Midtown Masters

by Cara McKenna

  John looked down at his drink. “If I said I believe in soul mates, would you think I was an idiot, brainwashed by fairy tales?”

  “No, I’d think you were a romantic,” she said with a smile. “A charming and endangered species, in this day and age. Have you ever felt like you met one—a soul mate?”

  He shook his head. “It’s just a nice idea, is all.”

  “On that we agree.” Though she wasn’t waiting on her own Prince Charming, that was for sure.

  “I’ve always been on the sidelines of romance,” John said. “Wait, no. Not even that close. Somewhere way back behind the bleachers. In the parking lot, watching through binoculars.”

  She smiled and sipped her wine, waiting for him to go on.

  “I guess things seem simple when you’re that far removed.”

  “Nothing’s simple when humans get involved.”

  He held up his glass in a little salute. “Truer words were never spoken.”

  “You may not feel like you’re part of the dating world, but believe what I said—you’re a romantic. It’s a dying breed, and that makes you a hot commodity.” She paused, distracted by a thought. “Say you met your female counterpart tomorrow. Die-hard romantic, a little shy, enjoys books and fireplaces and avoiding parties.”

  He laughed. “Sign me up.”

  “If you met that woman, dated, discovered the chemistry was off the charts, and you lock it down, get married, and die together in your sleep . . .”

  “Yes?”

  She sipped her drink, set it down, studied the glass. “Do you think you’d regret never doing anything with a man?”

  When she looked up, she found that dignified face pensive.

  “I don’t think so,” he said slowly.

  “It sounds like it’s a very real part of your sexuality.”

  “It is. Not the largest part, and not the deepest part.”

  She smirked.

  “I know, that sounded vaguely dirty. But to answer your question, I suppose I can’t say. But if I catch myself pining for anything, it’s a romance with a woman, not a physical encounter with a man. One feels like a lack in my life, the other’s merely a curiosity.”

  She nodded, satisfied by his reply. “I wish you lived in Pittsburgh. I’d make it my mission to set you up.”

  “That’s sweet. But despite what you’ve seen tonight, you might not wish that upon your single friends.”

  “Jesus, you’re hard on yourself.”

  “I’m just being honest. And realistic. I don’t know what it is about you, but I’m not myself with you. In a good way. I’ll tell you this—you’ll make a great therapist.”

  “Or just a good friend,” she offered. Or, she couldn’t help but think, we have chemistry. Maybe John had never felt this before. Never met one of those people who made you feel a certain way—more attractive, more charming, more understood and appreciated. Suzy had felt that with quite a few men, and a couple of women, too. She felt it with Meyer. Hell, she felt it with John. Could he really have reached the cusp of forty without ever meeting someone who did that?

  “There are certain people,” she said slowly, “who are like . . . This analogy might not make sense to a guy, but bear with me. If you use the changing rooms in fancy boutiques or lingerie stores, sometimes they use these mirrors that are very, very slightly curved, so you look skinnier.”

  “I’ve heard about those.”

  “And they use vanity lights, like rows of tiny lights, so it’s not shining straight down, casting cellulite shadows, and they make your eyes look super glittery. And the bulbs are pink-tinted, so your skin looks really even.”

  “I’m dying to see where you’re going with this.”

  “There are certain people who do the same thing. Friends and lovers who make you feel better than you normally do. Make you feel shiny and smart and funny and more lovable. More comfortable. It’s like magic, when you meet one of those people.” And it was like witchcraft when you were attracted to them, to boot. “Maybe I’m one of those people, for you. Maybe that’s why it’s easy, hanging out with me. Have you felt that with anybody before?”

  “I’m not sure . . . Not with a woman, I don’t think. With some old friends, yes. I’ve had friends I felt more understood by. More accepted.”

  She nodded.

  “I suppose I do feel that with you. And right from the start, actually,” he said, gaze moving to the side as he teased the thought out. “Even when it was just typing, just the performances, it felt . . . not quite easy. But natural. Far more natural than I’d ever have expected. I’ll be honest with you—”

  “Please do.”

  “I only ever planned to hire the two of you for a single hour. A single evening. It became a little addictive. It’s the most . . .” His voice dropped to a hush, but his eyes rose to meet hers. “It’s the most whole I’ve felt, sexually. Or the most connected I’ve ever felt to another human being, sexually. I know that sounds ridiculous, but it’s true. And it made me bold. Far bolder than I’d ever imagined possible. I mean, the notion of seeking out a sexual connection, even one as compartmentalized and removed as ours was . . . You can’t understand how unlike me that was.”

  “I’ll take your word for it.”

  “So, no, I can’t deny that there was something special about you and him, or the safety of the situation, or whatever rapport there was, separated by two screens and a keyboard and a camera, and the width of an entire state. At first I thought it was the anonymity that made it possible, made me that man . . . But now that we’re talking about it, maybe you’re right. Maybe you are that kind of person, for me.”

  “It goes both ways, that shiny feeling. It has to, or I would never have crossed that ridiculous line, wanting to get closer to you.”

