The Other Mrs.(8)

I turned away, kept walking, didn’t give him the satisfaction of smiling back.

I felt his eyes follow me from behind.

I spied my reflection in a storefront window. My hair, long, straight, with bangs. Rust-colored, stretching halfway down my back, over the shoulders of an arctic-blue tee that matched my eyes.

I saw what that chad was looking at.

I ran a hand through my hair. I didn’t look half bad.

Overhead, the “L” thundered past. It was loud. But not loud enough to tune out the street preacher. Adulterers, whores, blasphemers, gluttons. We were all doomed.

The day was hot. Not just summer but the dog days of it. Eighty or ninety degrees out. Everything smelled rancid, like sewage. The smell of garbage gagged me as I passed an alley. The hot air trapped the smell so there was no escaping it, just as there was no escaping the heat.

I was looking up, watching the “L,” getting my bearings. I wondered what time it was. I knew every clock in the city. The Peacock clock, Father Time, Marshall Field’s. Four clocks on the Wrigley Building, so that it didn’t matter which way you came at it from, you could still see a clock. But there were no clocks there, on the corner where I was at.

I didn’t see the stoplight before me go red. I didn’t see the cab come hustling past, racing another cab to snatch up a fare down the street. I stepped right into the street with both feet.

I felt him first. I felt the grip of his hand tighten on my wrist like a pipe wrench so that I couldn’t move.

In an instant, I fell in love with that hand—warm, capable, decisive. Protective. His fingers were thick; his hands big with clean, short nails. There was a tiny tattoo, a glyph on the skin between his fingers and thumb. Something small and pointy, like a mountain peak. For a minute, that was all I saw. That inky mountain peak.

His grip was powerful and swift. In one stroke, he stopped me. A second later, the cab raced past, not six inches from my feet. I felt the rush of it on my face. The wind off the car pushed me away, and then sucked me back in as it passed. I saw a flash of colors only; I felt the breeze. I didn’t see the cab shoot past, not until it was speeding off down the street. Only then did I know how close I came to being roadkill.

Overhead, the “L” screeched to a stop on the tracks.

I looked down. There was his hand. My eyes went up his wrist, his arm; they went to his eyes. His eyes were wide, his eyebrows pulled together in concern. He was worried about me. No one ever worried about me.

The light turned green, but we didn’t move. We didn’t speak. All around, people stepped past us while we stood in the way, blocking them. A minute went by. Two. Still, he didn’t let go of my wrist. His hand was warm, tacky. It was humid outside. So hot it was hard to breathe. There was no fresh air. My thighs were moist with sweat. They stuck to my jeans, made the arctic-blue tee cling to me.

When we finally spoke, we spoke at the same time. That was close.

We laughed together, released a synchronous sigh.

I could feel my heart pound inside of me. It had nothing to do with the cab.

I bought him coffee. It sounds so unimaginative after the fact, doesn’t it? So cliché.

But that was all I could come up with in a pinch.

Let me buy you a coffee, I said. Repay you for saving my life.

I fluttered my eyelashes at him. Put a hand on his chest. Gave him a smile.

Only then did I see that he already had a coffee. There in his other hand sat some iced froufrou drink. Our eyes went to it at the same time. We sniggered. He lobbed it into a trash can, said, Pretend you didn’t just see that.

A coffee would be nice, he said. When he smiled, he smiled with his eyes.

He told me his name was Will. There was a stutter when he said it, so that it came out Wi-Will. He was nervous, shy around girls, shy around me. I liked that about him.

I took his hand into mine, said, It’s nice to meet you, Wi-Will.

We sat in a booth, side by side. We drank our coffees. We talked; we laughed.

That night there was a party, one of those rooftop venues with a city view. An engagement party for Sadie’s friends, Jack and Emily. She was the one who was invited, not me. I don’t think Emily liked me much, but I planned to go anyway, just the same as Cinderella went to the royal ball. I had a dress picked out, one I took from Sadie’s closet. It fit me to a T, though she was bigger than me, Sadie with her broad shoulders and her thick hips. She had no business wearing that dress. I was doing her a favor.

I had a bad habit of shopping in Sadie’s closet. Once, when I was there, all alone or so I thought, I heard the jiggle of keys in the front door lock. I slipped out of the room, into the living room, arriving only a second before she did. There stood my darling roommate, hands on her hips, looking quizzically at me.

You look like you’ve been up to no good, she said. I didn’t say one way or the other whether I’d been being good. It wasn’t often that I was good. Sadie was the rule follower, not me.

That dress wasn’t the only thing I took from her. I also used her credit card to buy new shoes, metallic wedge sandals with a crisscross strap.

I said to Will that day in the coffee shop about the engagement party: We don’t even know each other. But I’d be an idiot not to ask. Come with me?

I’d be honored, he said, making eyes at me in the café booth. He sat close, his elbow brushing against mine.

He’d come to the party.