by Holley Trent
“Just tell me where,” he said. “I suppose the cash spends the same no matter what time of day it is.”
Everley lifted her head at a stop around ten blocks down the line and angled her way through the throng.
He followed, deciding that he could probably switch trains there for a more direct trip, anyway. And he wanted to make sure she got home without issues.
She climbed up to street level, paused at the sidewalk as if to get her bearings, and scurried across the intersection before the light could change.
He was hot on her heels, thinking he might actually break a sweat for the first time in months.
Approaching a bored-looking hot dog vendor she pointed to a typical Coney Island dog and shoved her hands into her coat pockets.
He realized then that street meat was her idea of dinner.
“Seriously?” Raleigh asked. “When you said cheap date, I assumed you meant you want to eat at someplace with walls and a door.”
“It’s comfort food. I wasn’t allowed to have them when I was a kid.”
“Why not?” He ordered two of the same.
“My mother thinks the eating of them looks rude.” She snorted and said in an undertone, “If only she knew what other sorts of things I’ve had in my mouth.”
Then she seemed to realize what she’d said. She turned on her heel toward him, wide eyed. “I...”
He waved off the concern. “When I was twenty and in college, my mother decided to do a surprise visit to me on campus. I’d naively left my door unlocked, because I had a private room and no one ever barged in.”
The vendor held out his bag and a couple of drinks.
Raleigh paid him and got out of the way of the next hungry New Yorker. “Caught me on my knees. Wasn’t my most shining moment.”
“On your knees...you were...”
“At that moment, I was pondering whether it was better to receive than to give, to be honest.” If Everley thought he’d be ashamed to make such a confession, she obviously hadn’t read many gossip blogs in the last decade. They’d all portrayed him as some kind of raging pansexual nymphomaniac, which was only partially true. “And why aren’t you wearing gloves? It’s like fifteen degrees with the wind chill.”
Furrowing her brow, she looked down at her bare hands. “I must have left them in my office. I thought I had them this morning.”
“Are they not in your pockets?”
“No. Just my keys.”
“You ought to keep them in your pockets when you’re not wearing them.”
“I’ll keep that in mind.”
They walked in silence until the next corner. Then she stopped, holding her uneaten hot dog against her chest. “I live down that way. You don’t have to walk the rest. I’m sure you want to get home before it’s pitch black out.”
“How far?”
She pointed to the building across the street in the middle. “Just there.”
He nodded. “Good location.”
“Good real estate agent.”
“Enjoy your dinner, then. I’ll see you in the new year, ready to tackle whole new projects, hmm?”
She grimaced but slowly salvaged expression into a quavering smile. “Yeah. None of yours, though. I promise.”
He laughed. He believed her.
Waiting, he watched her cross the street and greet the doorman as she approached her building. Then he hurried back to the subway, eager to get back into the subterranean warmth.
The warmth didn’t last long, though, because he hated walking away from things he’d left undone. He didn’t want to care about Everley Shannon any more than necessary, but Stacia was right that there was something off about her smile. It didn’t cost him anything to ask if she was okay. Sometimes that was all people needed. He’d certainly had his fair share of asks.
Everley was waiting in front of the elevators when he arrived in the lobby. He gestured to the guard at the desk, indicating whom he sought.
She started at the sight of him beside her.
“You’re not okay, are you?” he asked.
“I...”
The doors opened. After a moment’s hesitation, she stepped into the elevator and he followed at her beckoning.
“Miss Shannon?” the guard called out, standing.
“It’s fine,” she told him. “I know him.”
He nodded.
After pressing the button for forty, she watched the floor counter tick up, up, up, and Raleigh let her have her silence. They were passing fourteen before she said anything. “Work is stressful, Raleigh.”
“I agree, but for me, it tends to be good stress.”
She managed to put on a crooked grin. “Unless I’m involved, right?”
“Do you want to talk some more about that?”
“No.”
The car stopped at her floor. She went out and right, reaching into the coat pocket that jangled.
“Quiet building,” he said.
“Yeah. People pay a lot for quiet. I thought that was what I wanted.”
“It’s not?”
She slid a key into the lock of 4022 and shook her head. “I think that’s why I adored Bruce so much. He came with sound.”
Past tense. Adored. Came.
Raleigh held his tongue on what he really wanted to say about certain rock stars and their noises and their irresistible passion, and instead asked, “What did he want from you?”
She popped the sticking door open with her hip and turned on the light.
“Well, he wanted company,” she said, gesturing him in.
He stepped over the threshold and closed the door. “Wanted?”
“He had to go and so we let things come to a natural end.”
“Go where? Back to LA? I’m certain he’ll be around plenty around the time the band’s film launches at the festivals.”
“No. Overseas. He...had some business things to deal with that would require him to put down stakes in South Africa for a while. Also, he’s been semi-estranged from his family for a long time and he was either going to fix it or make it worse. He wasn’t quite sure. I think he was tired of being neither here nor there with them.”
