by Ruby Lang
It was the least he could do. Then he would’ve been able to retire from the fray with a clear conscience. “It didn’t go quite how I hoped.”
“She didn’t switch sides when you batted your eyelashes at her?”
Ty blushed. He wished it had worked. “We started off on the wrong foot and ended on another wrong foot.”
“But in the middle, did you dance?”
“Mrs. E.”
“Hey, old habits die hard. We’ll keep working.”
“I don’t think I can do much more. This was a one-time thing.”
“Let’s make it a two- or three-time thing.”
“Mrs. E, I don’t know how else I can help. My job is really busy and it’s not like I’m really affiliated with the garden—”
“You’ve been here since the beginning. I’m going to lean on you, especially because you know money and we’re going to need some of that expertise. We can talk all we want with the city, but that’s what it’s going to come down to. So you’re with me, right?”
“Right.”
She started to walk away. “Love your enthusiasm, Ty.”
“I only agreed because you’re kind of terrifying, Mrs. E,” he called after her.
She said over her shoulder, “Not scary enough if you almost said no to me.”
Chapter Four
Early July
A few people came out to watch the city inspector do her business. Tyson Yang did not show up. It was a Wednesday afternoon. He was probably at work doing whatever CPAs did: making spreadsheets, reading up on taxes, calculating the student debt of people like her. Magda allowed herself one minute in which to picture him in a suit, but she couldn’t manage it. The dirt-stained T-shirt and cargo shorts were too much a part of him. What was she doing mooning over him, anyway? She didn’t even like him, despite how often he appeared in her thoughts.
A couple of gardeners doggedly continued their work, refusing to acknowledge that anything out of the ordinary was taking place. Some of the teens were curious, though, and went up to ask questions, and got to peer through the inspector’s scope.
More gardeners, however, showed up for the early morning photo shoot. They also looked suspiciously well styled. In fact, Mr. Serra and Mrs. Freeman appeared to have had their hair done. A few people sported brand-new straw hats. Magda hadn’t been planning to include any of them in the pictures. In fact, she’d tried to get Lou, her usual photographer, to take pictures from the emptiest angle possible. But Lou was charmed. It was charming, this crew of well-dressed elderly people and teens in a garden bursting with blooms and vegetables and butterflies. So even though Magda tried to downplay the fact that the lot was occupied—she instructed Lou to take the most forlorn pictures she could—Lou took it upon herself to get the gardeners back in and stood around long after her appointed time to point and click at people holding tomatoes and sniffing flowers. She heard Lou chatting with Mrs. E about the project to save the garden.
Magda gritted her teeth and reminded herself she needed to sell the lot. That she wanted to sell it. She wasn’t out to make enemies with the gardeners. Who knows? Maybe they would raise the money. And she would be here to help with paperwork. Keith liked to remind her of it. Yelling into his phone from a cafe, he reminded her, “Property’s bought and sold all the time all over the place. Neighborhoods change—you know that. You won’t live long in this city if you don’t get in on it.”
“Well, that’s the thing, lots of people have lived long in the city, in this neighborhood, and they’re getting along in their lives.”
“They’re taking something that isn’t theirs. Don’t go all soft, Magda, especially for these people. You don’t survive long in this business if you keep that up. Besides, it can be good for them, too. Think of the jobs it’ll create, building this place.”
“I know all that, Keith. But I was thinking we could explore options for the garden—”
“It’s not a garden. It’s a lot.”
You could say that again.
Keith wasn’t the one coming up to the neighborhood all the time; he wasn’t the one who had to face all these sun-weathered faces. If anything, now that she’d been charged with showing the lot, he’d made himself scarce. She was the one who walked past people on the street and immediately knew they recognized her because she was selling their beloved community garden.
It wasn’t that people were unpleasant. But she could feel them watching her as she bought cleaning supplies at the supermarket, or when she ordered coffee.
A few days after the garden had been photographed someone set the alarm off at the townhouse.
It was late on a Thursday night. Magda was in Crown Heights in Brooklyn showing a one-bedroom rental. She’d taken in ten applications. It had been a long workday, but she needed the money. At least the apartment she was renting out was close to her place. But when she got the call from the security company she had to drag her tired self back into Manhattan and up to the townhouse to inspect it and make sure that nothing was wrong.
The security company had called the police who were waiting outside for her. It was a warm night but Magda shivered. She didn’t feel comfortable taking the two bored male cops through the house so late, but she didn’t have much choice.
It was pretty clear that the people who’d set off the alarm hadn’t gotten the door open, but there were a few gouges visible enough that Byron would probably scold her for not wrapping the whole house in plastic each night before she left. She quashed her fear and tried to seem pleasant and professional but it was past midnight by the time she’d given the cops coffee and answered questions. All because someone had scratched up a couple of locks.
“Probably some homeless guy knows this house is empty,” the younger officer informed her. “Your uncle should really do something about that. It’s not safe having the place abandoned for this many years.”
