Page 67 of Still Me
And just like that she was asleep. I waited a moment, placed my turquoise cashmere round-neck over her to keep her from getting chilly, and then I climbed to my feet.
“You can leave her in here, if you like,” I whispered. “Ilaria’s in the kitchen with the other two. I think she’s—”
I turned and let out a yelp. Sam stood in my doorway, his arms folded and a half smile on his face. A carryall sat on the floor between his feet. I blinked at him, wondering if I was hallucinating. And then my hands rose slowly to my face.
“Surprise!” he mouthed silently, and I stumbled across the room and pushed him out into the hall where I could kiss him.
—
He had planned it the night I had told him about my unexpected free weekend, he told me. Jake had been no problem—there was no shortage of friends happy to take a free concert ticket—and he had reorganized his work, begging favors and swapping shifts. Then he had booked a last-minute cheap flight and come to surprise me.
“You’re lucky I didn’t decide to do the same to you.”
“The thought did cross my mind, at thirty thousand feet. I had this sudden vision of you flying in the opposite direction.”
“How long have we got?”
“Only forty-eight hours, I’m afraid. I have to leave early Monday morning. But, Lou, I just—I didn’t want to wait another few weeks.”
He didn’t say any more but I knew what he meant. “I’m so happy you did. Thank you. Thank you. So who let you in?”
“Your man at Reception. He warned me about the kids. Then asked me whether I’d recovered from my food poisoning.” He raised an eyebrow.
“Yeah. There are no secrets in this building.”
“He also told me that you were a doll and the nicest person here. Which I knew already, of course. And then some little old lady with a yappy dog came along the corridor and started yelling at him about refuse collection so I left him to it.”
We drank coffee until Ashok’s wife arrived and took the children back. Her name was Meena and, glowing with the residual energy of her community march, she thanked me wholeheartedly and told us about the library in Washington Heights they were trying to save. Ilaria didn’t seem to want to hand Abhik back to her: she was busy chuckling to him, gently pinching his cheeks and making him laugh. The whole time we stood there with the two women, chatting, I felt Sam’s hand on the small of my back, his huge frame filling our kitchen, his free hand around one of our coffee cups, and I felt suddenly as if this place were a few degrees more my home because I would now be able to picture him in it.
“Very pleased to meet you,” he had said to Ilaria, holding out his hand, and instead of her normal look of blank suspicion, she had smiled, a small smile, and shaken it. I realized how few people took the trouble to introduce themselves to her. She and I were invisibles, most of the time, and Ilaria—perhaps by virtue of her age or nationality—even more so than me.
“Make sure Mr. Gopnik doesn’t see him,” she muttered, as Sam went to the bathroom. “No boyfriends allowed in the building. Use the service entrance.” She shook her head as if she couldn’t believe she was acceding to something so immoral.
“Ilaria, I won’t forget this. Thank you,” I said. I put my arms out as if to hug her but she gave me the gimlet stare. I stopped in my tracks and turned it into a sort of double thumbs-up instead.
—
We ate pizza—with safe vegetarian toppings—and then we stopped in a dark, grubby bar where baseball blared from a small TV screen over our heads and sat at a tiny table with our knees pressed together. Half the time I had no idea what we were talking about because I couldn’t believe Sam was there, in front of me, leaning back in his chair, laughing at things I said and running his hand over his head. As if by mutual consent we kept off the topics of Katie Ingram and Josh, and instead we talked about our families. Jake had a new girlfriend and was rarely at Sam’s anymore. He missed him, he said, even as he understood that no seventeen-year-old boy really wanted to be hanging around with his uncle. “He’s a lot happier, and his dad still hasn’t sorted himself out, so I should just be glad for him. But it’s weird. I got used to having him around.”
“You can always go and see my family,” I said.
“I know.”
“Can I just tell you for the fifty-eighth time how happy I am that you’re here?”
“You can tell me anything you like, Louisa Clark,” he said softly, and lifted my knuckles to his lips.
—
We stayed at the bar until eleven. Oddly, despite the amount of time we had together, neither of us felt the panicky urgency we’d had last time to make the most of every minute. That he was there was such an unexpected bonus that I think we had both silently agreed just to enjoy being around each other. There was no need to sightsee, to tick off experiences, or to run to bed. It was, as the young people say, all good.
We fell out of the bar wrapped around each other, as happy drunks do, and I stepped onto the curb, put two fingers into my mouth, and whistled, not flinching as the yellow cab screeched to a halt in front of me. I turned to motion Sam in, but he was staring at me.
“Oh. Yeah. Ashok taught me. You have to kind of put your fingers underneath your tongue. Look—like this.”
I beamed at him, but something about his expression troubled me. I thought he’d enjoy my little taxi-summoning flourish, but instead it was as if he suddenly didn’t recognize me.
We arrived back to a silent building. The Lavery stood hushed and majestic overlooking the park, rising out of the noise and chaos of the city as if it were somehow above that kind of thing. Sam stopped as we reached the covered walkway that extended from the front door and gazed up at the structure towering above him, at its monumental brick façade, its Palladian-style windows. He shook his head, almost to himself, and we walked in. The marble lobby was hushed, night man dozing in Ashok’s office. We ignored the service lift and walked up the staircase, our feet muffled on the huge sweep of royal blue carpet, our hands sliding along the polished brass balustrade, then walked up another flight until we were on the Gopniks’ corridor. In the distance Dean Martin started to bark. I let us in and closed the huge door softly behind us.
