“I was an intern at a British publisher, but really more like a file clerk.” She grinned. It was one job she could talk about, although she’d only worked there for a few months, and spent the rest of the time writing her own books.
They chatted about college and traveling in Europe. He had gone to Stanford, and had a WASPy, conservative look to him, as though he might come from money, but she didn’t care. He walked her along the park to the subway to go back downtown, and told her how much he’d enjoyed spending time with her and hoped to see her again. And she said she would like that too. She had assumed that he lived in her area, because she’d met him in Soho, but he didn’t. He told her he lived uptown, and left her at the subway entrance with a promise to call her soon.
And as she rode downtown, she thought of all the things she couldn’t tell him, like working on her movie in L.A. for the past six months. She was like someone who’d been to prison. There were large gaps of time in her life she was unable to account for, unless she told the truth, which was taboo.
He called her again a week later, and she was back at work on the book, and didn’t want to take time away from it, so she told him she was busy when he invited her to dinner. He sounded disappointed, but said he’d call her again, which he did two weeks later. She had just finished a difficult chapter, and was in a great mood. He asked her out for a movie and pizza, and she accepted. They had dinner at a little Italian restaurant in her neighborhood, and he told her he had just read that they were making a movie of Alexander Green’s book Darkness and he wanted to see it with her when it came out, since she’d read some of the books too.
“Movies are never as good as the books, so we might be disappointed,” he warned her.
“No, it’s pretty true to the book. I hear he consulted on it, and had an assistant on the set the whole time,” she blurted out and then wanted to cut her tongue out as soon as she said it. She knew too much about it.
“How do you know that?” He was surprised.
“I read about it somewhere. I think he keeps very close tabs on his work.” Tim nodded. And they both liked the movie they saw that night, and talked about it as he walked her home afterward. She thought about inviting him upstairs for a drink, but didn’t know him well enough, so she didn’t, and her manuscript was all over the dining table and she didn’t want him to see it. She thanked him outside her building instead. He kissed her on the cheek, and hailed a cab to go back uptown.
They had dinner two more times in the next few weeks, and he was always polite and pleasant. She asked him how his fundraising for the start-up was going and he said he was having a hard time getting investors for it, but he wasn’t ready to give up yet. He looked so determined that she felt sorry for him, and he asked her what she was doing that summer.
“Working. I don’t have any plans. What about you?”
“I’m sharing a house in the Hamptons with ten friends. It’s a fairly big old house. We each get two weekends a month.” He smiled at her, faintly embarrassed. He was thirty-two years old and obviously struggling financially, and had hinted that he was worried about his future at the start-up, if he was unsuccessful bringing in investors for it.
“That sounds like fun,” she said about the Hamptons.
“Maybe you’d come with me sometime,” he said cautiously, and she nodded, thinking about it. She wasn’t sure if she was ready for that. She liked him, but not being honest with him was hampering them both. He asked her about it the next time they had dinner, on a warm May night, when they ate at a sidewalk café under a full moon. It was a Thursday night, and Brigid had had her baby, so Alex was going home to Boston to see her the next day. She had turned down his invitation for dinner Saturday night, and he suggested Thursday instead.
“Alex, are you seeing someone else?” he asked her hesitantly. She was surprised by the question and shook her head.
“No, I’m not.”
“I don’t know why, but I always get the feeling that there’s a lot you’re not telling me, and you’re busy so much of the time.” It was true and hard to explain. Her books always came first, and her assignments from Bert. She liked doing the editing as soon as possible when she got it back from him, and it was fresh in her head.
“I get too involved in my work sometimes. When I get freelance assignments, they have tight deadlines usually.” He nodded and didn’t seem convinced, and she felt guilty for lying to him. She was beginning to wonder if she would ever have a normal relationship with the life she led, but there was something about him that always stopped her from telling him more of the truth than she did. Maybe the fact that he was struggling and she wasn’t. She felt awkward about it, and she knew he could tell just from the building where she lived. She hadn’t invited him to her apartment yet either. Some strange instinct stopped her every time. But she didn’t want to live in a walk-up in a bad neighborhood just to make the men she met comfortable either. She worked hard, did well, and had a nice life. But it was definitely creating distance between them.
“You’ve never shown me anything you’ve written,” he mentioned. “Where do your articles get published?”
“In women’s magazines mostly. You wouldn’t have seen them. They’re not written for men.” He laughed when she said it.
“You know your audience at least. I guess that’s why I like Alexander Green’s books so much. You can tell they were written by a man. No woman could write that.” She almost groaned when he said it. He had just proven her father right, and had the same prejudice he had about women writers.
“You never know. Some women authors might surprise you. There are some very good female crime writers around.”
“Like Agatha Christie?” He laughed again.
“No, tougher than that. Patricia Cornwell or Karin Slaughter…” She would have liked to add herself to the list but couldn’t. And feeling rude for not having done it sooner, she invited him upstairs for a drink when he took her home that night. As soon as they walked in, she knew she had done the wrong thing. It put an immediate chill on the evening. He looked tense when he sat down, and she poured him a glass of wine.
“This is quite a place,” he said, as he glanced around. The loft-style living room was huge, and clearly a very expensive co-op, which impressed Tim, more than she’d expected it to.
“I’m actually apartment sitting for a friend,” she said, when she saw the expression on his face. She was lying to him again.
“Or you have a rich father,” he said with a snide tone. His earlier pleasantness had faded rapidly.
“My father died eleven years ago,” she said quietly, sitting across from him in a vintage leather chair.