What happened in the five minutes between Fred wishing her a good night and getting up from her seat, Jess wondered later, on the flight back to New York and then a thousand times in subsequent weeks. What exactly had she been thinking on the long walk from the bar, across the lobby, past reception, to the elevator bank? Her hands had been shaking, she remembered that. She had to clasp them together and remind herself to breathe.
When Jess left the bar area and turned for the elevators, she counted to five—one, two, three, four—and then turned. And there he was, standing in the lobby, looking at her. Just where she knew he’d be.
“Hey again,” he said. He didn’t seem the least bit nervous. He stopped about three feet away from her, shoved his hands deep into his pockets, and raised his shoulders to a shrug. “Want to get a drink?” he asked. “Not here,” he added.
Jess glanced over at his buddies, and if they’d all been turned toward them, watching, she would have walked away. But they didn’t even seem to have noticed that he left.
“Where?” Jess asked.
“Upstairs?” he said, pressing the elevator button. He didn’t touch her, he just stood very close. “If you want to.”
“Just a drink?” she asked.
“Probably not just a drink, no.” He smiled, and it was a kind smile.
She wanted to seem like a woman who found the invitation to be no big deal, like it happened all the time.
“Tell you what. I’m going to room 704. If you want to join me, great. If not, then it was very nice to have met you.” He paused. “In case you don’t come up, I want to tell you that you are very, very lovely, Jessica-who-hates-her-name. I hope you have someone who tells you that.”
When the elevator door closed, she stood there for what felt like a very long time. She listened to the machinery turning, carrying him to his room, steel cables straining and pulling. Then silence. The whole building was waiting for her to decide. She put her palm to the door. She pressed the button and the system sprang to life. When the elevator arrived, she pushed number seven.
She thought she’d have a minute to collect herself, but when the doors opened, he was sitting in the armchair across from the elevator.
“Okay, I’m nervous,” she said.
He closed the space between them, took her elbows, and walked her backward slowly until they arrived at the wall. And then he kissed her. He seemed cautious at first, testing, but then she kissed him back. He pressed his whole body against her, and she could feel his knee between her legs. He had her dress partly unzipped, and she didn’t even notice until she felt his hand on the bare skin of her back.
“We should probably get out of the hall,” he said.
But it struck Jess as they moved toward his room that he might be different in there. He might hurt her. Or she might see his toothbrush on the bathroom counter in a pool of murky water and know that the way he appeared to strangers was false, that the wife he left behind in Seattle, or Toronto, or Minneapolis was sick of cleaning up after him, was working up the courage to leave him.
“Hey,” Jess said, pulling away from him. “I’m sorry. I’m going to head to my room. I’m really sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry,” he said, immediately taking his hands off her. He sighed, but he was nice about it and that made her feel worse.
“You’re sure?” he asked.
“Yes,” she said.
“Okay. Let me just—” Frowning, he reached around and zipped up her dress. He patted her back as if to say she was all set.
“Do you do this a lot?” she blurted. “I noticed your ring.”
She didn’t mean anything by it, but she could see he didn’t like the question and wouldn’t be answering. He called the elevator for her, waited politely until the door opened.
The next day, checking out, Jess waited in her room until the very last moment. Then she arranged her hair in front of her face, put on sunglasses, and got out of the hotel as quickly as possible.
During the flight home, she thought of the flight attendant on the long journey from Bangkok all those years ago. Jess tried to remember what she’d been like at twenty-five, what she thought about, what she worried about, how quick she was to speak her mind. How sweet that woman was, handing her that ice pack, later bringing her a cold can of ginger ale. How she’d asked, the second time Jess had to rush to the toilet to vomit, if she always felt ill when flying or if perhaps she was expecting. She said Jess’s face was very pale, but she said it with a small smile, as if encouraging Jess to share a secret. Jess remembered how the woman’s colleague had said something to her sharply in Thai, and the attendant who’d been so kind suddenly looked flummoxed.
“Expecting what?” Jess had asked, and only much later, in the frigid darkness of coach, thirty thousand feet above Africa, in a tube traveling five hundred miles an hour, did Jess register what she meant.
* * *
When she arrived at their little house in Gillam after a delayed departure from San Francisco and her driver from LaGuardia taking a wrong turn, she walked in to find Malcolm there, even though it was a Saturday. His face, his stance, the slight cowlick over his left eye that he tended to so carefully in the mirror each morning, the way he tilted his head and rubbed the stubble on his cheek when he was nervous, when he was trying to think of what to say, it was all as familiar to her as her own reflection.
“I returned the glasses,” he said, taking her suitcase, moving it to the landing so he’d remember to carry it upstairs. “They said the credit will show up in about a week.”
“You didn’t call,” she said. “You didn’t text me even one time.”
“Neither did you,” he said. And that had hurt, she could see. It wasn’t a sentence he was capable of saying.
Jess felt a sob gathering in her chest, so she put her hands over her face and doubled over like she’d been punched. She made a keening sound that she’d never made before, not even when she lost the baby she’d come to think of as Nora. Malcolm’s Nora.
“Jessie,” Malcolm whispered, sliding his hand through her hair, pulling her as tight as he could. The solid hulk of him compared to that stranger in a hallway. How could she have gone that far.
“Jessie. Honey. Don’t cry. Please.”
“The glasses are not the problem.”
He was quiet for a long time and then he said that he knew that, of course he knew that, but he didn’t know what to do.
five
They met at a barbeque at Siobhán and Patrick’s house, Memorial Day weekend. Siobhán called Jess at work that Friday to say that Patrick’s best friend from college had moved to Gillam, she was sure she’d mentioned that to Jess. He didn’t know anyone. He’d moved there because Patrick had talked it up so much over the years and he had to find a place fast, get the kids settled, get them enrolled in school. They’d only ever known the city but Neil liked the idea of a big yard, somewhere commutable to Midtown. Siobhán assumed he had plans for the long weekend, but it turned out he didn’t. So now they all had to come over.
“How do you know I don’t have plans?” Jess asked.
“Do you?”