Still 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 facade, 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.

  Nathan's light was off, and along the corridor Ilaria's TV burbled distantly. Sam and I tiptoed through the large hall, past the kitchen and down to my room. I brushed my teeth and changed into a T-shirt, wishing, suddenly, that I slept in something a little more sophisticated. When I emerged Sam was sitting on the bed, staring at the wall. I stopped brushing, and looked at him as quizzically as you can, when you have a mouth full of peppermint-flavored foam.

  "What?"

  "It's . . . strange," he said.

  "My T-shirt?"

  "No. Being here. In this place."

  I turned back to the bathroom and spat and rinsed my mouth.

  "It's fine," I began, turning off the tap. "Ilaria is cool and Mr. Gopnik won't be back until Sunday evening. If you're really uncomfortable tomorrow I'll book us a room in this little hotel Nathan knows two blocks down and we can--"

  He shook his head. "Not this. You. Here. When we were at the hotel it was just like you and me as normal. We were just in a different location. Here, I can finally see how everything has changed for you. You live on Fifth Avenue, for crying out loud. One of the most expensive addresses in the world. You work in this crazy building. Everywhere smells of money. And it's totally normal to you."

  I felt oddly defensive. "I'm still me."

  "Sure," he said. "But you're in a different place now. Literally."

  He said it evenly, but there was something in the conversation that made me feel uneasy. I padded up to him in my bare feet, put my hands on his shoulders and said, with a little more urgency than I had intended, "I'm still just Louisa Clark, your slightly wonky girl from Stortfold." When he didn't speak, I added, "I'm just the hired help here, Sam."

  He looked into my eyes, then reached a hand up and stroked my cheek. "You don't get it. You can't see how you've changed. You're different, Lou. You walk around these city streets like you own them. You hail taxis with a whistle and they come. Even your stride is different. It's like . . . I don't know. You've grown into yourself. Or maybe you've grown into someone else."

  "See, now you're saying a nice thing and yet somehow it sounds like a bad thing."

  "Not bad," he said. "Just . . . different."

  I moved then so that I was astride him, my bare legs pressed against his jeans. I put my face up close to his, my nose against his, my mouth inches from his own. I looped my arms around his neck, so that I could feel the softness of his short dark hair against my skin, his warm breath on my chest. It was dark, and a cold neon light beamed a narrow ray across my bed. I kissed him, and with that kiss I tried to convey something of what he meant to me, the fact that I could hail a million taxis with a whistle and still know that he was the only person I would want to climb into one with. I kissed him, my kisses increasingly deep and intense, pressing into him, until he gave in to me, until his hands closed around my waist and slid upward, until I felt the exact moment he stopped thinking. He pulled me sharply into him, his mouth crushing mine, and I gasped as he twisted, pushing me back down, his whole being reduced to one intention.

  That night I gave something to Sam. I was uninhibited, unlike myself. I became someone other than myself because I was so desperate to show him the truth of my need for him. It was a fight, even if he didn't know it. I hid my own power and made him blind with his. There was no tenderness, no soft words. When our eyes met I was almost angry with him. It is still me, I told him silently. Don't you dare doubt me. Not after all this. He covered my eyes, placed his mouth against my hair, and he possessed me. I let him. I wanted him half mad with it. I wanted him to feel like he'd taken everything. I have no idea what sounds I made but when it was over my ears were ringing.

  "That was . . . different," he said, when we could breathe again. His hand slid across me, tender now, his thumb gently stroking my thigh. "You've never been like that before."

  "Maybe I never missed you that much before." I leaned over and kissed his chest. It left salt on my lips. We lay there in the dark, blinking at the neon strip across the ceiling.

  "It's the same sky," he said, into the dark. "That's what we have to keep remembering. We're still under the same sky."

  In the distance a police siren started, followed by another in a discordant descant. I never really registered them anymore: the sounds of New York had become familiar, fading into unheard white noise. Sam turned to me, his face shadowed. "I started to forget things, you know. All the little parts of you that I love. I couldn't remember the scent of your hair." He lowered his head to mine and breathed in. "Or the shape of your jaw. Or the way your skin shivers when I do this . . ." He ran a finger lightly down from my collarbone and I half smiled at my body's involuntary reaction. "That lovely dazed way you look at me afterward . . . I had to come here, to remind myself."

 
"I'm still me, Sam," I said.

  He kissed me, his lips landing softly, four, five times on mine, a whisper. "Well, whichever you you are, Louisa Clark, I love you," he said, and rolled slowly, with a sigh, onto his back.

