The words themselves don’t feel so terrible out there, clunked out on the console between us. Cash covers my hand with his, and his eyes are so filled with compassion that I think I might break, right there in that shitty car on I-84. I gaze out onto the interstate in front of us, a large, flat expanse of nothingness with no cars and no people. It’s all so lonely.
I depress the window button and feel the warm air hit my face. I take some deep breaths. I’ve said the worst things about myself to someone who seems to care about me and I’m still here. My hands are trembling and I shove them under my thighs, my diamond digging into my skin.
Cash reaches over, taps my shoulder. “Okay?”
I nod awkwardly. I feel like someone who has impulsively confessed something horrible on a crashing plane that ends up righting itself only minutes later. I cough. “Yeah. I want to find out information on Joan. How can I do that?”
“Do you have a computer?” he asks. I give him a duh look and he laughs. “If you give me fifteen minutes and decent Wi-Fi, I can find out pretty much anything.”
I shrug. “Okay, let’s go. But I’m taking advantage of Henry being gone and ordering Chinese for dinner. He generally considers all takeout to be the lowest form of food, barely edible.”
“Well, that’s a real shame. I happen to love chicken and broccoli.”
? ? ?
We order takeout and sit on a blanket on the living room floor, surrounded by foil and cardboard containers, the sauce oozing out of the corners. I eat until I could burst and we chat about the city, being transplants, and what things were hardest to get used to.
“The speed of everything,” Cash said without thinking. “Everyone walks fast, the subways are fast, the taxis are fast. And yet, it can still take an hour to cross a one-mile island. Why? It used to be frustrating. About eighteen months here, I stopped trying to figure it out.”
“Yes! For me, the hardest part was the massive amounts of people. I come from a city but San Francisco has nothing on New York in terms of sheer number of bodies. But no one looks at each other. In California, people are nice.” I pour us both a glass of wine in the supplied paper cups. “I met Lydia and it got easier. I had a ready-made band of misfits.”
“Well, it was easier for me at first, then lonely later. I have friends now, guys at the paper or from the gym.”
“What about girlfriends now?” I blurt.
He shrugs and leans back against the easy chair behind him. “I do okay.” He rubs his hand across his jaw and gives me a sideways grin. I briefly think of Henry—he would die if he saw us eating in here. The rug cost $5,000. To cover the silence, I reach into the greasy bag and pull out a fortune cookie. I crack it open, the crumbs dusting down to my legs, on to the blanket. I pull out the little folded rectangle of paper. “‘In case of fire, keep calm, pay bill, and run,’” I read. “What does that even mean?”
“I like how they tell you to pay the bill first, though.” He stretches his legs out and grabs a cookie. “Here’s one. ‘It never pays to kick a skunk.’ Honestly, these are the weirdest fortune cookies I’ve ever seen.”
“Kick a skunk? Oh my God, that’s ridiculous. Okay, here’s one.” I unfold another little paper and drop it. We both reach for it and his hand accidentally grabs mine. I pull it away. “‘The greatest risk is not taking one.’”
We both ponder that one. Cash smiles. “I guess we should get a move on our search for Joan, then?”
I laugh as he pulls the last cookie from the bag, cracks it open, and unfolds the fortune. His smile falters.
“What? Read it.”
“Ah, Zoe. ‘You are extraordinarily beautiful.’”
“What?” The flush creeps up my neck and my cheeks grow warm. I clutch the collar of my shirt.
“That’s what it says, look.” He hands it to me. He’s right. You are extraordinarily beautiful. My pulse thumps under my thumb. I feel it then, his crush on me. We don’t know each other enough for it to be any more than that but I’ve been abusing his friendship, pretending the undercurrent wasn’t there. Why else does a man go to such lengths for a woman, driving her a hundred miles in one day?
“Cash, I—”
“Did you hear that?” Cash whispers. He holds up his hand, and then I do hear it. A single bang coming from the kitchen fire exit. All penthouses in New York must have a secondary exit—it’s part of the fire code. The door back there is locked with a key, not a card the way the front door is, and it’s rarely used. The only key that I know of is in the kitchen drawer.
I stand up, all wine-fueled courage, and tiptoe toward the kitchen. The room is dark and light filters in from underneath the emergency door. The light in that hallway is bluish fluorescent and gives the kitchen an eerie glow. I scoot along the cabinets, my back against the countertop. Underneath the door, I can make out the shadow of two feet. I can’t breathe, my heart pounds. We have got to get out of here.
I’m staring at the door, my feet rooted to the marble floor in terror, when the door handle jiggles.