Back at his place, Andrew set down the baggage in his room and left Valerie to unpack her things. When he returned, she’d slipped under the sheets without turning the light on. He sat down by her, kissed her, then walked back to the door, guessing she needed to be alone to mourn the relationship that had just ended. He wished her goodnight and asked if she still liked hot chocolate. Valerie nodded and Andrew left the room.
That night, from the sofa in the living room, where Andrew had trouble sleeping, he heard her crying and ached to go and comfort her, but stopped himself. Only she could help herself get over that kind of grief.
In the morning, Valerie found a breakfast tray on the coffee table in the living room. On it was a bowl containing cocoa powder and a note:
I’m taking you to dinner tonight.
It’ll be our first time.
I’ve left you a spare set of keys in the hall.
Love,
Andrew
Valerie promised Andrew she’d only stay as long as it took her ex to move his things out of her apartment. If her best friend Colette didn’t live in New Orleans, she’d have gone to stay with her. Ten days later—much to Andrew’s regret, as having her around was making him happier every day—she packed her suitcase and went back to her place in the East Village. Seeing Andrew’s saddened face, she reminded him they’d only be fifteen blocks away from each other.
Summer arrived. During the weekends, when the heat in the city became unbearable, they took the subway to Coney Island and spent hours on the beach.
In September, Andrew left the States for a ten-day trip, refusing to give Valerie the slightest bit of information about it. He used the word “confidential” and swore she had no reason to doubt him.
In October, when he went on another trip, he promised to take her on vacation as soon as he could so she’d forgive him. But Valerie didn’t like consolation prizes and told him he could screw his vacation.
As fall drew to a close, Andrew was rewarded for the work that had taken up all his time and energy. Weeks and weeks of research and two trips to China to gather evidence and verify the credibility of his sources had allowed him to uncover the details of a child trafficking racket in Hunan Province and put together an investigation demonstrating just how corrupt and horrific human behavior can be. His article was published in the Sunday paper, the most-read edition of the week, and caused a real stir.
Sixty-five thousand Chinese babies had been adopted by American families over the previous ten years. The scandal was that hundreds of them hadn’t been abandoned, as their official papers claimed, but forcibly taken away from their birth parents and placed in an orphanage that was paid five thousand dollars per adoption. The lucrative trade had greased the pockets of corrupt police officers and civil servants who had set up the trafficking ring. The Chinese authorities moved quickly to cover up the scandal, but the damage was done. Andrew’s article forced a large number of American adoptive parents to grapple with the tragic implications of his investigation.
Andrew was the buzz of the Times’ editorial offices, and even got mentioned on the evening news. He was congratulated by his peers, though some of them were clearly jealous, and received a personal email from editor-in-chief as well as numerous letters from readers who’d been deeply moved by his investigation. Three anonymous death threats were sent to the newspaper, though such threats were nothing new.
Andrew was on his own for the holidays. Valerie had gone to visit Colette in New Orleans. The day after she left, Andrew was attacked in a parking lot by someone with a baseball bat. It could have turned nasty if the tow truck guy he’d had an appointment with hadn’t arrived just in time.
Simon had gone skiing in Beaver Creek, Colorado, to celebrate the New Year with a group of friends. Andrew spent Christmas and New Year’s Eve sitting at the bar of Mary’s Fish Camp with a plate of oysters and a few glasses of dry white wine.
2012 got off to a promising start, apart from a minor accident in early January, in which Andrew was hit by a car as he was passing in front of the Charles Street police station. The driver, a retired cop revisiting his old workplace while on vacation, was mortified that he’d hit Andrew and relieved to see him get back up unhurt. He insisted on treating Andrew to dinner at the restaurant of his choice. Andrew wasn’t busy that evening, and a good steak sounded better than filling out an insurance claim form. Besides, no journalist can refuse a meal with a garrulous old New York cop. The inspector told him his life story and the highlights of his career.
Valerie had kept her apartment, which Andrew nicknamed her “safe house,” but from February on she slept at his place every night, and they started thinking seriously about finding a bigger place and moving in together. The only hitch was that Andrew refused to leave the West Village: he’d sworn to himself he’d live there till the end of his days. He knew the stories associated with those charming streets by heart and took pleasure in retelling them when they went for walks. Like the Greenwich Avenue intersection where the diner that had inspired Edward Hopper’s famous painting Nighthawks once stood, or the house where John Lennon had lived before moving to The Dakota. The West Village had played a role in nearly every American cultural revolution and was home to the country’s most famous cafés, cabarets and nightclubs.
“I mean, Joan Baez got her start here,” Andrew told Valerie.
“Who?”
Andrew was indignant. How could someone not know who Joan Baez is? But when he turned he saw in Valerie’s face that she was teasing him. He smiled. “That’s reason enough to live here, right?”
“Oh, sure,” said Valerie.
One afternoon, he came home early from the office, emptied out his closets and transferred most of his belongings to a storage unit. That evening, he opened the wardrobe doors for Valerie and announced that there was no longer any hurry to find a new place; she now had all the space she needed to move in properly.
In March, Andrew was commissioned by his editor to undertake a new investigation, in the same vein as the previous one. It was an important special report and he got to work immediately, thrilled at the prospect of going to Argentina.
In early May, back from Buenos Aires and knowing he’d have to return there soon, Andrew couldn’t think of any other way of getting Valerie to forgive him for his travels than to announce to her when they were at an Italian restaurant one evening that he wanted to marry her.
