“How sweet,” I said. “So tell me, Adam, which is your favorite book?”
“All of them.”
That’s what they all said.
“Give me a straight answer or I won’t let you sit down,” I said.
Adam rattled off the titles of five of my six novels and then quoted the opening paragraph of my first book, which was set in Perugia, where I had spent my junior year abroad. The passage contained a phrase in Italian that referred to the huge white truffles of Umbria. He pronounced the Italian perfectly, and then translated it to show that he knew what it meant.
I said, “OK, Adam, you can sit down.”
My date said, “After all that, you should maybe sit on his lap.”
Not such a bad idea. The waiter delivered a large platter of antipasto.
Adam said, “I’ll be mother.”
“Why you?” asked the husband, who also seemed to know him.
“Because I was late,” Adam said.
“Late? Is that what you call it? You practically stood us up.”
Without looking at me, Adam said, “Yeah. Well, I was recovering from a terrible disappointment.”
I said, “Did Adam play lacrosse for Colgate, too?”
“No,” my date said. “He played for Syracuse. They kicked the crap out of us three years in a row. Adam did most of the damage.”
Handling serving spoon and fork with one hand, Adam filled our plates and handed them around. Suddenly I had an appetite. I gobbled the antipasto and ordered gnocchi. It was after midnight when the party ended with half a dozen empty wine bottles on the table. Adam picked up the tab. The other two insisted on taking care of the tip. After they stood up and turned their backs, Adam counted the bills they had left on the table and added another twenty.
Hmmm,
said the wine.
On the sidewalk, the old boyfriend wondered if I’d mind finding my own way home. He was staying with the newlyweds, and they lived in New Jersey. He’d find a cab for me.
Adam said, “I’ll see her home, if that’s OK.”
“Same old Adam,” said the husband.
My date just smiled nicely and waggled his fingers at me. Apparently Adam had won me in a long-ago lacrosse game.
Adam and I walked to his car, one of those convertibles with a metal roof that folds into the trunk. Despite the weather he put the top down. It wasn’t snowing, but it was cold, and as the car moved, the windchill factor took effect. He asked where I lived. I told him. The air smelled washed. Adam smelled like coffee, having drunk two double espressos in the restaurant, and the aroma reminded me of Italy. I felt safe with him. I felt other things besides. I had drunk a lot of wine.
I asked him what he did for a living. He pretended not to hear me. We arrived at my building.
Adam said, “Shall I park the car or say goodnight?”
I didn’t answer the question, but I didn’t open the door, either.
He put the car in gear and found a parking space about half a block away. He backed into it expertly and turned to me. I must have looked like I was going to ask another question, because he put a gloved finger to my half-frozen lips and said, “I’m a lawyer.”
“You don’t smell like a lawyer.”
“Neither do you,” Adam said. “Let’s go upstairs.”
The next morning, while Adam slept, I wrote a scene that described in exquisite detail what had happened between the two of us the night before. Unbeknownst to me, Adam stood behind me as I typed and read over my shoulder.
He said, “I really hope you’re going to do this every time we have sex.”
I was naked. He put his fingertips on my shoulders and pressed lightly.
Later, while I regretfully took a shower—all those olfactory delights swirling down the drain to be replaced by the aroma of Olay soap—Adam prepared breakfast. It was nothing like one of Henry’s gourmet repasts, but it was fine. This guy knew how to poach eggs in the microwave, make toast, pour orange juice.
Over coffee, Adam told me he had grown up in Saratoga Springs. He had had a happy childhood. Like me, he was an only child. His father was a stockbroker who in his youth had played football at Syracuse. His mother, who had almost made the Olympics as an equestrian, owned a stable and taught kids to ride. He had spent four years on destroyers, and then gone to law school at Georgetown. After that he worked for the government in Washington for a while, and finally hung out his shingle in Manhattan—in SoHo, on Wooster Street, in fact, because he wanted to live a funky life. He had his own law firm, no partners yet. He made a living, he had a little money of his own. This recitation sounded like a wedding notice in the “Sunday Styles” section of the
Times.
Adam said, “Your turn.”
I said, “If you’ve read the author blurb on my books, you already know everything.”
“You’re right. My favorite thing is the photograph, that look in your eyes.”
“Cut it out.”
“Actually, I Googled you,” he said. “You made Phi Beta Kappa. You’ve got an MFA and a PhD. You were an all-conference lacrosse player in college. Did you have a lacrosse scholarship?”
“Women’s lacrosse? Are you kidding?”
Adam said, “One more thing. Our meeting in the gallery was no accident. I spotted you on the street and followed you.”
This was kind of sexy to know, but also kind of not. I said, “Why, when you knew you were going to have dinner with me?”
“I didn’t know you were you. Meeting you was supposed to be a surprise. It was a surprise. I was late at the restaurant because I was looking for you all over Chelsea.”
