After about half an hour, she found herself in front of the gym. She walked in in time to see Elliot just finishing up his cardio on the StairMaster. Once he caught sight of her, he became instantly concerned.
“What have you done? You’re supposed to take your clothes off before you shower.” He led her over to one of the leather banquettes and helped her out of her sodden raincoat. “You’re wet right through,” he said, and fussed for a few minutes with towels. When Kate’s wet hair had been wrapped in a turban and the towel hugged her neck, Elliot was ready for conversation.
“I broke up with Michael,” Kate said.
“Good.” Elliot nodded, then put his arm around her. “It was only a matter of time. And this saves you a ticket to Austin, which you can spend on a share in our house this summer.”
Kate, who had expected more surprise and a lot more sympathy, shook her head. “I don’t think being the only woman in a house full of gay men in Cherry Grove would be the thing for me right now.”
“Oh, come on. You’d have more fun than you would with any of your straight boyfriends. When did Michael ever make you laugh the way Brice does? When did Steven ever make you laugh?” Elliot stopped and stared at her so intently that she knew she was in trouble. He leaned forward, his elbows on his knees, his nose an inch away from hers. “You’re not still going to meet up with Steven, are you?”
And, of course, Kate was.
Chapter Thirty-two
Kate expected nothing from the meeting with Steven the next afternoon, but her pride made her primp. She was vain enough to want to look her best, and she put on extra mascara and French-braided her hair. Steven had always liked it like that.
As she was leaving her apartment and pulling the door shut behind her, she stopped, gazing out into space, remembering too vividly the last time she’d seen Steven and the way they had parted at this door.
“Forget something?” Max asked from behind her.
Startled, she spun around. “Oh, no, just thinking is all. What’s up with you lately?”
“Not much. How about you?” He lounged against the wall.
Now was not the time to explain what she was doing or going to do, and Max certainly wasn’t the person she should confide in. “I’m actually going to be late for a meeting,” she said, and tried to step by him. Max wasn’t exactly a nuisance: He was a nice guy, but she didn’t have time for him.
But he wouldn’t let her go. He reached out and touched her arm. Again, she was startled. “I’ve heard from Jack again,” he said, and shifted from foot to foot. “Or should I say, I’ve gotten e-mails. He sent me more pictures.”
Kate sighed. It was bad news that didn’t have to be shared.
As if he could read her mind, Max looked away and said, “I still don’t think I should show them to Bina.”
“Absolutely not,” Kate told him. “You know she’s pretty tight with Billy now, and I don’t want her to get upset about Jack again.”
“Billy? Who’s Billy?” Max asked, his forehead wrinkled.
“Oh, that’s a long story you don’t have the time to—”
“I’ll listen. Try me. I’ve got the time.” He sounded more anxious than casual.
God, he was such a gossip! “Unfortunately, I don’t,” Kate told him. “I’m going to be late.” She made her way to the stairs at the end of the hall, then looked back to see Max sliding down the wall to sit on the floor. Since when was Max so compassionate about her friends? Sure, Jack was his cousin and he might feel some responsibility for Bina, but not to this extent.
“You know, I worry about Bina,” Max said. “I need to talk to Jack.”
“No, you don’t,” Kate called to him as she ran down the stairs. “Leave well enough alone.”
Steven looked terrific. Well, Kate reflected, Steven had always looked terrific to her. As he stood up, his length unfolded, reminding Kate of one of those hinged yardsticks. He smiled, and his smile broke the parentheses, the lines on each side of his mouth that looked so attractive on men.
“Hi,” he said. “What can I get you?”
Kate was glad she hadn’t committed to dinner. Though he lived in the East Village, Kate had selected the Starbucks near her apartment. It was safe: Steven wouldn’t expect her to have a meal with him, and Elliot never frequented that place. Steven had what looked like a very large caffè latte in front of him, half of it gone. He must have arrived early. “An iced tea,” she said in answer to his question, and took the seat across from him at his tiny table in the corner. He nodded and was at the counter in a moment. It gave Kate a chance to smooth her hair and look at him from behind.
