The Cloisters(25)

“Ready?” said Rachel, coming up behind me. “I want to show you something.”

“If you need to stay—”

“I don’t. Sometimes Patrick forgets The Cloisters isn’t my whole life. Even if it’s his.”

I nodded, letting myself touch the flowers one last time.



* * *



We walked down the winding paths of Fort Tryon Park, past runners and older couples on benches, past toddlers lying on patches of grass and children using the thick shrubbery to play hide-and-seek. Like schoolmates, we held books to our chests and walked two abreast. Our steps steady, even, synchronized. It was us, I realized, against the world. An arrangement we had hashed out silently during our meetings with Patrick.

If we had been at the Met, maybe we would have gone to a small chic bar with a French name and a select clientele, but this far north, Rachel led me to Dyckman Street, where we walked through two graffitied concrete underpasses until we found ourselves on the Hudson, where a bar sprawled alongside a public boat launch and sailing dock. The tables were plastic, and white umbrellas offered shade to the handful of people who enjoyed their drinks, skin pinkened from the sun and wind. There was no fanfare, no hostess, no formal menu, just a place to order and a place to sit and wait. It delighted me that places like this could exist in a city like Manhattan, where I had once imagined everything cheap and beautiful had long ago been remade into something trendy and expensive.

Rachel ordered our drinks, and I watched her lean over the bar to chat with the bartender; he didn’t seem to mind her body in his space and kept returning to hover near her. In between the conversations she shared with the bartender, the man sitting on the stool next to her kept trying to edge his way into her attention. When her head tipped back in laughter—from whose words I couldn’t be sure—I noticed, again, the undulating way her body moved, all softness and curves, no sharp points like the ones I had begun to develop. When she returned, she put down two pale beers. I could feel the late-afternoon sun tanning my arms, baking them in a way that reminded me of my childhood in Washington. But the call of the seagulls, the constant motoring along the river, was entirely new.

“What do you think of Leo?” she said, finally, taking a sip, the foam clinging to her lips.

“The gardener?”

“Mmm,” she said, “yes, the gardener.”

“I don’t know him.”

“I didn’t ask if you knew him. I asked what you thought of him.” She paused and considered the question. “If you think of him?”

“I think of him,” I said, trying to keep the heat out of my cheeks when I remembered the way he had touched me that day in the garden, the weird intensity with which he held my gaze, even the way his hand had rested above Rachel’s head.

“He seems to be thinking about you,” she said, looking out across the river.

“He’s not why I’m here.” Although I wanted to believe that they had talked about me. That the day I saw them in the garden, I was the topic of conversation, and nothing else.

“Well, that’s the best way, then, isn’t it?”

Out on the Hudson, sailboats waited to catch the breeze in their miniature triangle sails, the wind shuddering against their white canvas, the loose snapping audible from shore.

“I’m only here for the summer,” I said.

“That’s what I thought, too,” she said, looking at me over her sunglasses. “But there’s something about this place.” She gestured out at the Hudson. “You know, Leo is the one who showed me this bar. I never would have found it otherwise. He knows so many little spots in New York like this.”

I felt a surge of jealousy, thinking about Leo and Rachel here, maybe even at the same table. But I couldn’t tell who I was jealous of.

“So you’ve known him for a long time?” I asked.

Rachel shrugged and changed the subject in that way she had—final, closed. “Do you want to go sailing?”

I didn’t have a chance to answer before she added, “Let’s go.” She drained her mostly full glass. “Come on.”

She was already pulling me toward the marina where the sailboats were tied up with colorful ropes in slips, a kaleidoscope of clanging hulls and bumpers, her hand wrapped around mine. I couldn’t help but notice that whenever I asked Rachel personal questions she changed the subject, or even the scenery. And yet, it was clear there were things she wanted me to know—clues about her life before me. I knew we would get there someday, and so I tripped behind her, happy to let things unfold in the way they were meant to.

“I don’t know how to sail,” I said.

“I do.”

I looked down at the thin cotton dress I had worn to work, the soft leather flats that Rachel had handed down to me, and the sailors on the dock, all in long-sleeve shirts and shorts, sensible shoes. But Rachel didn’t look behind her. She trotted down the dock until we came across a boat tethered near the end and began expertly untangling the lines, her long fingers working on instinct, coiling, throwing them into the boat and holding on to the deck so that I could slip in.

“Hurry up,” she said, and I noticed her glance over her shoulder. The boat was small and unsteady, and it took everything in me to grip the edges of the hull, what tiny bit of railing there was. The whole thing so shallow I thought I might just slip into the Hudson. Rachel leaned her body against the boat and gave us a surprisingly forceful shove before angling the bow out to join the current. As she lifted the main sail, pulling confidently on a rope and cleating it down, the wind caught up and lurched us forward. I finally spared a look back at the dock, where the man who had been sitting at the bar was cupping the sun out of his eyes and yelling. But the sound was lost to the rustle of the main sheet. I turned and looked toward the open stretch of water, a smile playing on my lips.