I smiled at him. “When I was little, I used to have these anxiety attacks when I’d come across an uneven brick path or a group of numbers that had no connection at all. My mom would have me lie down and imagine a forest that seemed to be in complete chaos. She’d describe the noise and the smell and the mess and the constant action. And then she’d start to uncover the logic, how the gorillas eat the seeds and fertilize the soil so that new trees can grow and provide homes for the birds, how the bugs work the soil and provide food for the birds . . . She’d talk for a long time until I could see the forest working as an organism in complete order. Unfortunately, as I got older, I couldn’t bring my mom everywhere I went. So I went to see a hypnotherapist a few years ago who helped me do pretty much the same thing, just by looking at a tree . . . when I need to, I mean. Which isn’t as often as it used to be.”
John was nodding at me like he totally understood that. What kind of a person wouldn’t think that was crazy? “I guess the idea is that when things seem crazy, it’s just because you’re not seeing the bigger picture.”
“Exactly. Which is how I try to think about high school. It’s like my whole life now, but maybe it’s just a small part of the whole story. And high school has been better, anyway. I’ve kept the whole genius thing on the down low, and I have friends. Even if they have no clue who I am.”
“You’ll like college. It’s just a bigger, better selection of people, and no one’s really in it to conform.” John shrugged and reached across the table to take my plate. “Think of it this way: at least we’re not those people who peaked in high school and sleep next to their prom photos.”
“So college was more normal for you?” I asked, hopefully. If his story was as much like mine as I’d imagined, I’d like to know it had a happy ending.
“It could have been. I met a lot of people at Princeton that I could relate to, people from all over the world with different life experiences. But I was really focused on graduating in two and a half years, so I didn’t really socialize that much.”
“What’s with you and the big rush?” I asked, reaching for a beer as a dessert after dessert. I wondered if I would ever be full again.
He got up to stoke the fire, which in no way needed stoking, and carefully avoided my eye. “My dad asks the same question all the time. He thinks it’s ridiculous, but I’ve always been set on getting this one job in the FBI. It’s highly selective, and they often pick young people who show the propensity to achieve quickly and beyond their years. It’s called Special Sector.”
“Sounds special.” I think maybe I was with his dad—where’s the fire?
John seemed to either not get or not care that I was making fun of him. “Most people don’t know about it, but its members have the highest level of security clearance in the FBI and are privy to the most critical operations happening in the U.S. at any given time. My dad had the chance at Special Sector and turned it down. I can’t imagine.” He let out a big breath, like he’d just gotten something off his chest.
“So that’s your big goal? Then what?” I finished the last three bites of his cake and leaned back into the huge sofa behind me.
“I guess a long career in the FBI. Maybe I’ll run it someday.” John offered a fake laugh and shrugged a little, as if he was a little embarrassed by having shared his long-term plan. “It’s a long shot. They only take one new guy every few years. Let’s just see if we can make it through this week alive.”
“Does this mansion of yours have a shower?” I was seriously getting used to the Four Seasons treatment.
“Sure, you can use my parents’ shower. Rifle around in my mom’s closet for some pajamas. Between the bathroom and the closets, there’s another dumbwaiter. Press the black button, throw your dirty stuff in, and then press the red button to send it down.”
He gestured to a flight of stairs that led to what must have been the third floor. I climbed them obediently and looked down to the far end of the hall to a closed door. The promise of a hot shower and really nice towels drew me down that hall like I was dying and moving toward the light. I opened the door and realized I’d been right. This was heaven. His parents’ room had a regal flair to it. There was a huge king-size four-poster bed with crisp white linens. Beyond it was a wall of French doors, flanked by white linen curtains, that looked out over Park Avenue and at Central Park’s treetops in the distance. I opened the doors, the breeze blowing the curtains into the room. The view was like a spa for my mind. Central Park is a perfectly shaped giant rectangle, and from a distance all the trees appear to be the exact same height. The kidney shaped reservoir is slightly off center but is balanced by kidney-shaped meadows dotted by baseball diamonds. The park is lined by buildings on every side, and as I looked across to the far side of the park, I could see the setting sun shining on a silver line of buildings, making a sharp edge to the park’s border. Central Park had to be home to thousands of species of trees, but from this height, I couldn’t tell an elm from an oak. It was just an orderly mass of green, all living peacefully together.
