The second verse was drowned out by a string of cannon fire erupting above us—the Philharmonic’s percussion section had levitated above the park to wage audio war against Central Park South, stalwartly guarding the silver city soaring at its back. Our eyes swung high to see fireworks exploding, a netting of electric sparks thrown up to the moon then sailing back down to dissolve into black.
“Is this for real?” I asked, unable to resist poking fun at the unabashed schmaltz of it all.
“It better be,” he whispered back and put a lid on my sarcasm by pulling me close and kissing me—the simplest way a man can, in the matter of a heartbeat, shut a girl up and crack the world in half before her eyes. “You’re going to hate to hear me say this, but moonlight really becomes you, M.” He tucked unruly strands of my bob neatly behind my ears, and with that the last of me was won over.
“Suddenly Love becomes everything, huh?” I teased Jeremy, blinking myself out of my daydream.
“Everything,” he repeated, steadfastly. I still thought it was a dangerous business—relinquishing control and letting emotions, letting the hopes you built up in someone else, toss you around like a rag doll with no guarantee you’d be better for it in the end.
“Has it ever occurred to you that maybe, just maybe, not everything is an epic Love Story, Jeremy?”
My question, intended to playfully antagonize him, quietly bowled him over. As he opened his mouth to reply, like a faithfully timed cue, there was a continuous sputter of an engine somewhere far above us. We both craned our necks to peer through the limestone forest of downtown spires, spotting a small propeller plane above the Hudson River that towed a fluttering, all-caps banner in its wake:
KELLY FROM INFINITY AND BEYOND I LOVE YOU NATHAN
“Isn’t it, though?” Jeremy asked me back, inhaling deeply.
The plane banked to the right over Hoboken to repeat its purposeful loop and Jeremy looked up to it gratefully. I guessed that the little plane would keep flying—keep circling, even if the banner waved itself ragged or the plane had to stop to refuel or one of the propellers malfunctioned—until Kelly fully comprehended the cosmic scale of Nathan’s Love for her. Jeremy’s thoughts of multiple carats and nosebleed seats and twenty-dollar cocktails had, for a brief stretch, depleted him. But the sight of that little plane and its soppy message restored the warmth in his brown eyes. I silently cursed the plane and Nathan, wherever the idiot was, for doing this to Jeremy. It took so little to reinspire him. And now it was stamped plainly across his face as he kept his eyes trained upward on the gentle flap of that airborne banner: whether it was written backward, forward, inside out, penciled on the back of a Victorian calling card, traced in the sand of a Montauk beach, cranked out in the fuzz of a gramophone’s melody, or flashed across the sky with firecrackers, life, Jeremy Kirby would insist, was nothing but a Love Story through and through.
* * *
Dinner was a disaster. My original plan had been to jump off the subway at Union Square and duck into the colossal organic grocery store at the top of the stairs to pick up the last ingredients I needed to make my mother’s shepherd’s pie recipe. But the session at O’Hara’s—and all of Jeremy’s adamant talk of Love becoming everything—had me in a daze and I inadvertently stayed with him all the way up to Grand Central. As another totally unhelpful validation of Jeremy’s romantically distorted life philosophy, a busker in a fedora swayed back and forth in our carriage, crooning out Sam Cooke’s “All the Way” with such raspy intensity I thought his heart might burst out of his chest and splatter onto the filth of the subway floor at our feet. I was inside my apartment door dropping my deal bag onto my couch by the time I realized I had no vegetables for dinner.
“Mom?” I called into my BlackBerry, frantically scanning the contents of my empty freezer in the hopes of a rogue packet of peas hurling itself in my direction.
“Hello, dear! I was just thinking of you!”
“How essential are the carrots in your shepherd’s pie?”
“I had no idea my recipes were of interest to you!” she trilled. I wagered that she had been waiting most of my adult life for this phone call and was probably close to bursting into tears of happiness. So was I—only mine were tears of distress.
“The carrots, Mom?”
“Well,” she considered, carefully, “I’d say all of the vegetables are equally important. The carrots, the peas, the corn…”
“And what if I have none of the vegetables?”
