“Nope,” Noah said. “She left two years ago for a finance job in New York.”
“Four years together; that’s impressive. Are you still seeing each other?”
“No,” Noah said simply. “She couldn’t really adjust to my commitment to medicine, which I don’t blame her for. In retrospect, she was counting on my hours getting less as I advanced up the training ladder, like it does for most people. Unfortunately, for me they got more, so she bailed out. She’s engaged now.”
“I think only those of us in medicine understand,” Ava said. “So who are you seeing now?”
“No one,” Noah said. Inwardly he cringed, wondering if Ava would think of him as socially hopeless.
“That doesn’t seem appropriate for a healthy man like yourself,” Ava said with a slight, mischievous smile. “As a fellow doctor, I’d like to ask how you manage.”
Noah stared back at Ava. He agonized for a beat, questioning if he should take the bait. “I’m resourceful,” he said after a pause. “There is always online porn.”
Ava roared with laughter and clapped her hands. “You are a trip, Dr. Rothauser. Now I have to wonder which of us is more addicted to the Internet.”
“There’s no way I am addicted,” Noah said. He found her mirth contagious and was laughing at himself even though he questioned why he had said what he did. He was thankful she had taken the comment in a nonjudgmental, humorous fashion.
After putting down her liquor glass, Ava leaned forward. “Last night I showed you most of my house. But there is one cool thing I did not show you. Interested?”
“Sure,” Noah said with a shrug. “Give me a clue.”
“I put a deck on the top of the building and the view is to die for. And it’s a beautiful summer night.”
He followed her up two flights of the central, nautilus-like stairway that spiraled from the very first floor. When they gained the sixth and final floor and pretending to be out of breath, Noah said, “With all these stairs you don’t need to work out.”
“Sometimes I take the elevator,” Ava said.
“Elevator? I didn’t know you had an elevator.” Noah had never been in a private home that had an elevator.
“The doors are disguised so as not to be intrusive,” Ava explained. She pointed to the wall to their immediate right. “Here’s one here.”
All Noah could see was a door-sized, rectangular, grooved outline that even cut through the dado and its trim. “Wow,” he said. “I never would have guessed. But there’s no call button.”
“It’s WiFi,” Ava said. “Welcome to the tech world.”
As Noah followed Ava into the room, he berated himself for acting like such a simpleton. Looking around, he guessed he was in the master bedroom. It was a large space occupying the entire width of the house. The west wall was a bank of French doors with the lights of the city visible through the multipanes just above the row of buildings that lined the next street down the hill.
“This is my bedroom,” Ava said proudly.
“Very nice,” Noah said. In actuality, he thought it was a lot more than nice. The room had a high cathedral ceiling, and the bed was at least a king and was set against the north wall; both cats were curled up against decorative pillows. Behind the bed was a trompe l’oeil mural of an open window looking out onto a European mountain scene. The south wall had a period marble fireplace similar to those in the living room. A second door on the east wall led into the marble master bath. The lighting was subdued, giving the room an overall restful ambience.
“And the view is terrific,” Noah added.
“You haven’t seen nothing yet,” Ava said playfully. She opened one of the French doors, stepped out onto a narrow balcony, and gestured for Noah to follow.
Moving from the air-conditioned, dehumidified interior, Noah could feel the summer warmth and moisture. He looked out at the view, noticing he could see into multiple apartments in the buildings on the other side of the alley. “Very nice,” he repeated.
“This way,” Ava said, as she tugged his arm to follow her. At the northern end of the narrow balcony was a black wrought-iron circular staircase that led up into the darkness.
As Noah climbed after Ava, he felt a touch of acrophobia. Just over the low handrail as he went up he could see down six floors into a neighboring garden. A moment later he was up on the very top of Ava’s house, standing on a raised deck with a more substantial handrail. The view was truly spectacular, with a good portion of the city of Boston spread out in front of him. From where he was standing he could see over the tops of the buildings in the foreground. In the middle distance was a wide stretch of the Charles River that made it appear more like a lake than a river. “You are right, this is to die for,” Noah said.
“You’re looking directly at MIT,” Ava said.
“Where?” Although he had spent two years at the famed school getting his Ph.D., it was hard to pick out the details from the panorama he was viewing.
“Straight ahead,” Ava said. She pointed with her left hand while she put her right hand on Noah’s shoulder to pull him closer. She also pushed against him so that he could sight directly along the length of her arm.
“Okay,” Noah managed. But he was no longer trying to distinguish which buildings of the thousands he could see belonged to MIT. Instead, he was acutely aware of Ava’s hand in the crook of his neck and shoulder with her forearm pressed against his back. He was even more aware of her body pressed up against his. She was busy describing various buildings so he could orient himself to the MIT campus, but he wasn’t listening to her voice. He was listening to his body, which was sending alarm bells to his brain. And the messages were not going to the higher-function areas involved with rational thought.
“Can you see the dome?” Ava asked, referring to the building at the very center of MIT.
As if he were being manipulated by some exterior force, Noah turned toward Ava and looked dreamily into her eyes. As there wasn’t that much difference in their heights, their faces were close. Ava responded by also turning her body toward him. “I’m getting the message that you are not all that interested in looking at MIT,” she said.
Noah didn’t answer. Instead he leaned forward in slow motion, turning his head to the side in the process. Ava’s head tipped back. A moment later their lips came together as they embraced.
It was a long, sustained kiss. At its conclusion Noah slowly leaned back, although their arms continued to envelop each other. His eyes were fixed on hers, although in the half-light he could only assume hers were on his. Noah sensed an overpowering urge to make love to her. It had been a long time since he had had such feelings, and the sheer intensity of the desire caught him by surprise. Previously he had worried that arriving early might have scared her off. Now he was worried that if she knew the fierceness of his passion, she would be literally frightened. It was so encompassing that it even scared him to a degree.