Lock Every Door(36)

On the next page is a striking photograph of an even more striking woman. Her gown is satin. Silk gloves reach her elbows. Her hair is midnight black and her skin an alabaster white. Her face is made up of sharp angles that, when joined together, merge into something arresting, even beautiful.

She stares at the camera with eyes that are at once foreign and familiar. They seem to pierce the lens, looking beyond it, directly at me. I’ve seen that look before. Not just in another photograph but in person.

“This woman looks a bit like Greta Manville,” I say.

“That’s because it’s her grandmother,” Nick says. “Her family and mine were friends for decades. She lived in the Bartholomew for many years. Greta’s whole family has. She’s what we call a legacy tenant.”

“Just like you.”

“I suppose I am. The last in a long line of Bartholomew residents.”

“No siblings?”

“Only child. You?”

I glance again at the picture of Greta’s grandmother. She reminds me of Jane. Not so much in looks but in aura. I detect restlessness in her eyes. An urge to roam.

“Same,” I say.

“And your parents?”

“They died,” I say quietly. “Six years ago.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” Nick says. “It’s tough. I know that from my own experience. We grow up expecting our parents to live forever until, one day, they’re suddenly gone.”

He transfers the pizza onto two plates and carries them to the round table in the dining room. We sit side by side, positioned so that both of us can look out the window at twilight settling over Central Park. The arrangement gives it the feel of a date, which makes me nervous. It’s been a while since I’ve done anything resembling a date. I had forgotten what it feels like to be a normal single person.

Only nothing about this is normal. Normal people don’t dine in rooms overlooking Central Park. Nor is their dinner companion a handsome doctor who lives in one of the most famous buildings in the city.

“Tell me, Jules,” Nick says, “what do you do?”

“As in for a living?”

“That’s what I was getting at, yeah.”

“I’m an apartment sitter.”

“I mean other than that.”

I take a bite of pizza, stalling. My hope is that Nick will lose patience and move to a different topic. When he doesn’t, I’m forced to swallow and admit the sad truth.

“I’m between jobs at the moment,” I say. “I was laid off recently and haven’t been able to find something else.”

“No harm in that,” Nick replies. “You could even look at it as a blessing in disguise. What would you really like to be doing?”

“I . . . I don’t actually know. I’ve never given it much thought.”

“Never?” Nick says, dropping his slice of pizza onto his plate to punctuate his surprise.

I have, of course. When I was young and hopeful and encouraged to ponder such things. At age ten, I wanted to be a ballerina or a veterinarian, blissfully unaware of the rigors specific to both professions. In college, I chose English lit as my major with the idea that maybe I’d become an editor or a teacher. When I graduated, following Chloe from Pennsylvania to New York with a mountain of debt weighing me down, I couldn’t just wait and choose what I wanted to do. I had to take whatever job paid the bills and put food on the table.

“Tell me about you,” I tell Nick, desperate to change the subject. “Did you always want to be a surgeon?”

“I didn’t have much of a choice,” he says. “It’s what was expected of me.”

“But what would you really like to be doing?”

Nick cracks a smile. “Touché.”

“Turnabout is fair play,” I say.

“Then I’ll rephrase my answer. I wanted to be a surgeon because that’s what I was exposed to from a very early age. I come from a long line of surgeons, beginning with my great-grandfather. All my life, I knew how proud they were of their work. They helped people. They saved people on the verge of being lost. It’s like they were mystics—bringing people back from the dead. Looking at it that way, I was all too happy to join the family business.”

“And business must have been booming if they could afford an apartment in the Bartholomew.”

“I’m very fortunate,” Nick says. “But honestly, this place never felt special. It is. I know that now. But growing up, it was just home, you know? When you’re a kid, you don’t realize your situation is different from everyone else’s. It wasn’t until I went away to college that I realized how unusual it was to grow up here. That’s when I finally understood that most people don’t get to live in a place like the Bartholomew.”

I pick a slice of pepperoni off my pizza and pop it into my mouth. “That’s why I can’t understand why someone like Ingrid would want to leave.”

“I’m surprised you went to Greta,” Nick says. “I didn’t think they knew each other. Come to think of it, I didn’t realize you knew Ingrid.”

“Only slightly,” I say. “You didn’t know her at all, did you?”

“We met briefly. Just a quick hello the day she moved in. I might have seen her around the building once or twice after that, but it was nothing substantial.”