“No vegetables!” she laughed, almost with affront. “In that case, button, I’m afraid you don’t have a shepherd’s pie.” I issued a cry of anguish and fumbled to end the call as my mother rushed to add: “Don’t panic, if it’s really an emergency I’m sure Belle can—”
After twenty minutes of wrestling with a potato masher and sautéed ground beef and a casserole dish, I cranked my oven to the highest setting and threw the monstrosity onto the top rack.
It wasn’t until I had changed into a pair of cords and heard Scott’s friendly triple rap on my door that I smelled the burning.
“Just a minute!” I yelled, flying into the kitchen and flinging open the oven to see a layer of flames quietly lapping across the surface of my sorry excuse for a shepherd’s pie. I tamped down the fire with a dishcloth before the alarm could rupture our eardrums then raced toward the front door to let Scott in.
“I sincerely hope you’re not looking for a sporty version of the Barefoot Contessa,” I said, blushing, opening the door in my ash-and-mashed-potato-streaked apron. He stood in front of me in his tortoiseshell glasses looking like a picture of handsome and relaxed proficiency. “Because that would mean I’m not the girl for you. Dinner isn’t ready. Won’t be ready.”
“What’s still left to do? Let me help!” Scott stepped through the door, handed me a bottle of burgundy, and started rolling up his shirtsleeves, pitching himself at a capable angle toward my kitchen.
“No.” I stopped him, pulling him back by his right sleeve. “Please don’t.”
“Why?”
“There was a small fire.”
“A fire?”
“That’s right. My shepherd’s pie caught on fire. I’d rather you not see.”
“Awww, M.,” he teased, glancing down at my apron and dish towel, the latter badly pockmarked with a scattering of burn holes. “Look at the upside. It’s a bit of a relief for me to see you’re not perfect at everything.” I flicked him with the towel and he reached over to smooth a thumb across my forehead. “The mashed potato you have on your face helps drive home the point.”
I activated my contingency plan. Fifteen minutes later, we were at the threshold of The Vanderbilt—always my faithful safety net. Shuffling through the revolving door behind Scott, I snuck a covert peek at my BlackBerry and saw I’d received another missed call and voice mail from Michael Gilbert at Bridges Capital.
“Now that’s the smile I would have gotten earlier if your pie hadn’t caught on fire,” Scott observed as I stepped into the lobby beside him, nodding hello to the concierge.
“Oh, it’s nothing. Just about the job at that investment firm I told you about,” I explained, shyly. “They’re being persistent about meeting with me.”
“They should be. You’re an attractive commodity.”
“I’ve never been called a commodity before but I think you’re paying me a compliment?”
“I’m definitely not calling you crude oil. Are you going to meet with them?”
“Yes, I think so.…” I paused. “You know it’s really nice to feel wanted.” I couldn’t help but glow, as he circled an arm around me and we crossed the lobby toward the main staircase. The truth was I hadn’t felt wanted—or valued—in a professional or personal sense since moving to New York and joining The Brothers. Until I met Scott, that is. I was supposed to feel wide-eyed and reverent about my city and my firm, constantly reminded that they had granted me entry through their gleaming gates and I should feel grateful that they, after
careful consideration, continued to let me stay. I didn’t want to be just allowed to stay anymore. I wanted to be welcomed, maybe even with open arms. Just like Scott’s arm—enough pressure to know he was there and engaged without being too burdensome.
“Oh right, I’m sure feeling wanted has always been a real issue for you,” Scott ribbed, narrowing doubting eyes in my direction. We stopped and faced each other on the landing halfway up the staircase.
“It has!” I cried, my throat tightening as I realized how much he had to learn about the complexities of my heart, how much I had to learn about his, and how little I knew about where everything was heading in my life.
We climbed another flight and took a table in a corner of the Grill Room, ordering standard red Bloody Marys and club sandwiches on wheat.
“I’m not making excuses about dinner but I’ve been a bit preoccupied,” I admitted. I assumed full responsibility for the pie-on-fire fiasco but with Jeremy’s confession at O’Hara’s and the raspy Sam Cooke subway serenade still ringing in my ears I had hardly brought my A-game into the kitchen.
