He picks up on the second ring. “Dannie,” he says. He’s whispering. “Hey.”
“Yeah. Hi.”
I’m in the bedroom of our apartment, my bandaged feet kneading the soft carpet. “Is Bella there?”
There’s a pause on the other end of the line.
“Come on, Aaron. She won’t return my phone calls.”
“She’s actually sleeping,” he says.
“Oh.” It’s barely 8 p.m.
“What are you doing?”
I look down at my sweatpants. “Nothing,” I say. “I should probably get back to work. Will you tell her I called?”
“Yeah, of course,” he says.
All at once I feel irrationally angry. Aaron, this stranger. This man, who she has known for less than four months, is the one in her apartment. He’s the one she’s turning to. He doesn’t even know her. And me, her best friend, her family—
“She needs to call me,” I say. My tone has changed. It bears the fire of my thumping thoughts.
“I know,” Aaron says. His voice is low. “It’s just been—”
“I don’t care what it has been. With all due respect, I don’t know you. My best friend needs surgery on Tuesday. She needs to call me.”
Aaron clears his throat. “Do you want to take a walk?” he asks me.
“What?”
“A walk,” he says. “I could use some air. It kind of sounds like you could, too.”
I’m not sure what to say. I want to tell him I have too much work, and it’s true — I’ve been distracted all week trying to prepare the documents we need for signature. We still don’t have everything from CIT, and Epson is getting anxious; they want to announce next week. But I don’t say no. I need to talk to Aaron. To explain to him that I have this, that he can go back to whatever life he was living last spring.
“Fine,” I say. “The corner of Perry and Washington. Twenty minutes.”
He’s waiting on the curb when my taxi pulls up. It’s still light out, although it will fade soon. October hangs a whisper away — the promise of only more darkness. Aaron is wearing jeans and a green sweater, and so am I, and for a minute, the visual as I pay the driver and get out of the cab — two matching people meeting each other — makes me almost laugh.
“And to think I almost brought my orange bag,” he says. He gestures to the leather Tod’s crossbody Bella gave me for my twenty-fifth birthday.
We start to walk. Slowly. My feet are still sore and raw. Down Perry toward the West Side Highway. “I used to live down here,” he says, filling the silence. “Before I moved to Midtown. Just for six months; it was my first apartment. My building was a block over, on Hudson. I liked the West Village, but it was kind of impossible to get anywhere on public transport.”
“There’s West Fourth,” I say.
He moves his face in a sign of recognition. “We were above this pizza place that closed,” he says. “I remember everything I owned smelled like Italian food. My clothes, sheets, everything.”
I surprise myself by laughing. “When I first moved to the city, I lived in Hell’s Kitchen. My entire apartment smelled like curry. I can’t even look at the stuff now.”
“Oh, see,” he says, “I just always crave pizza.”
“How long have you been an architect?” I ask him.
“Since the beginning,” he says. “I think I was born one. I went to school for it. For a little while I thought maybe I’d be an engineer, but I wasn’t smart enough.”
“I doubt that.”
“You shouldn’t. It’s the truth.”
We walk in silence for a moment.
“Did you ever think about being a litigator?” he asks me, so suddenly I’m caught off guard.
“Excuse me?”
“I mean, I know you practice deal law. I’m wondering if you ever thought about being one of those lawyers who goes to court. I bet you’d crush at it.” He gives me a one-eyed smile. “You seem like you’d be good at winning an argument.”
“No,” I say. “Litigating isn’t for me.”
“How come?”
I sidestep around a puddle of liquid on the sidewalk. In New York you never know what is water and what is urine.
“Litigating is bending the law to your will, it’s deception, it’s all about perception. Can you convince a jury? Can you make people feel? In deal making, nothing is above the law. The written words are what matters. Everything is there in black and white.”
“Fascinating,” he says.
“I think so.”
Aaron lifts his hands from his sides and rubs them together. “So listen,” he says. “How are you?”
The question makes me stop walking.
So does he.
I turn slightly inward, and he mirrors me. “Not good,” I say, honestly.
“Yeah,” he says. “I figured. I can’t imagine how hard this must be for you.”
I look at him. His eyes meet mine.
“She’s—” I start, but I can’t finish it. The wind picks up, dancing the leaves and trash into a veritable ballet. I start to cry.
“It’s okay,” he says. He makes a move forward, but I take one back and we stand on the street like that, not quite meeting, until the river quiets.
“It’s not,” I say.
“Yeah,” he says. “I know.”
I swallow what remains of my tears. I look across at him. I feel anger hit my bloodstream like alcohol. “You don’t,” I say. “You have no idea.”
“Dan—”
“You don’t have to do this, you know. No one would blame you.”
He peers at me. “What do you mean?” He seems to genuinely not understand.
“I mean, this isn’t what you signed up for. You met a pretty girl, she was healthy, she’s not anymore.”
“Dannie,” Aaron says, like he’s choosing his words very carefully. “It’s important that you know that I’m not going anywhere.”
“Why?” I ask him.
A jogger passes by and, sensing the tension of the moment, crosses the street. A car horn honks. A siren whirls somewhere down Hudson.
“Because I love her,” he says.
I ignore the confession. I’ve heard it before. “You don’t even know her.”
I start walking again. A kid zooms past us with a basketball, his mother sprinting after him. The city. Full and buzzy and unaware that somewhere, fifteen blocks south, tiny cells are multiplying in a plot to destroy the whole world.
“Dannie. Stop.”
I don’t. And then I feel Aaron’s hand on my arm. He yanks and turns me around.
“Ow!” I say. “What the hell.” I rub my upper arm. I am, all at once, overcome with the urge to slap him, to punch him in the eye and leave him, crumpled and bleeding, on the corner of Perry Street.
“Sorry,” he says. His eyebrows are knit together. He has a dimple in the space above his nose. “But you need to listen to me. I love her. That’s the long and short of it. I don’t think I could live with myself if I bailed now, but that’s not even relevant because, like I said, I love her. This isn’t like anything I’ve ever had before. This is real. I’m here.”
His chest rises and falls like it’s taking physical effort to be upright. That I understand.
“It’s going to be more painful if you leave later,” I say. I feel my lip quiver again. I demand it to stop.
Aaron reaches out to me. He takes both my elbows in his palms. His chest is so close I can smell him.
“I promise,” he says.
We must walk back. I must call a car. We must say goodnight. I must come home and tell David. I must, at some point, fall asleep. But later I don’t remember. All I remember is his promise. I take it. I hold it in my heart like proof.
Chapter Twenty-Two
On Tuesday, October 4, I arrive at Mount Sinai on East One Hundredth Street an hour before the scheduled surgery. I still haven’t spoken to Bella, but I come to her pre-op room to find both her father and mother there. I don’t think they’ve been in the same room in over a decade.