“Fascinating,” Raleigh murmured. He didn’t know much about Bruce’s nonpublic life, and since the Athena deal had been purposefully avoiding any discussion of it. He didn’t want to care, but he was too curious a creature not to. “So, you didn’t talk about books or anything?”
She flicked off her heels and shrugged as she peeled back the paper on her hot dog. “I counseled him that his prose is weak and that he was far more powerful as a songwriter. I didn’t want to hurt his feelings, but I didn’t understand why he would want to shift gears when he was so obviously brilliant in what he was doing before. He didn’t think people were listening to what he was saying, though. I suppose I can understand that. People only hear what they want to sometimes.”
It was Raleigh’s turn to grimace. He knew he was guilty of that, too.
“Well,” he said, as gently as he could. “I’m sorry you broke up. Rebound sex usually improves my outlook.”
“Are you offering it?”
“No.”
He couldn’t tell if she’d been joking with the question or if he’d been by offering the suggestion in the first place.
Both, maybe.
She evidently didn’t feel any embarrassment over the exchange, and he respected that because he certainly didn’t, either. She continued down the hall and turned on another light at the end of it. “Do you want a plate, Raleigh?”
“If you don’t mind.”
She handed him a dish in the kitchen.
He set the sloppy dogs on it and planned a consumption strategy. “I really shouldn’t eat them. Red sauce doesn’t play nice with my teeth whitening treatments.”
&
nbsp; “Ah, that explains it. The editorial staff is always murmuring about your teeth.”
“Amongst other things, I’m sure.”
She didn’t take the bait.
Smart girl.
He laughed. “I splurged. It became an obsession.”
“Kind of like eyebrow threading. You have to maintain the look.”
“It’s the era of Instagram. You’ve always got to be selfie ready. People like to see faces, not that they see much of mine lately. I had to lock down my account to keep the political spies out of my business, such that it is.”
“I’m sorry you have to do that. I don’t even know the password to my personal account anymore. I’ve been so busy comanaging the Athena one that I don’t bother to update my own.”
“Social media blasphemy.”
She put up her hands and breathed out a strained laugh. “When I have a life beyond the walls of Athena, I’ll post some pictures of it.”
“You can’t seriously tell me that you never do anything outside of work. Vacations?”
“My friend can’t take time off to go with me.”
“Day trips?”
“Same.”
“Hobbies?”
“Mine aren’t Instagrammable.”
“What are they?”
“What are yours?” she returned.
“I’m pretty sure this interrogation was supposed to be focused on you.”
“Can’t stand the heat?”
He laughed. He hadn’t realized how much he missed verbally sparring with people since Stacia had retreated into her Valliere love cave. “Sweetheart, I’m an open book.”
Everley snorted—a precise, practiced sound suggestive of the private school nuisance she must have been. Just like him. “Then tell me.”
“Travel,” he confessed.
“Alone?”
“Usually. Also, DIY.”
“Of?”
“Furniture and things of that sort. I get impatient with searching. If I can’t find what I want in a store, I customize.” Stacia always teased him about his predilection for elevating junky antiques when West Elm was right there for him to walk into. Everley didn’t laugh, though. She made a little “hmm” sound and nodded in a gesture of familiarity. He shouldn’t have been surprised. Her building may have been modern, but beyond her new-looking sofas, nothing about her apartment hinted at catalogue chic. “One day, I’ll have a garage to confine all that wood dust and the sandpaper bits to.”
“What else? Obviously not politics.”
It was his turn to snort. “Living is political and having opinions is healthy. I’m more of an advocate than an activist, however. I don’t have my father’s aspirations or want of power.”
“Neither do I.”
Raleigh pressed his lips together tightly the way his mother had taught him when he was nine. Back then, he’d lacked the tact to allow people to lie in peace. “That’s not true,” would tumble out of his mouth, much to his parents’ shame, and his father would tell him in very precise terms what Raleigh had ruined by speaking.
He wasn’t in the mood to press on the issue. They were having a productive conversation, and he wasn’t especially eager to end it just yet. Perhaps like Everley, he was in want of noise, and hers was pleasant.
“I don’t do much.” Everley nudged toppings back on her hot dog. “I read, sometimes.”
“Oh?”
“Mostly magazines. The big glossy ones about organization and living your best life. It’s competency porn, I suppose. Right now, there really isn’t much else, except for Stacia’s books because I trust her endings won’t be shit. I don’t have the concentration for anything else.”
Brave of her to admit that.
Perhaps that was one thing she didn’t feel compelled to inflate or impress with. That was what human beings did. They made their interests seem grander than the mundane boringness they really were. They made themselves sound like connoisseurs when at best they were dilettantes and dabblers. No one ever admitted they didn’t have the capacity to master a hobby.
Her honesty moved her up a few ticks higher on his mental scale of regard—to just below the “We could be friends, but,” level. Most people didn’t make it that far.
