“I’m going to meet you at the airport, okay? Right near baggage claim.”
The crowds ebbed and flowed beneath the bright lights of Charles de Gaulle Airport, and then I saw Julia. She wore a loose black dress that skimmed her tan thighs, a bright scarf, her hair in a bun. She looked older, and more beautiful. That summer we traveled across Europe, living out of our backpacks and surviving on bread and wine. It was my first time abroad, and I was self-conscious about my unstamped passport. Julia had traveled a lot on family trips to London, Paris, Venice, Barcelona, Athens. She knew her way around these cities intuitively. One afternoon in Rome, she led me to the top of the Aventine Hill. “Where are we going?” I asked.
“You’ll see,” she said, walking with purpose.
At the top of the hill was an orange grove overlooking the city. The sky was soft and golden, and couples took turns posing for pictures in front of the sprawling sunset view. I figured this must be the place she’d meant to lead us. But Julia kept walking. She led me past the grove, down a paved road, to a plain-looking green wooden door. “What is it?” I said.
“Okay.” She pointed at a small keyhole. “Look through that.”
I found out later that it was a famous thing to do: to peer through this keyhole and see the framed view of the basilica in the distance. But at that moment it felt like she was giving me something just discovered, something I never would have found for myself. A new way of looking at the world. There was a stillness as the image came into focus.
We got back to campus senior year, and it was different. It was better. We were happy. I felt more certain about all of it. It made sense to me, for the first time, how one thing flowed into another; that there was a logic to the way life unfolded. We never did wind up winning a national championship, the one Reynolds had hinted at back in freshman year. I was a solid player, up and down my wing with discipline, but I wasn’t good enough to play forever. Gone were the days when I’d cram my hours with extra squats and lifts and sprints. It didn’t matter anymore, because that wasn’t what I wanted. I was done with hockey. What I wanted was a life with Julia.
I still had one of the business cards from four years earlier. Reynolds must have passed out hundreds of those over the years. Finance was a well-trod path for other guys from the hockey team. I could do that, I thought. And it felt in keeping with a certain vision, an answer to the question that I’d been chasing ever since I was a kid. The jobs in finance flowed through campus like a wide, swift river. I wound up getting an offer from the most competitive place I applied to—Spire Management, a hedge fund in New York.
And when I asked Julia to move in with me, she said what I knew she would say. She smiled and threw her arms around me. “Yes,” she said. “Yes. I will.”
Chapter 2
Julia
Abby and I were at a party at Jake Fletcher’s apartment on the night of the opening ceremonies for the Beijing Olympics. The flat-screen TV in the living room showed a massive stadium filled with glittering lights. Jake shared this apartment, at the top of a high-rise building in the financial district, with three of his friends from Dartmouth.
“Holy shit. Look at that view,” Abby said. The Statue of Liberty was visible in the distance, through the window. “How much do you think they’re paying?”
“A couple thousand each.” The wraparound terrace, the sunken living room: Jake and his roommates may have been pulling down banker salaries, but this was above and beyond. “Right? At least. I’m sure they’re getting help from their parents.”
“You think any of them are single?”
I grimaced. “Ugh. Don’t even joke.”
“Hello? You’ve seen my shit-hole apartment, right? It might be worth it.”
She turned, expecting a laugh, but instead she saw me scanning the room again, frowning at my phone. She waved her hand in front of me. “Earth to Julia?”
“He’s two hours late. He hasn’t even texted.”
“Oh, don’t be such a mope. Come with me.” She grabbed my hand. Abby always knew how to turn things around. She was the youngest of five, and the Darwinian pressures of a crowded childhood had made her resourceful. She was like the stone soup of friends. Give her twenty bucks and a room and you’ll get a great party.
“Hold this,” she said, handing me her cup. We found an empty corner on the terrace, forty stories above the street. A constellation of cigarettes moved through the night air. Music thumped from the built-in speakers.
“Where’d you get that?” I asked as she lit the end of the joint.
“Here. We’re splitting this.”
“I haven’t smoked since graduation.”
“That’s no way to live,” she said in a choked voice, holding the smoke in her lungs. Then she exhaled. “See? This party is awesome.”
We’d smoked half the joint when I saw Jake Fletcher across the terrace. I waved him over.