It wasn’t abandoned, Magda wanted to point out. She was here all the time. There were ladders and drop cloths and all indications of construction being done, even if it was quiet right now. And it was the freaking middle of the night. “Working on it,” Magda said through gritted teeth.
“How much does a place like this go for, anyway?” the cop asked.
She wasn’t feeling conversational. She wanted to be rid of them, even though they’d turned out harmless enough. She wanted to be home, in her bed.
“A few mil,” she said through gritted teeth.
“Yo, that’s ridiculous,” the younger man said, although without any surprise.
He was clearly one of those people who wanted to ask Magda the price in order to tell her it was too much.
The older officer finally finished his coffee. “Real estate in New York,” he said.
It was the most he’d talked all night. He got up and put his cup in the sink and the younger one followed suit.
They left Magda alone in the house shortly after. She debated if she should bother to trek back home if she was going to have to come back up here again in the morning. But there was nowhere to sleep. There was only one bed, and it was made up with an elaborate arrangement of pillows and cushions and blindingly white sheets that she’d never be able to smooth and refold to their current crispness. She’d have to iron. The thought made her shudder. Uncle Byron had reluctantly paid to have the bedroom staged as well as the dining room and he wasn’t likely to spring for a touch-up. Still, she could have found somewhere to nap, but her hair was a mess and she didn’t have her lucky suit with her, and that was what decided her in the end.
She locked up as best she could.
Magda felt better once she got outside. The streets weren’t exactly empty at this time of night. People coming home from late shifts plodded down the sidewalks. Sirens wailed. Every now and then, a booming car cruised slowly down the block. Her sensible mid-height heels hurt, though. She’d made it
halfway to the 135th Street stop when she noticed the jogger coming toward her. She braced herself. No one else was around, and she wasn’t planning on becoming the first victim of someone who was clearly bananas if he was exercising at this time of night.
She shrank to the side as he appeared under the streetlight, still several feet away. His black hair was wet and his face was set in beautiful, serious lines, although she’d never seen them so grim.
But she didn’t have time to wonder about his expression because in that swift flash under the lights, she’d also noticed a couple of other pertinent facts: the runner wasn’t wearing a shirt. The runner was Ty.
* * *
The woman stepped out into the light just as Ty was approaching the spot under the street lamps. He’d angled himself off the sidewalk and onto the street and put on a burst of speed to get past her—slowing down would scare her into thinking he was a creep, especially at this time of night. But he’d already sprinted past her when he registered who it was—and that she had already seen him.
Magda Ferrer.
What the hell was she doing out here in the middle of the night, half limping? Was she hurt?
He turned quickly and almost ran smack into her as she came back toward him.
“Are you okay? Are you safe? Talk to me.”
His eyes scanned her as best they could under the street lamp. He was aware that he wanted to run his hands over her, to check for himself to see if she was whole and healthy. But he didn’t want to scare her more. She seemed unharmed. A little dazed. She was staring at his chest, which he realized belatedly was bare and sweaty, but it was dark out and he hadn’t planned on running into anyone he knew. Self-consciously he shook out the T-shirt he was clutching in his hand and pulled it over his head. He noticed she followed the motions of his hand as he smoothed the fabric over his torso.
At least her eye movement was okay. She hadn’t hit her head.
“I’m fine,” she said after a long moment. “You’re...you’re out running at midnight?”
He blinked. “Well, yes. And you’re out selling real estate?”
She paused again and he was starting to worry when she finally hung her head and laughed softly. She shook her head, then closed her eyes.
“You aren’t okay,” he said, looking around, wishing he could take her arm, wishing there was a bench nearby, a couch, a hospital cot, and an emergency physician.
He stepped closer to her, not caring if he was sweaty.
“No, no, I’m fine. Thank you.” When she opened her eyes, Ty noticed she’d also leaned in and that her face was very close to his.
She must have realized it, too. She glanced away. “Someone set off the alarm at the townhouse.”
“What? Were you inside? Did they get in?”
“They didn’t. It’s fine. It only set off the alarm. I wasn’t here.”
“Then why on earth are you here? Especially at this time of night.”
“I’m responsible for the place. The alarm company called me because I’m the closest. Anyway, I talked to the police. A few scratches and dents on the door, that’s all. I just want to get to the subway and go home.”
Her voice, usually so calm, throbbed with fatigue. She’d had a terrible day from the looks of it.
“Let me get you a Lyft or something,” he said. He reached for his phone.
She looked away. “No, thanks.”
“But—”
“I live all the way in Brooklyn.”
She let that sit. A trip downtown and across the bridge would be expensive. Had she gotten out of her bed to take care of this?
“I can put it on my account,” he said steadily.
But she’d gathered herself and she was already starting to pull away from him and toward the subway.
“No. I can’t owe you.”
That stopped him. He wasn’t sure how he felt about it. He reminded himself he shouldn’t feel anything. Much. “At least let me walk you to the train. It’s late out.”
