First Born(55)

‘Check?’ he says.

They bring it to us and we split it.

‘I’m heading back up to school. You still in Midtown?’

I nod.

‘Walk you there?’

We set off.

The evening is warm for the end of October, and there is a stillness in the air. Couples walk entangled. The woman in front of us has her hand in her lover’s back pocket, and his arm is loose around her waist. I start to think about how my hand would feel in Scott’s pocket. Just casually placed there. The movement of him as we walked.

‘I said, do you think you’ll ever come back to New York?’

‘Sorry, I was miles away. I don’t know. Maybe? Probably not. Probably won’t be able to.’

We cross the street heading north.

‘It can be expensive, but try to live your life to the full,’ he says. ‘Sorry, that sounds like greeting card bullshit. I mean, that’s what Katie would have wanted, you know?’

‘You think?’

‘Well, she never talked to me about her dying or anything,’ he says. ‘But in an indirect way, watching movies – can’t remember which ones; she usually chose them – she said she thought couples who are in love and then one of them dies from cancer or whatnot, she said the other should move on and marry someone else. That life is for living and you only get one shot.’

‘That sounds like KT.’

Our arms touch as we walk. Not much, mere grazing. I walk close to him and he does not back away.

I catch a sense of his aftershave in the breeze and I just want to stop and sniff him, breathe him in, open up my nostrils and smell him.

‘Hey, Stevie!’ he yells, then jogs off up the street.

Who the hell is Stevie?

They hug and pat each other’s backs and I realise how tactile Scott is and how I’ve not been close to him tonight, not really.

He runs back to me and says, ‘The guys are going to play pool, get some beers. I’m gonna join them. You want me to get you a cab or something?’

‘No,’ I say, and my voice fails me. I squeak, ‘I’ll be OK.’

He’s leaving me by 34th Street to join his friends? Leaving me here alone?

‘It was nice seeing you, Molly,’ he says, leaning in for a kiss. I feel his smooth, hard cheek next to mine. I reach round for a hug and we hold together for perhaps half a second. The smell of his hair. His chest pushing into mine.

‘It was good to see you,’ I say, my breath close to his ear.

He looks down at me and he’s blushing again and he pulls away and runs off to his friends.

I head north up Ninth Avenue. After the initial shock of his leaving I reassure myself, safe in the knowledge that I can see him again if I choose to. I can spend quality time with him again.

I’m not walking, I am gliding. Floating just above the pavement. My skin feels softer than it has ever felt and I am oblivious to all the water towers, cranes and scaffolding around me. I cross ten more blocks, daydreaming. About how his chest would feel against the heels of my hands. How his fingers might push through my hair.

And then I catch sight of someone.

In a shop window.

He’s staring right back at me.

Suddenly, I’m cold.

There he is again, in a car wing mirror.

I cut down a side street and into a Starbucks.

He’s gone.

I step outside.

No sign of him.

I walk to the corner to hail a cab.

And he steps out from a 7-Eleven and walks right up to me.





Chapter 30


I increase my pace and walk with a group of three middle-aged couples, all of them wearing jeans and white sneakers. We cross over to Port Authority and go in.

He is nowhere.

I leave the group to collect their tickets and I walk further inside and buy a grey beanie hat from a chain store.

He’s not here.

I’m sweating.

People drag their bags around, looking for buses, and I scan from left to right, my pulse racing inside my temples. Is this it? Is this the moment when Bogart DeLuca takes me away, silencing me, neutralising a problem on behalf of his boss? Here to end me with a stab to the heart or a suppressed 9mm round to the back of the head? Maybe the plan to meet at the Pierre Hotel tomorrow was merely a ruse? The generous pay-off was a lie? A misdirection? Maybe this had been the true plan all along?

I take cover behind an escalator.

No sign of him.

I see people walking around with wet hair. One of them shakes an umbrella. I buy a disposable plastic poncho and slide it on.

I walk to Seventh Avenue.

Up to Times Square.

Everyone tells me how this was once a dangerous part of Manhattan, full of pimps and crack dealers. But that was then. Now it’s all Disney and Gap stores. I fit in perfectly wearing my poncho. I’m one of a herd.

I cross towards Sixth and he’s right there on the other side of the road.

Mets cap pulled down low, ill-fitting suit, black shoes.

Or is this when Martinez and a crew of his non-uniform colleagues swoop in and arrest me because my research wasn’t quite thorough enough and I missed a crucial detail: a fibre or a fingerprint?

No.

I was obsessively careful in the apartment. Scrupulous in the extreme. There were no fingerprints.

Did I miss something, though? No. I didn’t miss anything. I can’t have.