He was still long and lean—at six feet three it was easy to be long, but perhaps he wasn’t quite as thin as he had been. His hair, however, was still as beautiful: a thick black waterfall that gleamed like a crow’s wing. Kate remembered too vividly how she had loved to stroke his hair. He turned and came back to her, the iced tea and a paper plate of biscotti in his hands. They were the anise ones that she liked. She was touched and surprised that he remembered, but when he picked one up himself, she thought that perhaps he’d gotten them for himself.
It was the time of day when few people dropped in for coffee: after the rush that followed lunch, but before the rush that followed dinner. No clients lingered except for the inevitable madman writing in something that looked like a journal and an older gentleman—obviously—who sat in a plush chair near the window, reading a rumpled copy of The New York Times in the waning afternoon light.
She took a sip of her tea and they sat for a moment in silence. Kate had promised herself that she wasn’t going to do much talking. She felt him looking at her and returned his gaze passively.
“You look terrific,” he said.
Kate smiled and hoped the smile was what art historians and novelists called “enigmatic.” “I’m glad you could meet me,” he added. He paused, but Kate maintained her silence. “Well, enough about you,” Steven said, “how do I look?”
“I think you’ve grown,” Kate said, tongue-in-cheek. “Do men have growth spurts?”
“Sure, but only emotional ones. And it’s pretty rare.” He stopped smiling, and his face took on the lean and hungry look that Kate remembered from their lovemaking and his talk about his ambitions. He wore it, she knew, when he wanted things. But she remained silent, waiting to hear what it was that he wanted now.
“Kate, do you ever think about how it was . . . I mean, how it was between us?”
She was grateful that Elliot wasn’t there to smack his forehead and whine about the months she had relived every detail of her time with Steven. “I’ve been busy,” she said.
Steven nodded. “I deserved that,” he said. “But I’ve been thinking about you. Actually, I can’t stop thinking about you. I do it all the time.”
“That isn’t good,” Kate said in exactly the same tone of voice Elliot would have used.
Steven didn’t seem to notice. “I’m here to tell you I was an asshole. I would say cad, but it’s too archaic. Asshole covers a lot of territory, but you know what I mean.”
Kate nodded and took another sip of her tea. “I think lying asshole would be more accurate,” she said. She turned her head toward the window so that she wouldn’t display any visible emotion to him. To her horror, out of the corner of her eye she thought she saw Max walking by. Was he with a woman? She couldn’t see them as they turned the corner, but she prayed they wouldn’t step into the shop. Max had met Steven more than once and would definitely agree with Steven’s current self-assessment.
“I don’t know what to say, exactly,” Steven told her. “Except that I’ve been reading Piaget and I think I’m a case of arrested development. I was emotionally somewhere between seven and nine years old when we were going out.” Kate raised her eyebrows. She’d expected an apology, but not such a complete and accurate one.
“Kate, I don’t regret anything in my life as much as I regret letting you go.”
Kate
tried not to let his words sink in. There had been so many weeks, months, that she had hoped to hear them. Now she told herself to stay cool and calm.
Steven looked around. “God, this place is murder,” he told her. “Please, Kate, let me take you out for a drink and dinner. Just give me a chance to explain everything.”
Kate meant to say no. She meant to shake her head. She had gotten the satisfaction and closure that she craved, and now she only had to be cold and polite and negative. Just one shake of the head. “My job is very demanding right now,” she told him.
“When will it let up?”
“With term-end reports, maybe a month.”
“So if I call you, could we see each other?”
When she found herself nodding, she was as surprised as Steven appeared to be.
Chapter Thirty-three
Kate barely had time to shower and get into bed, totally exhausted from her meeting with Steven, when the phone rang. She looked at the caller ID, wondering, and when she saw that it was Bina’s number she heaved a sigh of relief and answered.
“I can’t believe it!” Bina almost yelled. “It’s working! It’s working almost too good! And he hasn’t even broken up with me yet.”