  Speaking of closer. She’d leaned in, and so had he. Their forearms were still inches apart atop the table, but still. She’d be damned if she’d pull away. She wanted to sprawl out on a bed or a couch or a carpet with this man and talk until the sun rose, every new thought a little handhold, bringing her closer and closer to understanding him.

  She glanced down, finding both their glasses empty. “I’m going to say something, and I promise it’s not an attempt to cut this night short, because that’s the last thing I want. But the smoke in here is giving me a headache.”

  “Me too.”

  “Want to go back to your hotel? To the bar, I mean.”

  “I’d like that very much.”

  Chapter Eleven

  Suzy donned her sweater and John slipped into his coat.

  “Thanks for the wine,” she said as they headed for the exit.

  He held the door for her. “You’re very welcome. Thank you for saving me from a night spent hiding in my room.”

  “Anytime.”

  The outside world was cool and damp and quiet. Exhilarating. They’d probably only been inside the bar for thirty minutes, yet things felt changed. Suzy felt changed, and she could blame only so much of the sensation on her wine buzz. The balance of this intoxicated, altered state was the doing of the man now strolling beside her.

  It felt like a date, undeniably. And the hall pass Meyer had offered felt like a very real thing, like a golden ticket tucked in her pocket.

  I can’t sleep with him, though. That was too far, too soon, with a man as inexperienced and sensitive as John was. She didn’t want to be the sex maniac who swept into his life and got him drunk and trampled over his misgivings and boundaries one crazy weekend. If there was any sweeping to be done, the broom would be in John’s elegant hands.

  “How drunk do you feel?” she asked him as they crossed to Walnut Street.

  “Not very.” He cast her a sidelong glance and smiled. “How about you?”

  “A little. I’m kind of a cheap date. Benefit of being a small citizen of a city with deep glas
ses.”

  “I promise I won’t take advantage.”

  “A gentleman like you? Perish the thought. I only asked because I am a little buzzed, and I was hoping you might be drunk enough to hold hands.”

  His dignified eyebrows rose in the streetlight, and he didn’t reply.

  “Clearly you’re not,” she said, holding her hands up in submission. “Just a hope.”

  “Why would I need to be drunk for that?”

  Her turn for speechlessness, though she recovered after a moment’s pause. “You don’t. I just assumed, since you profess to be so shy . . .”

  “What would it mean if we did? Hold hands, that is.”

  “Just a silly impulse.”

  “Mine’s gone all sweaty just now.”

  “Wipe it on your coat and give it to me,” she commanded.

  With a nervous little smile, he pulled a handkerchief from an inside pocket and wadded it in his palm before replacing it.

  “Give it here,” Suzy said, nodding to his hand.

  He held it out and she took it in her far smaller one. Neither said a word for nearly a minute, their shoes on the sidewalk seeming to speak for them. Suzy’s steps were quicker, sharper, John’s longer and fewer and softer, though their paces synced, arms swinging in unison.

  “Not so bad, is it?” she asked, looking up at him.

  “My brain can’t help but want to know what it means.”

  “Just two hands,” she said, and squeezed his. “But if you need a more concrete answer, it means I feel close to you right now. And I’m glad you’re here.”

  “Simple enough.”

  “I’m very simple. It’s one of my strongest selling points.”

  He laughed. “I doubt that.”

  “Well, if not simple . . . Open, I guess. Whatever I feel tends to come tumbling out of my mouth without much filtering. I try not to overthink things too much. I did when I was a teenager and I was such an anxious wreck.”

  “Oh?”

  She nodded. “I was a worrier. And I thought way too hard about everything, drove myself nuts.”

  “What sorts of things did you overthink?”

  “My feelings, mainly. I have a lot of them, all the time, and they overwhelmed me when I was young. Every crush was a soul-racking infatuation, every passing attraction to a girl became an identity crisis. Every mean word cut me like a rusty chainsaw.”

  “So how did you get to here?”

  “With a therapist.” She winked at him. “A really good one. Exactly the right person, who got me, and let me talk, and didn’t try to fix me with drugs . . . Though I did discover during college that pot is my friend.”

  “And that’s why you chose your field?”

  “Partly. One part of it is because I’ve always had this hole inside me, this sensation that my parents and I have been strangers my entire life.”

  “Oh.”

  “They came from such a different culture, and they never talked about their feelings, or even their lives from before I came along. Not much, anyway. They were—and my mom still is—very un-emotive. So wanting to understand them was part of it, and my own oversupply of emotions and how to deal with them was the other. It was like I was feeling enough for the three of us, almost, when I was younger.”

  “Huh.”

  “Once I learned to step back from my feelings a little, to examine them, detach them from my reactions . . . All those thoughts and feelings became fascinating to me, in a whole new way. I got interested in the connection between feelings and physical sensations, and what happens in your head between the moment someone hurts you and the moment your fist flies at their face—or you run away and cry, or eat a whole sheet cake, or get drunk, or yell at your kid. I want to help people like me—hyper-feelers—hit PAUSE and sit in that uncomfortable space between the stimulus and the response, and learn to choose what comes next.”