“I know it’s tough to balance a job search with working at The Brothers. They won’t make it easy for you.”
“It’s not that,” I said. “Jeremy and I had a long talk after work.” Scott’s neck seemed to kink and I watched him stretch it to the left then backward to scan the bar for a sign of our drinks. “Things between him and Belle are getting serious—he told her that he loves her and she said she loves him back.”
“And that’s a good thing, right?” Scott ventured, stretching his neck to the left again and righting it when our Bloodies appeared at the table.
“That’s the part I’m confused about. I thought it would be. I thought it was everything he wanted in the world. But he’s convinced that who he is and what he can give her isn’t enough. That not being a Breckenridge with an annual invite to the Mayflower Ball makes him inadequate, and it’s only a matter of time before Belle figures that out. It’s ridiculous. Is your neck okay?”
“Yes, it’s fine. You know, it would be tough for anyone to compete with Chase’s muscle mass,” Scott joked, grinding generous amounts of pepper into his cocktail. “Like we’ve said, the guy is huge. And by huge, I mean…”
“Cut it out, this is serious,” I chided him, taking the pepper grinder out of his hands and setting it down on the table between us. “They’ve built a ludicrous little world for themselves—playing the Victrola and dancing on the furniture and chasing after cupcakes.… I just don’t see how it could be sustainable. Maybe Jeremy is right.”
“He often seems to be.”
Our sandwiches arrived, holding little interest for either of us.
“I mean, I’m not sure they can even tell what’s real and what they’ve invented anymore. You of all people know it’s nothing new for Belle—she’s been blurring fantasy and reality ever since she launched La Belle Vie. When she lost her parents her defense strategy was to turn her life into that blog—her own perfect movie set. But she’s taking it too far. She thinks she’s being filmed, for God’s sake.”
“Well, maybe Jeremy likes being on camera, too,” he clipped back. “He seems to get a decent amount of attention.”
“Jeremy? Not a chance!”
Scott’s eyebrows shifted into startled angles.
“The last place he wants to be is center stage. He wants to be behind the scenes. Loving her. Doing whatever he can to put her name in lights. The problem is Belle isn’t just starring in the movie, she’s directing it. And meanwhile, Jeremy is so damn earnest about it all. He can be so naïve but that’s part of what makes him so wonderful.”
“It sounds like Jeremy may be skating on thin ice,” Scott commented, setting his jaw and reaching back over for the pepper grinder. “Here’s the thing. At the end of the day, whatever anyone convinces themselves of is what becomes real. Belle and Jeremy’s little cupcake universe actually exists to them. So if they’re happy in it, they’ll keep living in it. Maybe you need to let them do that.”
“Sure, but doesn’t that mean both of them have to be in on the game? Both of them have to keep buying into it? What happens if one person balks?” A melancholy image of Jeremy as court jester—bright cheeked and loose limbed in a red flannel coxcomb and bells—dangled over my shoulder.
“M.…,” Scott started, and suddenly I noticed that his eyes had clouded into a stormier gray. He had barely touched his sandwich. “I know Jeremy is your best friend, and I know you and Belle go way back and that can all get very complicated. But you’ve got to let go of it—I mean let go of Jeremy—a little. Otherwise a guy is going to start wondering what the deal really is between the two of you.”
“The two of us?”
“That’s right, the two of you. People get really close when they work together in a toxic place. Seeing each other cry at the desk can do that.”
“But Jeremy and I are pals,” I offered, sounding all of six years old. “Well, it’s more than that but it’s not more than that, if that makes any sense?”
“Sure, that’s cleared everything right up,” he answered, downing the remains of his cocktail. “How about we get some air?”
He hardly waited for my nod to stand up and place his folded napkin on the table. We retreated down the main staircase together, cycling back through The Vanderbilt’s revolving front entrance in silence. It was the first time a dark shade of anything had cast itself over us and I didn’t like it in the least. My still-empty stomach had laced itself into a knot.
