But where would I go? How could I explain? I couldn’t leave, because for the first time, New York finally felt like home. Last year the city was a backdrop separate from my life, something I was only borrowing. But the shift had happened not long ago, when I realized that I had changed. That the city had been witness to different versions of myself. It gave me a new claim over this place. I had tried, failed, collapsed, but I was still here. The city was still here. The scale of the place had become newly comforting. It had a way of shrinking my pain to a bearable smallness. It was nothing compared to the towering skyscrapers or the teeming crowds. Any given day, in any given subway car, there were people who were happier than I, people who were sadder than I. People who had erred and people who had forgiven. I was mortal, imperfect, just like everyone else. It was good to be reminded of that.
But that mortality also made me old. I felt like I might vanish in a second. I realized—knowledge that arrived all at once—how much the world would continue to change after I was gone. Someday, people would look back on this era in the same way I had looked back on the settlers of the New World or the cowboys of the West in the slippery pages of my schoolbooks, strangers whose lives were distilled down to a few paragraphs and color illustrations. They would shake their heads, not believing that we could have known so little. It was nearly impossible to imagine the continuity. Then they would turn away from the past and continue their lives in a world transformed by technology or disease or war. By rising oceans or collapsing economies or by something that we—we soon-to-be relics—couldn’t even imagine.
But I wanted to. I wanted to imagine, and then to see. I clung to the time I’d been given. I didn’t want to leave.
On my fourth night in a row at McGuigan’s, Maria said, “I’m off early tonight. You want to get dinner? I can cook.”
A cat was purring atop the refrigerator when she opened the door to her studio apartment, up in the northern reaches of Morningside Heights. “Make yourself at home,” she said, turning on the stove with the click and hiss of gas igniting. She handed me a beer, and I wandered around. I liked her apartment right away. She had houseplants on the windowsill, a rag rug, a desk covered with textbooks and notes from law school, a refrigerator layered with family pictures and yellowed recipes. I stood at the other side of the room and watched Maria at the stove—apron tied around her waist, humming along to the radio—and I remembered the night I came home to Julia cooking in our tiny kitchen. How she had glowed from a happiness that I thought belonged to both of us. That was the worst part: I’d been misreading it all along. It was why I couldn’t bear to think about Julia, not even the good parts, because I couldn’t be sure that there ever were good parts.
After dinner, after sex that was surprisingly intimate for a first time, we lay in Maria’s bed, which was tucked in the corner next to an open window. I was half asleep when she climbed out of bed, wrapped herself in a robe, and turned on the desk lamp. “Stay there,” she said. “I’m going to study for a few hours.” She was taking the bar exam that summer. Her cat had been asleep on top of Maria’s stack of textbooks. The cat unfurled and stretched, purring regally as she hopped down to the floor and made way for her owner.
The next morning, Maria kissed me good-bye, and we made plans for dinner the following night. It was while I was shaving in front of the bathroom mirror back at home that I felt it. I’d told someone the truth. The actual, whole truth. And it was okay.
Was it that Maria had finally given me the thing I had craved for so long? Acceptance and forgiveness; grace? I thought so at first, but I realized that wasn’t it, because she wasn’t the one whose forgiveness I needed. What Maria had given me was simply a reminder that the loneliness didn’t have to last forever. I didn’t have to know what came next in order to have hope.
*
One morning in early May, Kleinman summoned me to his office.
“Peck. Have a seat. You’re aware that we’re approaching a settlement with the SEC in the WestCorp case.”
“I had guessed as much, sir.”
“And you probably know about the compromised state of the firm right now. We’ve taken a lot of hits in the last few months. We’re starting a round of layoffs later today. Someone from HR will be calling you around eleven to go over your package. But I wanted to give you a personal heads-up.”
I had been expecting this for a long time, but it was still strange to hear the words actually spoken. Kleinman smiled at me.
“You know, I can see why Michael liked you so much. You’re loyal, and that goes a long way. In another life, you probably would have had a great career ahead of you here. But you understand why we can’t keep you on.”
I nodded. “Yes, sir.”
“You’re Michael’s guy. He made you his guy. If I kept you around while laying off a bunch of people who had nothing to do with this—you know how bad that would look. People would hate you, to be frank. And then they’d hate me. You’d just remind everyone of what came before. What we need here is a fresh start. We’re going to be a lot smaller, but we’ll rebuild eventually.”
Kleinman stood up and extended his hand. “Well. Best of luck, Peck. Thank you for your cooperation these last few months.”