“Has it always been like that?” he asked. “The shitty concentration, I mean.”
“No.” She gave up on the hot dog. A bit more than half remained on the paper wrapping. She stared at it.
He said nothing. He wasn’t going to hector her about her consumptive habits. And besides, the things were massive. Maybe finishing an oversize meal was something else she didn’t feel the need to perform.
“I used to quilt. I know it...sounds odd and old-fashioned, but it appealed to the numbers part of my brain. The counting. The orderly repetition. I liked devising new patterns and figuring out how much fabric I needed to buy and how many pieces I needed to cut. My friend Lisa used to complain that my serger replaced my need for socialization, but she adapted.” Everley let out a dry laugh. “She has a key to this place. I gave it to her in case of emergency, but she used to come over when I’d go into my fabric cave for too long and she’d stand right next to my work desk, pour me a glass of wine, and then unload on me all the crap she’d endured during the week. Usually, she’d bring her own project. We’d sit there, sometimes quiet for hours, working out craft problems. It wasn’t glamorous, but I miss it.” She shrugged. “She’s too busy, anyway. She’s renovating an old summer camp upstate and trying to turn it into a viable business.”
“A new camp?”
“No. It’s hard to explain. I’m sure she’d love to tell you all about it if you can get her to slow down.”
“I see.” He was actually hungry, so he finished what was left of his dinner and disposed of the wrappers. The craft addiction cranked her up a little higher on the scale. She knew how to make things. He liked makers.
Everley cowered in the doorway between kitchen and living room, looking at him but not. Out of it again.
Whatever was eating away at her was heavy and chilidogs were only going to preoccupy her for so long.
He washed his hands and scoured his brain for something provocative to say. If she were like him, she’d probably feel better when she was arguing. “You know, I wouldn’t have sex with you, anyway.”
Her gaze snapped into focus.
A-ha.
Somehow, he managed to keep his expression still. “Intimacy with coworkers almost always leads to that unfortunate scenario of excrement meeting fan blades. The one notable exception I can think of,” he said, tapping his chin, “is Steve Martinelli and Eugenia Fisher.”
Everley’s slow headshake indicated she didn’t follow, but he imagined she wouldn’t. Their story had happened before Tom Shannon had shouldered Everley into Publicity Row. “Those people who write those cozy mysteries set in Florida?”
“Yes, the ones with the reptile puns as titles. They weren’t always cowriters. They were muddling along in their respective solo careers until they met at a conference. The details are scant, as you might understand, but apparently the two were so exhausted after a long day of events that Eugenia had followed Steve to his room. They’d both undressed, got into bed, said goodnight, and went to sleep thinking nothing of it. Apparently, they’d both recently been through breakups of long-term relationships.”
“Ah. I’m sure we’ve all done embarrassing things while in breakup fog.”
“I certainly have. Perhaps one day, I’ll tell you about what I did when I was thirty.” He needed to look up the statutes of limitations on a couple of petty crimes first. “Anyhow, you can imagine how startled they were in the morning when they got their wits back about them.”
“Apparently not so startled if they’re writing books together.”
“They can’t keep their hands off each other.�
� Raleigh gave his upper lip an exaggerated curl. “It’s disgusting.”
“You’re such a villain. You know that?” Her laughter pealed down the hall as she disappeared from view.
“I’m aware, dear,” he murmured, straining to catch the last of her throaty chuckles as they tapered off.
Her laugh was the closest thing he’d ever heard that could qualify as what his very evangelical grandmothers would have called a “joyful noise.” It was bold and a little brash, but honest.
Real.
The scale clicked upward to a hair beneath “but,” and the rush he got from hearing her laugh made him edge farther into the apartment, seeking her out.
“There’s no danger of us writing books together,” Everley said from some tucked away place. “I don’t think you’re creative enough.”
“Excuse me?”
“You are almost certainly the type of man who starches his underwear. You’d get boxed in. I need room to play.”
He found her at the very back of the apartment in her bedroom. At the dresser by the door, she rolled up the hose she’d evidently just removed.
That should have been his cue to leave, but he also should have went straight back to the subway after seeing her home and he hadn’t done that, either. She’d morphed from a project to an item of intrigue, and there were still so many of her layers to peel back.
“I don’t iron my underwear, much less starch it.”
Her resulting expression was a purest impersonation of a “Sure thing, Jan” meme that he’d ever seen in real life.
“Then you probably hire someone to do it for you.” She bumped the drawer closed with her hip.
“On my salary?” He scoffed. “But I suppose the salary doesn’t matter to you.”
He couldn’t help himself. He’d freed the truth dragon from its cave, and dragons rarely returned to confinement once they were out. “You probably don’t even notice the infusion of funds into your checking account, do you? You’re not there for the check. You’re there for the bigger prize.”
“Why do you insist on making assumptions about me?” She’d taken on that lifeless tone again. There was no laughter in it.