He smiled so deeply she felt her eyes water.
The lobby had a cracked mosaic floor and smelled like old pizza boxes. There were stickers for a political rally pasted all over the circuit breaker box. He didn’t let go of Scarlett’s hand or slow down the entire way to his apartment. He took the steps two at a time and had the door hanging open when she got there. It was dark inside the apartment. He went in first and turned on all the lights.
“Welcome to the palace,” he said, backing up against the refrigerator to let her past.
Eric’s apartment was a tiny studio, the kind that reminded Scarlett that most people in the city didn’t live in five-story hotels, no matter how decrepit they were. The room had an uneven floor and was just wide enough for a bed and a canvas chair. Those were the only real pieces of furniture. The kitchen—it if could be called that—was about the size of the back seat of a car and was full of miniaturized appliances. There was only one small set of shelves, and they were packed to the point of groaning, so most of his things were piled neatly and pushed against the walls—books, scripts, DVDs, piles of clothes. Everything was careful and neat.
“This is where I live,” he said, offering her the room’s only chair. “It’s not as nice as where you live.”
“I like it,” Scarlett said. And it was true. Eric could have lived in a box behind a pizza place, and she would have said she liked it and meant it.
“You know what? If I went to school in North Carolina, I could rent an apartment about twelve times this size for about half as much. Anyway, I have something to show you. Just sit there. Don’t look. Close your eyes.”
Scarlett slowly closed her eyes. She heard things being shifted around.
“Okay, open!”
He was holding up a boxed set of Gone With the Wind DVDs.
“This isn’t the normal version,” he said gravely. “Oh, no. This one has everything, all the extra footage. It has like…nine hundred hours of footage. If you’re in my family, this is what you watch on Christmas. My grandma gave this to me when I moved here so I wouldn’t forget the glorious cause.”
He set it on the floor by her feet and then went and sat on his bed, which was the only other piece of furniture on offer. Then he seemed to think better of it and sat in the middle of the floor.
“When I first met you,” he said, “I was so amazed to meet someone named Scarlett. I thought it was a sign or something. I had come to New York, and there was Scarlett, and she lived in a hotel. And she had beautiful blonde curls…”
He put the tips of his fingers together and touched them a few times. For several minutes, he said nothing at all. Then he dragged himself over to the foot of the chair and moved the wayward curl out of her eye.
“That’s always there,” he said. “I always want to move it. Hope that’s okay.”
“It’s okay,” she replied, her voice dry.
“The thing…from the other day…”
He waited, as if thinking that Scarlett would need some time to recall the kissing.
“In the theater?” she asked.
“Yeah. That. Did you…like that?”
“It was the best thing that ever happened to me,” she replied, with a sudden and surprising candor.
“So, if it happened again…you wouldn’t be upset?”
Only a shake of the head this time. Saying “no” was way too complicated. He reached up his hand, offering her help down from the chair. When he kissed her this time, he leaned her back against the floor, guarding her head with his hand. Scarlett lost all sense of where she was, or anything else that could possibly have been happening when the whole thing was broken by the most horrible buzzing noise that she had ever heard.
“It’s okay,” he said. “It’s just my door. Hold on.”
Spencer’s voice entered the room, very loudly.
“Hey,” he said. “I can’t find Scarlett. Is she up there with you?”
“Uh…” Eric looked down at Scarlett. “Yeah. She is. We’re coming down now. Meet you in a second.”
Scarlett looked at the clock. It was one-thirty in the morning. That had to be wrong. She looked to her watch for confirmation, and the DVD display, and the readout on the little orange microwave. They all said a variation of the same thing…1:32, 1:33, 1:34. How had it gotten so late? They must have been there for over two hours.
Eric leaned against his door and banged his head lightly against it in concern.
“That was your brother,” he said. “He didn’t sound very happy.”
“It’ll be fine,” Scarlett said. A quick glance in the mirror as she stood revealed a head of curls standing on end and a lot of makeup smudges around her eyes. She flattened the curls as best she could and rubbed away the blotches.
“Do you want me to go down with you, or…?”
“I should probably go by myself,” she said.
“But you’re okay?”
“Don’t worry,” she said taking a deep breath. “It’s just Spencer. It’ll be fine.”