  “How interesting. And specific. I was going to ask why you chose psychology, but I’d expected something like, ‘I want to help people.’”

  “I do. But I want to help certain kinds of people with certain kinds of situations. Hotheads and crybabies,” she joked.

  “I don’t consider myself either of those things,” John said as they turned onto Fifth Avenue, “but I think you’ve helped me in some way. Or opened something up in me that I didn’t know was there, at least.”

  “Maybe I’ve just given you an opportunity to talk about it all.” She squeezed his hand, and he squeezed back.

  “Undoubtedly. There’s no one else in the world I could talk to the way I talk to you. I’d thought maybe it was because we were strangers, and it was anonymous. But then I managed it with the camera on, and on the phone. Now in person.”

  “My teenage self would’ve wanted to spend the next week obsessively unpacking it all and trying to understand it, but I’m happy to simply conclude that we have some kind of natural bond and leave it at that.”

  “I wouldn’t have thought I was capable of whatever this bond is before we met, so thank you.”

  “Maybe it’s because we met in such an impolite way,” she teased. “We met with our most vulnerable parts exposed, and when that goes well, I think it’s our instinct to embrace that trust. That, or to panic and run for the hills.”

  “I tried running,” he said with a smile, eyes on the sidewalk, “but after half a mile something drew me back.”

  The hotel appeared down the block, its gray stone looming stately in the city lights. Suzy’s heart was beating quick and steady, though its presence was high, light, this anxiety the exact opposite of dread. The thrill of attraction. Of hope.

  As they reached the steps, she let his hand go, missing its size and warmth immediately and wondering if she’d ever get to feel it again.

  They made their way to the bar, a classy affair, and bustling. Loud, in fact, not fitting the rest of the venue.

  “Busy,” she said, looking around the place. “There must be an event.” Lots of suits, very few dresses. A business thing, not a wedding, she guessed.

  “So it would seem.”

  And just like that, she could sense John’s nerves returning, stiffening his posture, making his eyes dart.

  “We could order room service,” she offered. “Or raid the minibar, if there is one.”

  “I could ask the concierge if we can get our hands on a bottle of your beloved pinot grigio.”

  “Good thinking.”

  Suzy waited in the lobby while John made his inquiry, then he turned and waved an arm toward the stairs. They hiked up a flight together, and John dug in his pocket for a key card. The lock blinked green, reminding her of their little chat avatars. He pushed the door in and she offered a curtsy before preceding him.

  “Ooh yes,” she said. “Very nice.” It was a big, open suite with a decorative white-marble fireplace and a massive bed. She set her purse on a desk and slipped off her shoes. The carpet felt good beneath her achy feet. “Hey! A chaise lounge. Would you like to be the therapist, or the patient? Don’t answer that—I call patient.” She crossed the room to stretch out on the couch, flexing her toes.

  John smiled shyly, hanging up his coat and pushing off his shoes beside hers. “The wine should be up shortly.”

  The chaise lounge sat near the bed, and he took a seat on the edge of the king mattress, clasping his hands between his knees.

  Suzy felt a little wave of unease. No, not unease—shame, perhaps. Humility. Never one to avoid her emotions, she met it head-on. “This feels sort of funny. Us in a hotel. Given my wildly inappropriate invitation from two Tuesdays ago, that is.”

  “Just friends, right?” he asked with a nervous smile. “I won’t offer you a check if you promise not to bill me.”

  “Deal.” That funny feeling shifted, revealing itself for what it was—not shame, she realized, but reg
ret. She really had wanted that. Wanted this. A night in bed with her client, or with him watching her and Meyer, in person. Lindsay’s gender had changed, but Suzy’s selfish desires hadn’t. She’d keep that to herself, though. They’d entered this room as friends. That was what John wanted from her, first and foremost, she suspected. Friendship. She’d respect that until such time as he gave her a signal he desired more.

  And then what? The hall pass nagged. Start with his mouth, work your way down.

  “I’m excited about tomorrow,” she told him, needing to get her mind out of the gutter. “About the mill tour.”

  “Me too. I’ve got a sense of how the scene in the book is going to go down, but I want to know what the light’s like, what it smells like. What the ambient noise is like, how voices carry in the space.”

  “Your job is pretty fucking cool.”

  He smiled—grinned, in fact—flashing a very nice set of teeth. “I know. I can hardly believe I get paid for it.”

  “Do—” A knock on the door cut her off, and whatever she was about to ask was gone. “That was fast.” She watched him walk to the door, sliding his wallet from his back pocket. She bet he tipped really well.

  She heard murmured words then John stepped back, letting a young man enter with a tray. It bore an ice bucket, wine bottle and two glasses. Suzy got up to investigate while John thanked the guy and closed the door behind him.

  “Schmancy,” she said, noting the wine’s label. She’d seen this brand on the shelf above her usual twelve-dollar standby, and made a mental note to savor. A corkscrew verging on modern art sat on a cotton napkin and she got to work. “Thanks for defaulting to my taste.”

  “I like wine. The Scotch is just something I dabble in, in my ongoing attempt to be half as cool as the man I invented.”