He often walked the forty blocks from his apartment building to hers. He doesn’t think she ever walked from her building to his. The ten or so times she was in his apartment, and two or three times she stayed the night in the almost two years they saw each other before he got the job in Baltimore, she came by taxi or subway or bus. Or walked up from West End Avenue and 74th Street after her therapy session, or she was with him after they went to a restaurant or movie or dinner party that was a lot closer to his apartment than hers, so they ended up there. Usually, though, if she was in his neighborhood with him at night, she said she’d like to go home to take care of her cats, or some other reason — she didn’t have her diaphragm or medication with her; she wanted to get an early start in the morning; she still had some work to do that night — and he almost always went with her. Times he didn’t, he put her in a cab. To get to her building, he walked down 75th Street from his building to Columbus Avenue or Amsterdam Avenue or Broadway. Sometimes he went north on Columbus to 96th Street — farther than that, the neighborhood could get a little dangerous — and then go to Broadway and head north to her building from there. More times, he took Amsterdam to 96th Street, and a couple of times to a Hundred-third — Amsterdam seemed safer than Columbus around there — and then go to Broadway and walk to a Hundred-fourteenth and then down to Riverside Drive and her building. Most times — nine out of ten, he’d say — he walked north from Broadway and 75th Street all the way to a Hundred-fourteenth, and almost always on the west side of the street because it was more interesting — more pedestrians, it seemed, and restaurants, markets, bookstores, coffee shops, sidewalk vendors — than the east side of the street, at least once he got past 79th. Also, on Broadway, he liked that he occasionally bumped into people he knew, something he doesn’t ever remember doing on Columbus or Amsterdam. For some reason this seemed to happen a lot more above 96th Street than below. Did he know more people up there? Doesn’t think so. Although from about a Hundred-sixth Street on he would see people from her apartment building she’d introduced him to or he’d met at gatherings she was invited to there or just recognized from the elevator or lobby or standing in front of the building or had started up conversations with in the elevator or lobby, or at the annual pre-Christmas party and used-book sale on the ground floor and once at a party in the lobby for a much-loved doorman who was retiring after working there for thirty years. He also has to consider that her building was much closer to Broadway than his. He never walked to her building from Central Park West or West End Avenue. They’d be dull walks, and going up to Central Park West would be taking him a little out of the way. He doesn’t know why he never walked to her building even part of the way on Riverside Drive. He now sees it could have been an interesting walk, with the view of this park and river from various spots, and if the sun was setting, beautiful. He did, a couple of times, walk inside Riverside Park from 79th Street and Riverside Drive to a Hundred-tenth. And he once jogged from his building to Riverside Park and then all the way in it to a Hundred-tenth and Riverside Drive, walking the last two blocks to her building so he wouldn’t come into the lobby panting and sweating. He walked a few times to her building when it was snowing, even heavily, because he always dressed for it — warm coat, wool cap, boots, gloves — and he had a complete change of clothing at her place, which she didn’t have at his, if any of his got wet. He never, though, walked there when it was raining hard. Then, with an umbrella and raincoat, he’d take the subway or bus. If the weather was sticky and hot, he’d still walk to her building, but more slowly, and about half the times stopped around 86th or 90th Street and Broadway and took the bus the rest of the way. He also never — or maybe he did this once and found out it was a mistake — walked to her place with a heavy package or two or a briefcase loaded down with books. Sometimes he stopped for coffee on these walks. Or he’d pick up food for them for dinner that night, Chinese or Indian takeout or from the market right up the block from her building, or bread or pastries or both from one of the bakeries or gourmet food stores on Broadway. Then he would reach her building, say hello to the doorman, take the elevator up and ring her bell, even after he had a key to her apartment for more than a year, just to have her open the door and smile at him, and often she’d already be smiling, and say something like “Hiya, lovie” or “I’m so happy to see you” and he’d say something like “I’m so happy to see you too,” and they’d kiss, a lot of those times even before one of them shut the door.
She thought of and arranged so many of the things for them. The one big exception that he can think of now might be the apartment in Baltimore they moved into five weeks before Rosalind was born. He was at a dinner party about six months before and a woman there, an art history professor at his school, mentioned she had a year’s sabbatical in New York the next academic year and was looking for a sublet there. “That’s a coincidence,” he said. “My wife and I will have to find a nice apartment here. Maybe we could swap for a year.” He looked at hers, liked it, she said she liked theirs sight unseen—“Doorman? Columbia area? Overlooking the river? And at that rent? Let’s shake on it”—and when the year was up they stayed on because the woman got a teaching position somewhere else. He was also the one who suggested they add a porch to their house, but she got the builders for it and designed it herself. They were sitting on the porch of the farmhouse they rented in Maine. Maybe ten years ago. Having a drink and watching the sky light up in different colors from the sunset, and out of nowhere he said “I just had a brilliant idea. The sky inspired it. You might not go for it, but it’s so pleasant out here, why don’t we have a porch like this one built onto our house?” “Not go for it?” she said. “I love the idea and have thought of it myself several times but never brought it up because I was sure you’d say it would be too expensive.” “Hang money for once,” he said. “I’ve been thrifty for too long. Save, save, save, and for what? For something like this. And what could it cost? Oh, maybe a lot. But the house is paid up and the expenses and taxes for it aren’t too bad. A porch would raise the value of it a little, so also the assessment of the house the next time around. But we both have good jobs — mine I can’t be fired from — and where we get a small raise every year. And we’ll keep it simple. Interchangeable glass and screens. Raw wood. No fancy furniture or embellishments. When we want something to sit on, we’ll bring out the chairs from inside. Okay, that’s going too far. Buy two chairs. Buy a little table. I figure the best spot for it would be off the living room, since we have that door to the outside there we never use and all that space it opens to. Though we won’t be able to see the sky like this from it and the occasional rainbow, we’ll still have a nice view of our woods and the road. We’ll watch joggers jogging past. Cyclists. The mail deliverers in their electric trucks. But you tell me.” “I can’t believe you’re saying this,” and he said “I know. Because I’ve also been so cheap.” She took his free hand and squeezed it. “That clinches the deal,” he said. Maureen came out and said “Why’s Mommy crying?” “Is she? Over something as silly as a porch.” The VCR. Rosalind was a few months old. Gwen said “That poor French poet I’m translating wrote that he bought a VCR in Paris and watched