This should be the photo I keep in my phone for emergencies,
I thought.
On Park Avenue, the city raced past me in both directions. Yellow taxis, black Town Cars, garbage trucks, and Mercedes sedans constantly changed lanes to jockey for position. I imagined a video game where all these different players were swerving in and out of traffic, trying to knock down the bicycle messengers. A woman crossed the street below, beautifully dressed in what appeared to be a beige cashmere blazer, gray pants, and six-inch heels. She walked as surely as if she were in sneakers, head up and fully confident that no unanticipated pothole would take her down. I wanted to be that woman. I wanted to move through the world with my head up. How many times had I almost been killed this week? I was running out of things to be afraid of.
Potholes,
I thought,
bring it on.
Their bathroom was dark pink marble with a glass box in the corner that I assumed was the shower. I took off my sticky, smelly, bloody clothes and turned on the hot water. I slowly peeled off the dressing on my arm, grateful that the bleeding had stopped. Obediently, I put all my stuff in the dumbwaiter, half worried I’d never see it again.
The showerhead came directly from the ceiling and let out a hard stream of water that had to be a foot in diameter. And because heaven is a place where no needs are unmet, the small shelf with shampoo, conditioner, and gardenia soap also had a razor. I let the water run as hot as I could stand it and just stood there, feeling every inch of my body become clean.
I felt changed somehow as that water ran down my back. Maybe it was coming so close to death that made me feel alive, almost invigorated. I hadn’t slept for more than a few hours in a row since the night before the attack on JFK, and my body ached from exhaustion. But mentally I felt like I wasn’t working as hard as I usually was, like it was a welcome break to quit dragging around a fake identity. Plus there was a slight current of energy running through me, just from being with John. I told myself that I didn’t care that much that my feelings were unrequited and that I would definitely end up hurt. Hell, I could also end up dead. What mattered was this feeling of letting someone know me and having him let me in too. Any awkwardness between us had disappeared completely, as if there was no longer any reason to pause to think before speaking. Bottom line: It felt easier to be with John than it had ever felt being without him.
I toweled off and headed into what had to be Mrs. Bennett’s dressing room. I cringed at what an incredible invasion of privacy this was, looking through her things while wrapped in her towel. I could tell she wasn’t a fussy person. Her dressing table had a mirror, a brush, moisturizer, a lipstick, and a poorly fashioned clay lion with the initials JB carved underneath. That’s it. Her closet had mahogany shelves on the left and hanging racks on the right. The drawers at the end suggested unmentionables, and I wasn’t that desperate. I had sent mine down in the dumbwaiter. Her shelves sported all shades of earth tones and all grades of cashmere. I only found one pair of pajamas but quickly put them back in search of something a little scruffier. I thumbed through stacks of beautiful shirts and scarves and beach cover-ups. But the stained cotton oversize nightshirt I searched for was woefully absent. So I went back to her only pair of pajamas and carefully unfolded them: ivory silk with little pearl buttons, professionally ironed. Were these people for real?
I found my way back down to the living room in bare feet, feeling a little nervous both because I was in John’s mother’s pajamas and because they were so beautiful that I thought it looked like I was trying too hard. John was nowhere to be found, so I roamed around tentatively, already worried that I was sweating or ruining the perfect crease in the pants.
“Digit? I’m up here.” John was calling from upstairs on the fourth floor. I walked up the red carpeted stairs and found a hallway identical to the one to his parents’ room but with an open door at the end. “I’m in my room,” he was calling. I took the smallest steps down the hallway, feeling nervous and pretty and suddenly so awkward. I needed my uniform back, at least my boots. I walked in and gave him what I am sure was the smile of a four-year-old looking for approval after poorly coloring in an outline of Elmo.