Kate was totally confused. “What are you talking about?” she asked.
“He called! He’s going to ask me to marry him!”
Kate felt a jolt of jealousy mixed with complete surprise. “Billy is proposing?” she asked, incredulous.
“Not Billy! Jack! Jack called from Hong Kong.” Bina was almost shouting. “He said he’s flying home the day after tomorrow and he’s doing it to see me. Kate, don’t you get it? Elliot’s plan worked. Jack is coming back to me.”
Tired as she was, Kate had trouble digesting this news. Her head was a jumble of Max’s e-mails, Elliot’s numbers and graphs, Bina’s gossip about her dates, the recent shocking news from the baby shower. All of it seemed to converge, making her dizzy. “Jack called and proposed?” she asked.
“Well, yes and no,” Bina said, sounding slightly less joyous now to admit the truth.
“Okay. Tell me exactly what happened,” Kate said, and wished that she hadn’t given up smoking years ago. This was going to be the kind of long, involved description that only a cigarette could help get you through. “And tell me it in order from beginning to end.”
She heard Bina take a deep breath. “Well, first the phone rang.”
Kate realized it was just as well she’d given up cigarettes: She’d probably need a whole carton for this. “Yeah. Then what?”
“Then I picked it up. No, actually my mother picked it up. Then she handed it to me and said, ‘It’s for you.’”
“Did she know it was Jack?”
“Not then. Not until I screamed. Well, maybe she did, do you want me to ask her?”
“No.” Kate pushed an extra throw pillow behind her head and wished she had a glass of beer. “Just tell me what he said and what you said, Bina.”
“Okay, so he said, ‘Bina, is that you?’ So I said, ‘Who wants to know?’ But I knew it was him because I knew his voice right away. You know, it sounded like he was calling from Coney Island or something, not from the other side of the world.”
Kate sighed. “Then what did he say?”
“He says, ‘Bina, I got to talk to you,’ and I say, ‘I’m listening,’ and he goes, ‘I’ve made a big mistake, Bina.’ And I go, ‘Well, how is that my business?’ So he says, ‘This is Jack.’ And I say—you’re gonna like this, Katie. I say, ‘Jack who?’ Wasn’t that good?”
“Great,” Kate said.
“So he says, ‘Jack Weintraub.’ And I go, ‘Oh, I was confused. I thought it was Jack Marco Polo.’ And he’s like, ‘What?’ And I’m like, ‘You know, the single guy that discovered a whole new world in the Orient.’”
Kate thought for a moment of hurrying Bina along, but now was no time for lessons in geography and political correctness.
“So he says, ‘Bina, don’t mock me. Have you been going out with someone else?’ And I say, ‘What’s it to you?’ And he says, ‘Now I know you are.’ And I say, ‘Think what you want, but I know the truth.’ And then he’s like, ‘Bina, I really have to talk to you.’ And I say, ‘Whatever.’ And he says, ‘I know you’re probably angry at me and everything—’ And I interrupt him and I say, ‘Think again, because I hardly remember you.’ Hey, Katie, do you think he heard gossip all the way in Japan?”
“He’s in Hong Kong, Bina.”
“Isn’t that a part of Japan?”
Kate just shook her head. “So what happened then?” she asked.
“Now it gets really good. He goes, ‘I have to talk to you.’ And I say, ‘Isn’t that what you’re doing now?’ And he says, ‘I’ve got to talk to you face-to-face.’ So I go, ‘That will probably be difficult since you’re so two-faced.’ And he says, ‘Meet me at the airport on Thursday, Bina. I’m flying into JFK just to see you. Please don’t say no.’”
Kate waited. There was silence at the other end of the phone. “So what did you say?” she asked, hesitating.
“I said yes!” Bina almost yodeled into the phone. “And he says, ‘I have something I want to ask you and something I want to give you.’ Isn’t that great? So do you think it’s too late to call Elliot and Brice and tell them, or should I wait until tomorrow morning? I mean, if it wasn’t for Elliot’s statistics, I never . . .” She paused. “Omigod, Katie! Omigod! I have to get Billy to dump me for this to work, right?”
