Janey settled into her seat and gazed down at the stage. My god. This was the way to see the ballet. It felt like a private performance for the two of them. “I like that you’re not pretending. It’s all new to me too. The honesty is refreshing, to tell you the truth. But we didn’t come here to talk about divorce all night. What do we know about La Sylphide? I haven’t been to the ballet in ages, even though my cousin, Ivy, was a ballerina with this company.”
“We know a lot. I strangely know a lot. It’s a tragic story.” Anything in Hugh’s perfect accent could sound like a tragic story if he wanted it to. Janey hoped they wouldn’t turn down the house lights before he finished telling it. She loved watching his hands move as he talked. “It’s one of the world’s oldest classic ballets and utterly heartbreaking. Probably a terrible ballet to bring you to on a first date, and I do apologize. It takes place in Scotland, which may be one of the reasons I’m so partial to it, on the night before a big wedding. A young Scotsman is lured away from his wife-to-be by a beautiful winged spirit. He leaves his wife on their wedding day, nasty chap, but when he catches the spirit, or the sylph as they call her, she withers and dies, so he loses both women in one swoop.”
“That’s a terrible story. I’m depressed and the ballet hasn’t even begun.”
“I know. I should have lied to you and told you it was about a princess who loses her shoe.”
“Too late now.”
“We can leave at intermission.” He had reached over to grasp her hand the moment they sat down and now clasped it between those long elegant fingers, gently stroking the top of it as if they’d been to dozens of Scottish ballets together and this was their regular private booth.
“Did your wife, sorry, your ex-wife, enjoy the ballet?” Janey couldn’t help but wonder if he was merely re-creating a comfortable pastime.
“Hated it. We never came. She preferred polo…and not just the ponies,” he added as a dry aside.
Janey didn’t know why this put her at ease, but it did.
They didn’t leave at intermission, and they didn’t get up to mingle either. Hugh swiftly exited their balcony and returned with two more Tullamores, neat.
Before either of them knew it, the performance was over and they were standing near Lincoln Center’s magnificent fountain. It was a sight Janey never tired of, the fountain lit from within at night, spouting golden streams several stories into the air.
“This feels like quite the New York moment, doesn’t it?” Hugh placed his large hands on her shoulders to make sure she was warm. She allowed her body to melt backward into his broad chest.
“It really does.” Janey turned to face him. He was shorter than Jacob but less wiry, much stronger, more of a man. “Tell me more about this toast with the, what did you say? Bone marrow?” She could indulge a little tonight. She deserved it.
“It’s close. My driver’s out front.”
When they arrived Janey recognized the name of the restaurant from a rave review on Grub Street, but she pretended not to have heard of it just yet. This neighborhood south of Lincoln Center, northern Hell’s Kitchen, was becoming the new place for trendy restaurants. But this place was unmarked, not even a sign outside.
Janey glanced at the menu as they settled into a comfortable corner booth. She’d been limiting herself to a thousand calories a day. This menu, of course, listed the number of calories in each dish. Almost every menu in New York City, even at the fancy restaurants, did that these days. Janey often wondered if it would be better if menu items came with both a calorie count and commentary. Three hundred calories for your kale salad—Congratulations on your self-control. One thousand calories for your French fries—Are you sure you want to do this? Three thousand calories for that burger smothered in cheese and bacon—You’re screwed.
Janey slid the menu across the table and let Hugh do the ordering. She’d be mindful of her portions. Hugh was a man who loved to eat. She didn’t want to be one of those women who just ordered a side salad. She wasn’t one of those women!
Hugh had an encyclopedic knowledge of New York City restaurants and could list almost every one he’d been to and what he’d eaten there. They discussed nothing but their favorite meals for their first hour at the restaurant.
She was thoroughly engaged in everything he was saying, only occasionally allowing her mind to wander. What caused his marriage to end? Had the wife been the first to cheat? Had he? Had they married too young? How long ago had he taken off his wedding ring? She’d stopped wearing hers a week after Michael left. Did he want to get married again?
He wasn’t only knowledgeable about New York. Hugh Albermarle was the British Indiana Jones. In the past five years alone he’d summited Everest, trekked the Lut Desert in Iran, cage-dived off the coast of South Africa, scrambled across the Wadi Rum in the footsteps of Lawrence of Arabia, and gone dogsledding in Finland.
Over several more whiskeys and a double order of the bone marrow toast and other plates of food, which kept arriving at the table even though Janey never saw Hugh order a thing, she learned his entire life story, starting with Cambridge and ending here as a managing director at Credit Suisse.
“I have my own division. It’s interesting. To me, at least. It’s how I found Stella, actually. Ever since health and wellness became the newest form of conspicuous consumption, we’ve been trying to make financial bets on the industry. About fifteen years ago our analysts predicted yoga was going to become the go-to exercise for Americans. At the time, yoga was not exactly a household word. It was practiced by tie-dye-wearing hippies who needed something to do once the Grateful Dead stopped touring. But we predicted it could be the perfect American exercise, a class where they make you lie down in the end and tell you you’re a goddess.”
For a second Janey considered telling him about Free the Nipple, but decided it wasn’t the right moment to talk about her breasts, and she remembered that was where Jacob asked her on a proper date.
“So we invested in Lululemon and Gaiam and high-end gyms like Equinox. We backed the first farm-to-table food chains and farm-to-face beauty lines. Have you heard of Skinny in a Bottle?”
Everyone knew about Skinny in a Bottle. It was sold at checkout counters right next to the 13-Hour Energy drinks. Janey had no idea what it was made of. Some kinds of vitamins and minerals they claimed sped up your metabolism.
Hugh continued. “I met the Skinny in a Bottle creator when she was a new mom selling juice out of her garage. We turned her little holistic business into every woman’s fantasy in a bottle. Now we have Skinny in a Bottle, Youth in a Bottle, Happiness in a Bottle, Hate Your Husband Less in a Bottle. Kidding about that one. I took her public for two billion dollars over the summer.”