John was sitting up in bed, dressed in a Princeton T-shirt and boxers. His face fell when he saw me, moving from a welcoming smile to a pained grimace. “Hi.”
“Hey. I found these in your mom’s room; they were the only ones there. Should I have just put my stuff back on? I put it all in the dumbwaiter and pressed the red button like you said, but I guess I could press the black one and get it back and then just put it on. It was red to send it down, right? What’s the matter?”
“Nothing. It’s just you. Well, you and the way you look in my mother’s pajamas. It’s just a little freaky, and I think I’m going to need therapy for a long time.”
I relaxed with the whiff of approval. “Can I go outside?” John’s room was identical in format to his parents, with a slightly smaller sleigh bed and the balcony beyond it with a higher view of Park Avenue and the Central Park treetops.
“Sure.” John hurried to join me outside, and we stood there, both in our PJs, looking out on the city as if we were completely alone. That was the quality of New York that I felt earlier as we raced from the subway, this idea that you are so completely surrounded by people that you are really all alone. At this moment, I loved it.
“New York is the perfect place for a family like yours.”
John knew exactly what I meant. “The best food in the world and not a single one of our neighbors cares who we are. It’s worked for us for a long time. I’m really glad you’re here, Digit.”
“Are you going to keep calling me that?”
“Probably—it’s perfect. There’s a reason it stuck. Does it bother you?”
I thought for a second and answered honestly, “For some reason, no.”
A cool wind blew past us, and John put his arm around me. “Let’s get you inside.”
We went in but left the French doors open. John started walking toward the hallway, and I climbed into bed. “Hang on. This is my room. I’ll walk you down to my parents’ room, come on.”
I put my head down and pulled the heavy down comforter up to my chin. “No.”
“Come on. We’re sleeping on our own tonight. There’s no need to . . .”
“No.” I was not getting out of that bed for anything.
“Okay, Digit. I’ll admit it.” He sat down on the side of the bed next to me. “I feel something too. A lot of something. But it’s got to be wrong. You’re seventeen years old. I am responsible for you, and if I give in now, who does that make me?”
I was so tired all of a sudden, I think even some of my hormones were starting to fall asleep. Without lifting my head, I said, “John, I feel a lot of things that I don’t have the energy to express right now, and I don’t think I’ve been exactly stealth about concealing them. But at this moment I’m feeling the effects of being thrown from a moving car, held at gunpoint, and tossed through a plate-glass window. You, incredibly attractive or not, might be the only thing that stands between my waking up in the morning and my being chopped up in my sleep. I am staying here, and so are you. And these fine silk pajamas are staying on. Now get in bed.”
He had no response to that. He walked around to the other side of the bed and climbed in. I was so comfortable and so safe in that bed. I stretched out and turned to take one last look at John before I went to sleep, but he was a step ahead of me. He was lying on his side, propped up on his elbow, looking at me in the oddest way. “What?”
“You know, for the longest time I have been so focused on the future. I’ve had a list of things I’ve wanted to accomplish since I was old enough to make a list. I am smack in the middle of the biggest challenge of my career so far, the outcome of which will determine my future, dead or alive—a success or a failure. Tonight when I was telling you about it all, I realized that right now, for the first time in my life, I only really want two things.” He touched my neck and looked at me so earnestly. “I just want to get you out of this. And then I want you to turn eighteen.”
With his hand still on my neck, he leaned down and kissed me. It was exactly like a kiss in a dream: a slow, soft kiss, not nearly long enough but long enough for it to matter. Of course, it was John who finally pulled away.
“Sorry,” he said, kissing me lightly once more and brushing my hair from my face. I’d never seen a less sorry person in my life.
“I forgive you,” I said. And I went to sleep.
When I woke up in the morning, I realized where I was before I opened my eyes. I wanted to remember it perfectly in case my parents didn’t want me to make a habit of shacking up with older guys on a school night. The first thing I felt was his skin on my back, warm and asleep. Then the smell of him, his own smell like clean skin combined with the smell of that great gardenia soap I’d used.