“Come on, Bina, that’s all nonsense. Jack called you because he loves you and misses you.”
“Forget that. This is because of Elliot. If I didn’t go out with Billy . . .”
Kate flung off the blankets and stood up. “Don’t be ridiculous,” she said. “You don’t have to do anything now but show up at the airport.”
“I’m calling Elliot,” Bina said. “I have to find out how long I have to date Billy, and then you and Elliot have to figure out how we break up.”
“Oh, come on,” Kate said. “You can just tell him it’s over.”
“Nahuh,” Bina said while Kate stomped into the hall and across to her tiny kitchen, phone in hand. She prayed there was just one beer left somewhere in the back of the refrigerator. “He has to break up with me, remember?” Kate opened the refrigerator door. It shone that lonely light that illuminates single women at one A.M. after they’ve had some horrible disappointment.
“I have to figure out a way for him to dump me, Katie,” Bina continued. “And I have to do it by Thursday. Otherwise . . .”
Behind the mayonnaise jar, Kate glimpsed the brown neck of a Samuel Adams. She uttered a silent prayer to the god of alcohol and grabbed it. “Look, Bina, you don’t have to believe me,” she told her friend as she poured the beer into a glass. She never drank from a bottle; it reminded her too much of her father. “Jack has just about proposed. I don’t know if you should accept him, but if that’s what you want, that’s what you’re going to do when you see him.”
“I’m calling Elliot,” Bina said. “I’m calling him and then I’m calling Barbie and then—”
“Fine,” said Kate. “Call them all, but leave me out of it.” After the baby shower, she didn’t think she could do one more function with the Bitches. She hung up the phone and chugged all the beer. Then she put down the glass and left it on the counter while she went, alone, to her bed.
Chapter Thirty-four
The morning dawned beautifully. Kate knew because she was awake—as she had been, on and off, for most of the night. The window in her bedroom faced east, and she saw the murky brown that passed as darkness turn first beige, then pink, and then, last, salmon as the sun rose. The light would last till past eight that evening, but there was no light in Kate’s heart. Though this was Kate’s favorite time of year, she woke with a heaviness in her chest and a gray despair that no dawn could affect. For the past few days she had been working and eating—though without an appetite—and walking to and from school, bu
t she felt barely conscious of any of it. Although she didn’t regret breaking up with Michael and she didn’t expect anything from Steven, she felt lonely and hopeless. Like so many women in Manhattan, she would go without a partner because either she wasn’t good enough or they weren’t. Her Brooklyn friends had exhausted her, and like a sore spot on her gums that she couldn’t keep her tongue away from, there was something annoying and painful about Billy Nolan and Bina’s affair with him that she preferred not to think about but kept going back to over and over. Perhaps worst of all, she couldn’t talk to Rita or her other Manhattan friends about it because they would never understand, and she couldn’t talk to Elliot about it because he was the instigator, and the truth was she didn’t want him, like a dentist with a fine instrument, picking at this sensitive spot.
She drifted into a light sleep. It was a quarter after six when the phone rang. She couldn’t imagine who it would be. She picked up the phone to hear Bina’s imploring voice at the other end. “Please, Kate, help me! I couldn’t do it right, and now I have to go to the airport. I went out with Billy last night and I acted as snotty as I could, but he just laughed. I flirted with another guy, but he didn’t seem to mind—”
“Whoa. Bina, slow down.”
“Kate, I tried everything everyone suggested. You have to help me. Billy hasn’t dumped me, and Jack lands in an hour and a half, and . . .”
Bina began to cry. And while Kate had heard Bina cry through almost every phase of their lives, there was an element to this that was new. Kate made shushing noises while she tried to wake up enough to figure out what was different. And then it came to her. For the first time, Bina was crying like an adult. Gone was the hysteria that allowed Bina to be so infuriating and yet sweet. Instead, Kate heard overlays of guilt, and shame, and anxiety.
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