Page 74 of The New Couple in 5B

“I’m not your Uber Eats delivery,” I say, pressing inside.

“Rosie.” He doesn’t sound happy to see me. “What are you doing here?”

“Are you going to let me up?”

I don’t hear anything for a moment, but then the inner door opens, too.

I hoof it up the three flights and he’s waiting for me at his door in sweats and a tattered Ziggy Stardust T-shirt under a plaid overshirt, house shoes. His hair is wild; he hasn’t shaved, and his eyes are rimmed with purple fatigue.

“Wow, one day out of work and you just fall to pieces, huh?”

“Don’t judge me.”

He stands aside and lets me in; the shades are drawn, and the living room is dim, the television on but muted. Pizza box on the coffee table, jacket slung over the chair, dishes in the sink. Max is a neatnik. This is not like him. It’s a blow; I get that. But this seems like a steep descent.

There might be more to it.Isn’t that what Amy said?

My internet search this morning didn’t reveal anything about his firing, the imprint folding. I haven’t heard from Amy about my new editor.

There’s a stack of books on the big chair next to the couch; he clears them aside so that I can sit.

“Coffee?” he asks.

“Sure.”

The kitchen is visible from where I’m sitting. He brews a dark roast in the Chemex. Usually, we’d be chatting about this thing or that, but the silence is heavy between us. I start rambling about Detective Crowe’s visit, how Dana’s death has been ruled a homicide.

“Another murder associated with the Windermere,” he says when I’m done. He brings my coffee, sits across from me. “Will you include it?”

It feels like an odd question, even though I’ve considered it myself. A woman has died. This is a hazard of crime journalism, that people get treated like characters in a story, that some of the horror of their victimhood is diminished, nearly fictionalized in its retelling. We need distance to narrate, but too much distance and we lose our humanity.

“Maybe,” I say. “But I’m more concerned right now about what happened to her. Did it have something to do with us? The apartment?”

“You don’t know with what or whom she was involved.”

Something about his phrasing makes me think of Olivia. And I remember how intimate they seemed at the gallery. I try to imagine them together, but I can’t. She belongs to the hard city of crime and punishment; she’s prickly, edgy. He’s a craft cocktail, art gallery, history geek; he’s—Max. He froths some milk.

“I talked to Amy last night,” I say into the silence that falls. “She said that they are going to publish the book at Dunham and assign me a new editor.”

Max tries for a smile. “I’m glad. I knew they would.”

My eyes fall on his bookshelf. I see several copies of my book there. It feels like our book, because he was so much a part of the process. It’s a loss I’m already grieving.

“If I were in a different place in my life, I’d walk away with you,” I say.

He looks at me across the distance between us, pushes up his glasses. “I know you would. I know that, Rosie. I would never ask that of you. I wouldn’twantyou to do that.”

I sink deeper into the plush chair. My nausea has subsided some, but the stale, greasy odor coming from the pizza box isn’t helping.

“I don’t know if I can do this without you,” I admit.

He clangs around the kitchen some more, tidying up, putting some beer cans in the recycling. Then he comes over with our coffee cups, sits across from me.

“You don’t have to,” he says, watching me. “We’re still—friends. Best friends, right?”

“Of course.”

“So that doesn’t change. We’ll still talk about the book all the time.” He sweeps his arm around the apartment. “And I’ll have loads of time to help with research.”

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