I stare at him, waiting for elaboration. He smiles at me as though I’m dense or defective.
“A baby.” Again, he grins. “I know you’ve wanted to try for a while and I’ve been back and forth. But I realize that it’s not fair to make you wait any longer. You will be a great mom, and you deserve a child. And I really want to be a father. So what the hell? Let’s make a baby.”
In retrospect, the memory isn’t as sweet as I’d once thought. At the time, I’d leapt from my chair and landed in his lap, covering his squinched face with kisses. His admission had seemed to validate our whole relationship. I’d told him to forget a full meal. We should eat oysters and get to the fun part. I didn’t think, until now, about the notes of surrender in his speech. It was almost like Jake had felt I’d earned the right to a baby, whether or not he was prepared to have one.
The train slows to a stop. A mechanical voice informs me that I’m on Marcy Avenue and Broadway, which is disorienting since Manhattan’s Broadway lies three blocks east of my apartment, and I’ve traveled in that direction for the past twenty-five minutes. Brooklyn, then.
I exit the car and ascend the steps. There’s a park to my right. Dark with plenty of trees to hide behind. I hurry past it, more jogging than walking. Ready to run. Tyler’s not popping out from a bar to save me this time.
I hear the highway on my left. I cut right, traveling down Division Avenue into the Jewish section of Williamsburg. A kosher grocery and liquor store dominates the corner. The Star of David marks a synagogue up ahead. Half the signs are in Hebrew. Car horns cut through the quiet like a machete. I veer right, instinctively heading toward the noisier, non-family-friendly side of area. That’s where she lives.
Eventually, I hit Ninth Street. I’m drawn toward the East River and the apartment that she told Jake in an e-mail “overlooks the water, for now.” Instead of a park lining the river, a massive construction zone flanks the bank, cordoned off by a chain link fence and makeshift cardboard wall. Through the mesh wire I see flattened dirt and the line of excavators that will dig down to the bedrock beneath the river, ensuring that the skyscraper-to-be is bolted to a foundation stronger than sand. Man-made dirt hills, as tall as a person, are located at the edge of the property. They’ve already started digging.
I cross to the sidewalk beside the future luxury apartment complex and turn to face the building across the street. It’s a squat warehouse, illegally converted, no doubt, into loft apartments and artist spaces. Multipane factory windows overlook midtown. Some are lit, revealing their open floor plans and brick interior walls, betraying that their owners are inside watching television or entertaining, not making matzo or chocolate or whatever the factory was originally slated to produce.
I count floors, trying to remember Officer Colleen’s apartment number. It was one something. Usually, that would denote the first floor, but things are wonky in Brooklyn. Maybe the basement counts.
One of the dark apartments blooms to life. The light reveals a white L-shaped couch with a kitchenette steps behind it. A naked woman walks to the eating area and straddles a stool at the breakfast bar. She must know people from the street can see her. Perhaps she’s gotten used to the construction site being vacant at this hour. More likely she enjoys voyeurs.
Her hair is piled atop her head in a messy bun. She looks like Officer Colleen, but every dark-haired petite woman would look like her at this distance. A man saunters from a back room. He buttons a shirt over his boxers. The way he does it, elbows high, hands down, screams my husband. I’ve seen him do this same act thousands of times. Shirt secure, he strides into the living room and grabs what must be his suit pants off the back of the couch. He jostles his legs inside, hopping to pull the tailored trousers over his firm backside. She turns in the chair to face him and the window. Her legs are spread like how a man would sit on a horse. She’s trying to get him to stay. Sharon Stone style.
I watch him as though he’s an actor in a movie and not my husband and the father of my child. The window is a television set. What I am seeing isn’t real.
He walks back toward the breakfast bar and reaches past her naked torso to a neighboring stool. A jacket waves in the air. He flings it over his shoulder, as though posing for a magazine. She stands, hands on her hips. He kisses her on the forehead and heads to the door. She follows him, brushing his side. Her walk is half sexy, half angry. I’m reminded of a cat scratching against a leg. They disappear. A moment later, she returns to the kitchen. Alone.
He must be coming down the stairs. I walk away from the streetlight and the chain link fence, pressing my back against the temporary wall around the left side of the construction site. The ambient light from the building in front of me is still too bright. He’ll see me. I hurry along the temporary wall, papered with fliers for street fairs and unknown bands, until I see a door. The wood has been kicked in near the knob.
I open it and slip inside. Immediately, I stumble on something. My knee lands in the dirt, saving my face. Beneath my foot lies a broken combination lock, pried loose, apparently, from the smashed door.
I pick myself up and walk, more carefully, back toward the chain link fence, pitching my weight forward to keep the heels from pinning me to the dirt in the construction site. As soon as I get there, the door opens across the street. Jake exits. He looks over his shoulder, as though he senses me watching, before jogging down the avenue. I can imagine the need for his hurry. He hopes to find me asleep so that he can claim to have come in around midnight. Working until 12:00 AM or even one can go unquestioned. Two AM demands an explanation. What excuse has he prepared if I’m awake? Will he claim to have nodded off on his office couch?
I watch him through the fine metal mesh, crouching, waiting until he rounds the corner before standing back up. Beating him home isn’t possible. Moreover, I don’t want to. Let him wait for me for once.
A shuffling noise sounds behind me. Too soft to be human. Maybe a rat. Maybe a robber trying to sound like a rat. Whoever broke the lock might be living here. Hiding here. Homelessness swells in the city during the summer. People leave wherever they managed to find shelter during the winter months and return to NYC, where the constant flow of tourists provides plenty of marks for beggars. There’s probably a group of men here, all of questionable mental health, getting high. They won’t appreciate my infringement on their party.
I scan the ground for something with which to defend myself should anyone come near. A board. A hammer. Metal catches the moonlight a few dozen feet to my right. I hurry toward it, hoping for something pointy. It’s a beam of sorts, far too heavy to lift. Behind it, covered in what appears to be pulverized ceramic, is something skinnier. I wrap my hands around its gritty exterior and yank it from the construction debris. It’s a pipe, curved like a scythe, the kind that might have once joined a sink drain to the indoor plumbing. Armed now, I retreat to the broken door, prepared to take a swing at whomever might come near.