STEVEN’S MEMORIAL SERVICE was in Connecticut in the first week of February, two days before Harry had to leave for Vienna to re-tackle his mess of a book. The Manuscript Miscreants spent the night before the service in a hotel bar drinking to Steven’s memory and re-telling all the stories they had told at Christmas, when he had been alive and talk of his death had merely been a joke in bad taste. Harry was mostly silent; he felt too old and too tired. Besides, Dennis could tell most of the stories he could as well, if not better. He retreated to his hotel room early to be alone with his thoughts, but lay in bed in the dark for a long time, wondering if he should be using his time better. On his manuscript. Or on any work at all.
Certainly, not on continuing to think about Eliza, which he really needed to stop doing. As much as he would have enjoyed having her here, she had better things to do than the emotional labor of attending to an old, sad man.
The memorial the next morning itself was subdued, if not downright dismal. Once it was over Harry could remember nothing of it except the sight of Mallory in profile, her face too pale and her dark hair making the shadows under her eyes more evident. There was a luncheon after for family and friends, but the Manuscript Miscreants slipped away in twos and threes. Harry said the goodbyes he couldn’t avoid and escaped back to his hotel room, this time with Meryl.
“Connecticut in February,” he said as he sank down into one of the armchairs by the window, “is the most miserable place on earth.”
Meryl sat down in the other armchair, leaning her cane against the side of it. She didn’t dignify Harry’s statement with a response, and he was well aware it didn’t deserve one. They sat in silence for a long time, his eyes tracing over patterns in the wallpaper. As much as he wanted to be in his own home, he was glad he’d taken the room for tonight as well. The idea of having to get himself packed and to the train station today was utterly intolerable. Even if he was going to get home tomorrow afternoon and then have to leave for the airport, and Vienna, that same evening.
Gradually Harry shifted his gaze to Meryl. She was watching him now far more than she was looking out the window at the parking lot, thinly dusted with snow.
“How’s your move coming?” Harry asked in a strained attempt to break the silence.
“Well enough.” She shifted in her chair. “Finding an apartment in New York is a nightmare. Especially from afar.”
“Stay at my place,” Harry said impulsively.
Meryl raised an eyebrow.
“Not – while I’m there,” he hastened to add. “I’m leaving tomorrow for Vienna, and I’ll be gone for a week. If it works for your schedule, I’ll give you a key now and you can use that as your base.”
“I appreciate it,” Meryl said. “Really, I do. But I’ve never intruded on your hospitality like that before, and I’m not going to start now.”
Harry allowed that with a bow of his head. He was relieved they had both gone through the motions, but uncertain how he felt about the outcome.
“Now, I’m going to ask you something,” Meryl said.
“What’s that?”
“Why haven’t we fucked?”
“Excuse me,” Harry spluttered. “We don’t always sleep together. Also, we’re not on holiday.”
“No, but we are at Steven’s funeral. I have no expectations that have been disappointed, mind, but I am surprised. I thought you’d want some comfort. So my question is this, Harry. Have we not fucked because we’re too close to New York and because my move makes everything too awkward, or have we not fucked because there’s someone else?”
“There being someone else has never stopped me sleeping with you before,” Harry deflected with something like panic. He was well aware of his own feelings for Eliza, but he didn’t know how to discuss them with someone else. Even Meryl.
“Is it the girl you work with? Is she still engaged?”
“She is,” Harry said, answering one question without answering the other. “I’m not sure for how long.”
Meryl gasped. She turned towards him, eager. “What have you done?”
“Nothing. And I’m going to continue to do nothing” Harry said, “Sometimes, people’s lives fall apart without outside help.”
VIENNA, HARRY MUSED forty-eight hours later as he took the CAT from the airport into the city, was either the very best place to have a midlife crisis, or the very worst. It was, on its surface, a quiet, serious city, with more opportunities to experience classical music than to get into any sort of decadent trouble. But the people who thought that didn’t know much about classical music or the multi-course, multi-bottle, and multi-hour dinners that sprawled out across the city’s restaurants.
When Harry had first come to Vienna, as a man less than half his current age, he had thought it a city keeping secrets. But over time he had learned to think of it merely as a city without shame, and that it had no need to flaunt the pleasures it so readily offered.
He’d chosen a B&B in Margareten, in part because ball season made hotel rooms somewhat difficult to come by on short notice, and also because he thought human contact beyond subdued and impersonal-by-design service might do him well. He could have rented an apartment, but on this trip he felt no interest in cooking for himself. Vienna’s food culture, with its celebration of game meats and rich stews infused with the flavors of both east and west, was made for this time of year.
The streets, as he wandered them, were full of the debutantes and their escorts who had descended on the city. They came from the rest of Austria, from the broader German-speaking world, from the expanse of the European continent and beyond. They hustled through the city like thick patches of clouds, the young women in white dresses, the men in their tails, their rosy cheeks a testament to the weather as much as the embarrassment, no matter how coveted, of entering society. Harry wondered if Eliza had been a debutante and how significant her debut had been. Had it been a purely Bostonian affair, or had she made it to the International Debutante Ball hosted traditionally at the Waldorf? Harry was sure he could look it up, but he was also sure he didn’t want to.
He’d attend a ball later in the week – it was something people who read travel books cared about – but right now he had no idea how he’d find something to say about that, or anything else, that wasn’t about her.
LATE THE NEXT MORNING, after he’d spent hours typing and deleting useless words on his computer, Harry shoved himself back from his desk at the B&B and stared at his keyboard in consternation. He was supposed to be fixing his book, which was supposed to be about the glamor and enjoyableness of Vienna. He was not supposed to be obsessing over his word count and watching the minutes tick by on the clock. He needed to get out of his room.
His stopped at the Naschmarkt, because there was no point to being in Vienna without indulging in very good snacks. Hopefully, an excess of sugar and carbs would combat the jetlag he was already feeling. It was one of his favorite places in Vienna, the perfect example of the blend of East and West, youth and age.
To his own dismay, as he perused dried sugar frui
ts and a thousand types of peppers stuffed with sweet, soft cheese, he kept looking over his shoulder as if he expected someone to be there.
Someone. He mocked himself. He was looking for an Eliza.
He couldn’t shake the feeling as he cut through Resselpark, passing students and tourists enjoying a rare moment of winter sun on the broad, shallow steps of Karlskirche. It would have been so natural to sit there with Eliza, sharing coffee and pastry from the market.
Harry cursed. It had been foolish enough, not to mention self-indulgent, to bring her to the wintergarden in New York. He didn’t need to populate this place with his fantasies of her as well. So he pushed on.
He stood in Stephanzplatz looking up at the cathedral. Making a visit to a church that shared the name of his recently dead friend was possibly a mistake. Steven, if he were alive, would not have the slightest bit of patience for Harry’s moroseness on that front.
He caught the last tour down to the catacombs, which was definitely a mistake. All Harry needed, when he was feeling old and tired, was to be led through tunnels and caverns full of bones. Ordinarily, it would have fascinated him, but today it felt gruesome.
When his group emerged from under the ground, they and the other tourists were being shooed out of the Cathedral in preparation for evening mass, but Harry dodged the docents and found himself a seat in the last pew. Maybe the moment would make a good passage in his book. As he sat here, he thought of Eliza and the day Steven died when they’d sat in St. Patrick’s Cathedral together, hiding their smuggled lunches.
Eliza
WITH HARRY IN VIENNA, Eliza was left at loose ends. She had plenty of work to do, and a million things to deal with in her personal life, but the city was dreary without him. Even if the sun had finally come out within a day of his departure.