Doug blushes, then offers a sheepish grin as he pushes a piece of fish around his plate.
“I’m sorry,” I manage, trying to shut up. “Did you... Were you hurt?”
“I sprained my ankle.”
My shoulders shudder as I fail to suppress one last guilty laugh. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s fine. You’re pretty when you smile, Denise.”
I’d heard that a lot growing up. My father spent a small fortune on dental care, beating my snaggle tooth into submission and closing the gap between my front teeth. Back then, I had a lot to smile about. Or so I’d thought.
“Thanks.”
I know he meant it as a compliment, an effort to get this date on track, and I vow again to try harder. I need this. I need a couple of hours every once in a while, just to keep going. To feel something. Before my father’s arrest, I’d been the life of the party; after the arrest, a pariah. Now, a hermit. Doug is the second person I’ve spoken to in three weeks, and it will be at least that long before I speak to someone else.
The stranger’s food comes and Doug talks and I listen and occasionally the stranger glances up, turns a page, and meets my eye. The connection is palpable and terrifying. I can’t have it but I want it. I want it but I don’t need it. Those are distinctions I’d never had to make before my world fell apart.
I tell myself I’m only feeling this way because it’s been so long since I felt anything at all. That the stranger only interests me because I didn’t already read his too-long biography on the Fantasy Friends website and scroll through his profile and study his photos. He’s only appealing because he’s unknown, and he finds me appealing for the same reason.
If only he knew.
Doug asks if I’d like coffee or dessert, and I decline. We didn’t come here for coffee or dessert. Dinner is just protocol. I know he’s got a condo ten minutes from the restaurant; we’d discussed it in our emails. I told him what I tell everyone: Denise rents a studio apartment in one of the artist buildings at the edge of the city. It’s cluttered and the dogs bark and we’ll have to go to his place, if things progress that far. Doug agreed. They all do.
He folds his napkin on the table and excuses himself to go to the restroom. I know it’s my imagination, but it feels like the air in the restaurant grows ten degrees hotter. The stranger finishes his meal and closes the paperback and returns it to his pocket. Our eyes meet. When the server places my bill on the table, the stranger asks for his at the same time. He pays cash and stands, and I can’t look away. I want to. I need to. Brown contacts, red wig, fake name. He doesn’t know me. He can’t.
His jaw flexes like he’s considering speaking but decides against it. Eventually, he reaches into his pocket and pulls out a card. It’s flat, shiny and black. He puts the card on the table, the edge of his thumb grazing the side of my hand. Then he walks out.
I don’t turn around to watch him leave. I couldn’t if I wanted to. Instead I stare at the card, the fancy silver script. Holden City Grand Hotel. Room 804.
I know what this means. It’s why I’m here. My legs are shaved, my skin is soft, my underwear is new. But until this moment, I hadn’t truly wanted it, not this way. Not really.
Now I do.
I pick up the card and turn it in my fingers.
I put it in my purse.
Then I pay the bill and leave before Doug returns.
2
I DON’T GO TO THE STRANGER’S hotel room. I want to, but I’m not ready to be murdered, my body hacked up and tossed into the Holden River, as many would agree I deserve. I won’t give them the satisfaction.
Architects and city planners perfected the design of Holden years before they ever broke ground, and while the city has won awards for its beauty and sustainability, it’s the network that runs underneath it that makes Holden truly remarkable. Considered naively optimistic at the time, the designers believed Holden would one day explode into a financial superpower and carefully arranged the space so every square inch would be useful. Accordingly, there are very few above-ground parking lots, and 99% of the city is accessible through an intricate network of underground parkades and pathways. Perfect for those who want to move around unseen.
Verre Plein is just a few blocks from my apartment, and I chose the restaurant for precisely that reason. If I don’t drive to meet my date, no one can offer to walk me to my car, make note of my license plate, and, if they’re so inclined, do some research into the stranger they’ve picked up for the night. Despite the screaming headlines, I’m not a criminal mastermind, and I haven’t figured out how to register my car to a fake name.
The underground pathways are heated but the parking garages are not, and with the frigid winter weather, I’m the only person braving the dark and cold. It takes ten solitary minutes to reach my building’s parkade, and I swipe my key card at the elevator, both relieved and miserable to be home. It’s a five-degree February night, but I’m burning up. Sweat gathers beneath my arms and at the nape of my neck where the ridiculous wig twitches.
I live on the fourteenth floor but take the elevator to the top, climbing the stairs to the roof and using my shoulder to shove open the door. The roof is a gritty combination of gravel and tar, sticky beneath my feet, rolling my ankles. The air up here is cold and clean as it rushes past.
The building doesn’t have a rooftop patio, and I like it for exactly that reason. If it’s uninviting, no one else will come. If no one else comes, no one can see me pacing the perimeter, measuring the distance from side to side, counting how many feet it would take until I ran out of roof and there was nothing but air.
I pause at the front edge, overlooking the busy street below, the passersby unaware. There’s no railing up here, no safety net. I let the tips of my shoes poke over the side and feel the icy wind whip over my fake hair. A violent shiver rolls through me, like a ghost passing from one world to the next. I close my eyes and wait for courage I know won’t come. For most of my life, I had the world at my fingertips, everything I could have wanted and everything everyone else wanted. Now I have this. Up or down. If my dad’s conviction is overturned, we’ll take a plane to parts unknown and start fresh. If it’s not, I’ll take that final step and give the world one last, dramatic display.
Until then, life, unfortunately, goes on.
I head back inside and take the elevator down to fourteen. I rarely see my neighbors, but tonight Mr. Pedersen, the frisky septuagenarian across the hall, is coming home from a date of his own, a perky redhead in a sparkly dress laughing at something he said. Mr. Pedersen winks at me and I grimace. He’s not paying me to pretend to like him for a night.
I unlock the door to my unit. Home sweet home. “Home” used to be penthouses and beach houses and Paris pied-à-terres. Now it’s a modest two-bedroom in a one-of-a-kind boutique building that resembles all the one-of-a-kind buildings around it.
Over the course of his career, my father amassed an enormous collection of real estate, sometimes full developments, sometimes a swath of units in a popular building he would rent out for “spare change.” As a result, we had master keys to approximately eighty percent of the buildings in Holden, giving me and my brother quite literal keys to the city. After my father’s arrest, the units were repossessed along with pretty much everything else we owned, including all of our homes.