  But it was at that point I had to acknowledge an uncomfortable truth. I had been different with him. And it wasn't just because I wanted to show him how much I wanted him, how much I adored him, though that had been part of it.

  On some dark, hidden level, I had wanted to show him I was better than her.

  14

  We slept until after ten, then walked downtown to the diner near Columbus Circle. We ate until our stomachs hurt, drank gallons of stewed coffee, and sat opposite each other with our knees entwined.

  "Glad you came?" I said, like I didn't know the answer.

  He reached out a hand and placed it gently behind my neck, leaning forward across the table until he could kiss me, oblivious to the other diners, until I had all the answer I needed. Around us sat middle-aged couples with weekend newspapers, groups of outlandishly dressed nightclubbers who hadn't been to bed yet talking over each other, exhausted couples with cranky children.

  Sam sat back in his chair and let out a long sigh. "My sister always wanted to come here, you know. Seems stupid that she never did."

  "Really?" I reached for his hand and he turned his palm upward to take mine, then closed his fingers over it.

  "Yeah. She had this whole list of things she wanted to do, like go to a baseball game. The Kicks? The Knicks? Some team she wanted to see. And eat in a New York diner. And most of all she wanted to go to the top of the Rockefeller Center."

  "Not the Empire State?"

  "Nah. She said the Rockefeller was meant to be better--some glass observatory thing you could look through. Apparently you can see the Statue of Liberty from there."

  I squeezed his hand. "We could go today."

  "We could," he said. "Makes you think, though, doesn't it?" He reached for his coffee. "You have to take your chances when you can."

  A vague melancholy settled over him. I didn't attempt to shake it. I knew better than anyone how sometimes you just needed to be allowed to feel sad. I waited a moment, then said, "I feel that every day."

  He turned back to me.

  "I'm going to say a Will Traynor thing now." I said it like a warning.

  "Okay."

  "There's almost not a day that I'm here when I don't think he'd be proud of me."

  I felt the tiniest bit anxious as I said it, conscious of how I had tested Sam in the early days of our relationship by going on and on about Will, about what he had meant to me, about the Will-shaped hole he had left behind. But he just nodded. "I think he would, too." He stroked his thumb down my finger. "I know I am. Proud of you. I mean, I miss you like hell. But, Jeez, you're amazing, Lou. You've come to a city you didn't know and you've made this job, with its millionaires and billionaires, work for you, and you've made friends, and you've created this whole thing for yourself. People live their whole lives without doing one tenth of that." He gestured around him.

  "You could do it too." It just fell out of my mouth. "I looked it up. The New York authorities always need good paramedics. But I'm sure we could get round that." I said it jokingly but as soon as the words were out I realized how badly I wanted it to happen. I leaned forward over the table. "Sam. We could rent a little apartment out in Queens or somewhere and then we could be together every night, depending on who was working what insane hours, and we could do this every Sunday morning. We could be together. How amazing would that be?"

  You only get one life. I heard the words ringing in my ears. Say yes, I told him silently. Just say yes.

  He reached across for my hand. Then he sighed. "I can't, Lou. My house isn't built. Even if I decided to rent it out, I'd have to finish it. And I can't leave Jake just yet. He needs to know I'm still around. Just a bit longer."

  I forced my face into a smile, the kind of smile that said I hadn't taken it at all seriously. "Sure! It was just a stupid idea."

  He pressed his lips against my palm. "Not stupid. Just impossible right now."

  --

  We decided by unspoken agreement not to mention potentially difficult subjects again, and that killed a surprising number--his work, his home life, our future--and we walked the High Line, then peeled off to go to the Vintage Clothes Emporium where I greeted Lydia like an old friend and dressed up in a 1970s pink sequined jumpsuit, then a 1950s fur coat and a sailor cap and made Sam laugh.

  "Now this," he said, as I came out of the changing room in a pink and yellow nylon psychedelic shift dress, "is the Louisa Clark I know and love."

  "Did she show you the blue cocktail dress yet? The one with the sleeves?"

  "I can't decide between this and the fur."

  "Sweetheart," said Lydia, lighting a Sobranie, "you can't wear fur on Fifth Avenue. People won't realize you're doing it ironically."

  When I finally left the changing room, Sam was standing at the counter. He held out a package.

  "It's the sixties dress," Lydia said helpfully.

  "You bought it for me?" I took it from him. "Really? You didn't think it was too loud?"

  "It's totally insane," Sam said, straight-faced. "But you looked so happy wearing it . . . so . . ."

  "Oh, my, he's a keeper," whispered Lydia, as we headed out, her cigarette wedged into the corner of her mouth. "Also, next time get him to buy you the jumpsuit. You looked like a total boss."