“Scott, I’m sorry. Scott—” He maintained his stride once we were outside on the sidewalk and I hurried up to clasp his shoulder, turning him back in my direction. “What I meant was—the only two of you is the two of us. You’re a clever guy. You must have figured that out by now.”
He shook his head in protest and then caved, sliding me into his arms and cracking an irrepressible smile.
“You sure are something, M.,” he said, eyes fondly scanning mine. “I get annoyed when I see you let things overshadow that. So don’t mind me if I get a little protective.”
Enveloped by his gaze, I took a deep, relieved breath and detected something else that was lacing the air—slightly sad and crisp … it was the earliest signpost of a changing season. While we had been inside, August’s humidity had miraculously drained from the air and, at least for the time being, the night had turned into a tingling precursor of all the best that would be born again come fall.
“Wait.” I inhaled again. “Can you smell it?”
“Smoke … fire?”
“September.”
We linked arms and slowly slalomed up one of the picturesque, chronically overlooked prewar inclines in Murray Hill, a few blocks from my apartment. The Chrysler Building—the most debonair skyscraper of them all, always dressed up in its top hat and tails—sensed the temporary key change and stretched its silver form even higher above us, a boastful arrow pointing at the heavens. Maybe I had been too preoccupied with a drama that wasn’t my own. Maybe, as absurd as it might seem to me, I needed to step back and let Jeremy live with Belle in their little cupcake world, as Scott said. But it was so damn difficult. On certain promising nights, even a girl like me wasn’t immune to the head-softening charms of the city. And if it was able to crack my shell and set me dreaming, if only temporarily, how wildly was it fueling the illusions of a Great Romantic like Jeremy? The Chrysler Building would be soaring above his nearby apartment at that very moment, too, and he might even be gazing up at it. His studio apartment had no air-conditioning so his windows would have been thrown open to greedily gulp as much fresh air as they could manage, giving him a better view of that eternally dapper tower. And far above him it would gleam on into the night, conspiring with Belle to give him all of the wrong impressions about Love and Destiny and how everything was bound to turn out for him.
I pulled my gaze down from all the flashing silver and yellow—the archetypical sky-high sheen of Midtown—and shook myself bac
k into my here and now with Scott. I needed to steady the ordinary but precious night that I had almost, without even realizing it, veered off track. We reached the front of my building and slowed to a stop, waving hello to my doorman who stood alert at his polished podium behind the glass.
“Who would you pick to play you?” I asked Scott, the Chrysler Building still reflecting in my eye as a mischievous, metallic twinkle. “If life actually was a movie, I mean. What actor would you pick to play you? Dead or alive.”
“Steve McQueen?” he considered, rubbing his chin. “You know what? Scratch McQueen. Me. My answer is me. I would want to play me.”
“I love that answer.”
“And you?”
“I’d want to be me, too, I think. No one else would get it quite right, would they?”
His eyes suddenly lit up and his freckles expanded into an exaggerated expression of discovery.
“Wait a second. Do you think we’re being filmed? You and me—right now? Right on this sidewalk?” As he tossed out the question he held the small of my back and swung me down toward the pavement in a dramatically angled kiss that channeled Rhett showing Scarlet just how badly she needed someone to smooch her right.
“No…,” I answered, woozily, resurfacing from our kiss and coming back to my senses though a faint ring of stars circled the air around my head insistently. My doorman shuffled embarrassedly behind his podium, flipping pages in search of an imaginary logbook entry. Scott helped steady me, his eyeglasses sitting off-kilter on his freckled nose as he grinned at me. It was goofy, oh it was the goofiest grin I’d ever seen, and it was pointed straight at me, and only me. “But we damn well deserve to be.”
SABERS AND HOLOGRAMS
Autumn sparked and crackled to life in New York City, channeling all of the magic and impossibility hardwired into the universe. By day, and on Saturday afternoons most of all, the city made you its grandest promises, dressed up in its fall finery—all poppies and mustards charged with the inimitable dream current of the season. By night, Manhattan’s bridges bejewelled themselves with cascading ropes of green and yellow lights slicing through the wonder of the India-inked air.
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