“You are out running.”
“I needed it. Bad day.”
“So you decided to make it worse by exercising at midnight?”
At least if she was able to laugh at him, she was doing all right.
They walked slowly. Her shoes were hurting her, but it wasn’t as if she could go barefoot on the sidewalk.
“It’s cooler right now,” he said, “and I couldn’t sleep. I had a lot on my mind, a lot of excess energy. I wanted to clear my head.”
His mind felt fuzzier than before, though. He had to stop noticing her curls, the way the dim light made her skin seem to glow like the softest velvet. He had thought of her on and off for weeks with a kind of irritation and restlessness that made him snappish. He tried to distract himself with the garden, sending out letters, fundraising. He exercised hard in the heat. But all of that, even the running, he thought grimly, seemed to circle back to Magda.
So here he was.
“I’ll bet no one breaks into the garden,” she was muttering.
Without thinking, he replied, “We get people cavorting there at night.”
“Cavorting?”
Damn. He couldn’t see her face clearly in the half-light of the city streets, but he could hear the laughter in her voice. And that made things better.
“They leave things. Like shoes. Erm, underwear. Condoms.”
It was only a list. A list of personal items. Not sexy. Do not think of sex.
“Right. Cavort is a good word for that.”
He was really not going to think of cavorting in the garden with Miss Business.
“Anyway, we want to have an open door—open doorway—policy. And that’s what that means, sometimes. People are going to go in. Maybe they’ll smash a few zucchinis in the process. Dammit. I didn’t mean it that way.”
But she had stopped walking and was laughing at him again; the sight of his face seemed to make her almost double over so that she had to hold on to the iron gate of a nearby brownstone.
He couldn’t help it. It wasn’t the greatest night of his life, and he was sweaty and smelly, and he was walking in the humid night air with the woman he’d slotted in his mind as his nemesis, and yet she was wonderful and her laughter was infectious, and he wanted to laugh, too.
“It’s too much,” she gasped. “Please tell me that they’ve left the eggplants and peaches alone at least.”
“We can’t grow peaches. Oh, you mean—”
Another burst of silent giggles from her. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. It’s been a really long night and I’m so tired, and the thought of Mrs. E having to break up a plant orgy is just too much for me right now.”
It was almost too much for him, torn between laughter and the talk of sex and all of his warring feelings.
He took a deep breath and tried to get his head on straight. “It used to be worse, when it was vacant, of course.”
“I’ll bet,” she said, wiping her eyes in that careful way of women who didn’t want to smudge their mascara.
“It really was a dangerous place.”
She gulped down a breath. “Tyson,” she said.
It was maybe the first time she’d said his name. “Ty,” she said, more softly. “You don’t have to convince me that the garden is a good thing for the neighborhood. Even if it were just something beautiful, even if it were only a clean, quiet spot on the block it would be enough. I know it does a lot more.”
“Well, if you do, how can you do what you do?”
“Because the seller owns it. Because we need more housing stock in this neighborhood—”
“Please, do you really think that anyone’s going to be able to afford whatever fancy-schmancy glass-and-steel and Miele-appliance-filled apartments they put up?”
She turned on him, eyes blazing.
“Are you telli
ng me you’re not one of those people? That you’re not someone who arrived here and drove up the prices so that these glass-and-steel buildings fill this neighborhood? Oh, look at how nice you are, helping out old ladies and trying to keep your pretty garden and participating in the community. You’re even getting muddy with them to show your commitment. And then you wash the mud off and go to your corporate job and buy the very fancy appliances for your place. Now that you’re here, you want to keep things the way they are, all that delightful character. But you didn’t think of what you were doing before moving into the neighborhood, did you? What if I told you that there are a lot of developers interested in mixed-income and affordable housing in this area? What if some of them were interested? Would you step aside for the good of the neighborhood, for the good of your neighbors, your friends, who want to be able to stay here?”
“You aren’t going to sell to those developers, though. You’re going to sell to whoever makes you the most money.” He added uncertainly, “Aren’t you?”
“So what if I am? Listen, you can talk a good game about caring about the community, but people like you moving in was what caused an affordable housing shortage to begin with—not people like me, trying to make a living, trying to sell one empty lot.”
They started walking again.
She was right, though, about people like him. He’d bought his apartment from a woman who’d lived in the neighborhood for nearly fifty years. He’d put in new floors, had the walls skim-coated, bought shiny appliances. He wasn’t the only person in his building who’d done this. And when some of the people who, like him, had moved out after doing their own renovations, he had been pleased to see that the prices had gone up in a short time—that all his effort and patience had jacked up his property values. He’d been happy to make the money—theoretical though it was. When he moved in, he’d seen it as an investment. He’d never expected to make it his home.
He was attached to it. It was everything he’d told himself he’d never do again.
She was still talking. “Everything is so easy for you. You have no idea. You run around this neighborhood at night like you own it. But if you own it, you can sell it, too. You probably will.”