This was good for my ego. On the other hand, it was eight thirty already, practically midday according to my usual schedule, and I hadn’t yet written a word, except for the smut.
“Looking for me all over Chelsea?” I said. “What’s the plan from now on? Are you going to go on stalking me?”
My tone was not as light as maybe it should have been.
Adam recoiled, then shook his head as if he had never imagined that I could say such a thing to him after what we had been to each other. He left without another word. The door closed behind him. What had I done? Was I out of my mind?
I sat down at the keyboard. Words flowed as from a mountain spring. At noon exactly, Henry’s face popped up on the computer screen. I felt a little current of guilt. It didn’t last long.
I said, “Hi, Henry. Nice timing.”
Henry said, “Can you come for dinner tonight? There’s someone I want you to meet.”
“Another Amerigo?”
“I’ll send the car around seven.”
The other telephone rang. I let it ring. Adam was leaving a message on the answering machine. He wanted to know why I had turned into such a spiteful bitch so soon after we had gotten out of bed? Why? He was at a loss to understand.
To Henry I said, “Fine, seven o’clock,” and hung up.
Adam’s disembodied voice was telling me that if he had any sense he would never want to see me again. However, he was prepared to give me one more chance.
He said, “Let’s get over this bump in the road. My place. Grab a cab, now.”
He gave me an address on Broome Street. I didn’t pick up.
Adam said, “Fine. I know you’re there. The hell with you.”
After he hung up, I went to the computer and Googled him. He didn’t have much of an entry, but what there was checked out with the life story he had told me.
Evening shadows were falling. What would I wear to Henry’s? I pulled on my tightest jeans and a pretty good top and my favorite necklace made of alternating polished and unpolished silver links, and a ruby ring I had inherited from an aunt, and sat down to watch the news while I waited for the intercom to buzz.
Henry’s other guest was a very laid-back Chinese in a two-thousand-dollar suit. He looked like a younger and taller version of the late Zhou Enlai—same handsome face and obsidian eyes, same coiled manner. I was glad I had dressed up a little. He handed me his business card. I tried to make points by reading the side printed in Mandarin. His name thereon was Ng Fred. He was chairman and CEO of CyberSci, Inc., of Beijing.
He said, in Mandarin, “The
Ng
is pronounced
Wu.
It’s a long story. The Cantonese ideograph is the same as the Mandarin character but has a different sound. But maybe you already know that.”
In English, I said, “Is Fred really your first name?”
“My business name,” he replied.
“So what should I call you?” I asked in Mandarin, showing off again.
“Fred is fine,” he replied in native American English. “Your Mandarin is quite good. You have a Shanghai accent. Where did you pick it up?”
“In Shanghai. I taught there for a year after grad school.”
“What subject?”
“Western art history, in a high school.”
“So you taught in Mandarin?”
“Sort of, sometimes. I was supposed to talk English, a twofer. Lots of giggles from the kids when I broke into Chinese.”
He gave me a real look of amusement. I liked this guy.
As Henry explained while we dined, the topic he wanted to discuss was defense systems for the spaceship. Fred’s company, in which Henry held a lot of stock, was going to build the ship—in fact, had already built a factory not far from Henry’s yurts in Hsi-tau. He and Henry were old friends—classmates—roommates, even. Fred’s mother was an American Chinese who as a Movement chick had been such a fervent Maoist that she moved to China and married a Red Guard. She sent Fred to a New England prep school, but I had already heard that in his voice just as he had heard Shanghai in mine. Later he had gone to Caltech, where he met Henry.
“I used to copy his notes,” Fred said.
Henry and Fred had been exchanging ideas about a defense system for the ship. The question of weaponizing a spacecraft was a difficult one, ethically speaking. Should humanity go unarmed into the cosmos or not? Theoretically mankind had no enemies except itself, in space or anywhere else. I said as much.
Henry said, “So what are you saying? That we should concentrate on countering a threat from Earth? That human beings would destroy the ship out of resentment or disappointment?”
I’m no great believer in the proposition that human beings will act rationally if given the opportunity to do so. Their natural state is irrationality, especially when they turn into a mob, which is essentially what they would become in the hypothetical circumstances we were talking about.
“The people who are being left behind might go crazy,” I said. “That’s always been the expectation in a worst-case scenario. But however crazy they went, I don’t think they’d be stupid enough to shoot down the spaceship. That would mean shooting down their only hope of escape.”
“Maybe not,” Ng Fred said. “But a boarding party might be dispatched to capture the ship before it launched—or if it had already left, to pursue it, overtake it, and commandeer it.”
Henry said, “Where would they get the ships for an expedition like that?”
“Do you really think the U.S. government is not going to build its own ship when it finds out about yours? Not to mention the government of every other technological state in the world.”
“So how do we protect the ship?”
“You find a new way to protect it without destroying it or killing too many pirates.”