  --

  We went back to the apartment for a couple of hours and napped, fully dressed and wrapped around each other chastely, overloaded with carbohydrates. At four we rose groggily and agreed we should head out and do our last excursion, as Sam had to catch the eight a.m. flight from JFK the following day. While he packed up his few things I went to make tea in the kitchen where I found Nathan mixing some kind of protein shake. He grinned. "I hear your man is here."

  "Is absolutely nothing private in this corridor?" I filled the kettle and flicked the switch.

  "Not when the walls are this thin, mate, no," he said. "I'm kidding!" he said, as I flushed to my hairline. "Didn't hear a thing. Nice to know from the color of your face that you had a good night, though!"

  I was about to hit him when Sam appeared at the door. Nathan stopped in front of him, reached out a hand. "Ah. The famous Sam. Nice to finally meet you, mate."

  "And you." I waited anxiously to see if they were going to get all alpha male with each other. But Nathan was naturally too laid back and Sam was still sweetened from twenty-four hours of food and sex. They just shook hands, grinned at each other, and exchanged pleasantries.

  "Are you guys going out tonight?" Nathan swigged at his drink as I handed Sam a mug of tea.

  "We thought we might head up to the top of 30 Rockefeller. It's kind of a mission."

  "Aw, mates. You don't want to be standing in tourist queues on your last night. Come to the Holiday Cocktail Lounge over in the East Village. I'm meeting my mates there--Lou, you met the guys last time we headed out. They're doing some promo there tonight. It's always a good buzz."

  I looked over at Sam. He shrugged. We could pop by for a half hour, I said. Then maybe we could go up to Top of the Rock by ourselves. It was open till eleven fifteen.

  --

  Three hours later we were wedged around a cluttered table, my brain spinning gently from the cocktails that had landed, one after another, on its surface. I had worn my psychedelic shift dress because I wanted to show Sam how much I loved it. He, meanwhile, in the way that men who love the company of other men do, had bonded with Nathan and his friends. They were loudly running down each other's musical choices and comparing gig horror stories from their youth.

  With one part of my being I smiled and joined in the conversation and with the other I made mental calculations as to how often I could contribute financially so that Sam could come here twice as much as we had originally planned. Surely he could see how good this was. How good we were toge
ther.

  Sam got up to buy the next round. "I'll get a couple of menus," he mouthed. I nodded. I knew I should probably eat something if only so I didn't disgrace myself later on.

  And then I felt a hand on my shoulder.

  "You really are stalking me!" Josh beamed down at me, white teeth in a wide smile. I stood abruptly, flushing. I turned, but Sam was at the bar, his back to us. "Josh! Hi!"

  "You know this is pretty much my other favorite bar, right?" He was wearing a soft, striped blue shirt, the sleeves rolled up.

  "I didn't!" My voice was too high, my speech too fast.

  "I believe you. You want a drink? They do an old-fashioned that is something else." He reached out and touched my elbow.

  I sprang back as if he'd burned me. "Yes, I know. And no. Thank you. I'm here with friends and . . ." I turned just in time for Sam to arrive back, holding a tray of drinks, a couple of menus under his arm.

  "Hey," he said, and glanced at Josh, before he placed the tray on the table. Then he straightened up slowly and really looked at him.

  I stood, my hands stiff by my side. "Josh, this is Sam, my--my boyfriend. Sam, this is--this is Josh."

  Sam was staring at Josh, as if he were trying to take something in. "Yeah," Sam said finally. "I think I could have worked that out." He looked at me, then back at Josh.

  "Do--do you guys want a drink? I mean, I can see you've got some but I'd be glad to line up some more." Josh gestured toward the bar.

  "No. Thanks, mate," said Sam, who had remained standing so that he was a good half-head taller than Josh. "I think we're good here."

  There was an awkward silence.

  "Okay then." Josh looked at me and nodded. "Great to meet you, Sam. You here for long?'

  "Long enough." Sam's smile didn't stretch as far as his eyes. I had never seen him quite so prickly.

  "Well, then . . . I'll leave you guys to it. Louisa--I'll see you around. Have a great evening." He held up his palms, a pacifying gesture. I opened my mouth but there was nothing to say that sounded right, so I waved, a weird, fluttering gesture with my fingers.

  Sam sat down heavily. I glanced across the table at Nathan, whose face was a study in neutrality. The other guys didn't appear to have noticed anything and were still talking about ticket prices at their last gig. Sam was briefly lost in thought. He finally looked up. I reached for his hand but he didn't squeeze mine back.