She stared at him suspiciously, then burst out laughing. Valerie’s laughter upset him. He looked at her, unsettled to realize that though he’d popped the question without really thinking about it, the idea of marrying her actually made him very happy.
“You’re not serious, are you?” Valerie asked, wiping the tears from the corners of her eyes.
“Why wouldn’t I be?”
“Come on, Andrew. We’ve only been together a few months. Don’t you think that’s too soon to be making that sort of decision?”
“We’ve been together for a year and we’ve known each other since we were teenagers. Don’t you think we’ve had plenty of time?”
“With a short interlude of twenty years!”
“I think the fact that we met in our teens, lost touch, then bumped into each other again by chance on a New York sidewalk is a sign.”
“I thought you were a fact-obsessed, rational journalist. Since when do you believe in signs?”
“Since I saw you.”
Valerie looked him straight in the eye without saying a word, then smiled.
“Ask me again.”
Andrew stared at Valerie. She was no longer the rebellious girl he’d known twenty years earlier. The Valerie sitting opposite him at the dinner table had swapped her patched jeans for a flattering skirt, her sneakers painted with nail polish for patent high heels, the shapeless army jacket she used to practically live in for a cashmere V-neck sweater that hugged her beautiful bre
asts. She no longer overdid the eye makeup—a light dusting of eyeshadow and a touch of mascara was all she wore. Valerie Ramsay was by far the most beautiful woman he’d ever met, and he’d never felt this close to anyone.
Andrew felt his palms turn clammy, which was a first for him. He pushed back his chair, walked around the table and knelt on one knee.
“Valerie Ramsay, I don’t have a ring on me because my intention is as spontaneous as it is sincere, but if you would like to be my wife, we’ll go and choose one together this weekend, and I intend to do all I can to be the best husband ever so that you wear it your whole life through. Or let’s say my whole life through, in case you decide to remarry after I die.”
“You can’t help adding a touch of black humor even when you’re asking me to marry you!”
“I promise you that kneeling like this, with all these people watching me, the last thing I was trying to be was funny.”
“Andrew,” Valerie whispered in his ear, “I’m going to answer ‘yes’ because I want to. And becauseI want tostop you looking like an idiot in front of the whole restaurant. But when you get back in your chair, I’ll tell you the one condition I’m setting for our marriage. The ‘yes’ I’m going to say out loud now will remain provisional for the next few minutes, all right?”
“Okay,” Andrew murmured back.
Valerie planted a kiss on his lips and said yes for all to hear. The other diners in the restaurant, who had been holding their breath, applauded enthusiastically.
The owner of the trattoria came out from behind the bar to congratulate his loyal customers. He took Andrew in his arms, squeezed him tight and, in his thick New York Italian accent, said softly into his ear: “I hope you know what you’ve just done!”
Then he took Valerie’s hand and kissed it.
“I’m allowed to kiss you now that you’ll be a Mrs.! I’ll get some champagne brought over to you to celebrate. On the house. Yes, yes, I insist!”
Maurizio returned to the bar and signaled to his only waiter to serve them immediately.
“I’m all ears,” Andrew said quietly as the champagne cork popped.
The waiter filled their glasses and Maurizio came over with his own glass to drink to the future married couple.
“Just give us a second please, Maurizio,” Andrew said, holding his arm.
“You want me to set out my condition in front of him?” Valerie asked, surprised.
“He’s an old friend. We have no secrets,” Andrew answered dryly.
“Fine! So, Mr. Stilman, you can take me to become your lawfully wedded wife if you give your word of honor never to lie, be unfaithful to me or intentionally make me suffer. If one day you don’t love me anyone, I want to be the first to know. I’ve had my fill of affairs that end in nights of sorrow. If you can make me this promise, then yes, I will marry you.”
“I swear, Valerie Ramsay-Stilman.”
“On your life?”
“On my life!”
“If you betray me, I’ll kill you!”
Maurizio glanced at Andrew and crossed himself.
“Can we drink to you now?” inquired the restaurant owner. “I do have other customers . . . ”
They made love all night long, stopping every so often to watch old black and white shows on the TV at the end of the bed. In the early hours of the morning, they crossed the city and went and sat on a bench overlooking the East River to watch daybreak.
“You must remember this night forever,” Andrew whispered in Valerie’s ear.
4.
Andrew spent the first ten days of June in Buenos Aires. On his return from this second trip to Argentina, he found Valerie more radiant than ever. A dinner together with their maid of honor, Valerie’s old friend Colette, and best man turned out to be one of the more pleasant evenings he’d ever spent. Colette thought Andrew was very charming.
In the weeks before the wedding, which was planned for the end of the month, Andrew spent every day and many evenings fine-tuning his article, fantasizing from time to time that he’d win the Pulitzer Prize for it.
The air-conditioning in his apartment had finally given up the ghost and the couple moved into Valerie’s one-bedroom in the East Village. Some nights, Andrew would stay at the paper until the early hours, on others he’d work at Valerie’s, keeping her awake with the sound of his typing.
The heat in the city was unbearable. Violent storms struck Manhattan almost daily. Andrew heard them described as “apocalyptic.” Little did he realize that his own life was about to take an apocalyptic turn of its own.
* * *
He’d sworn to Valerie that there’d be no strip joint or nightclub full of bachelorettes; just an evening with friends.
For his stag night, Simon invited Andrew to a trendy new restaurant. In New York, trendy restaurants open and close as fast as the seasons change.
“Are you sure about your decision?” Simon asked, reading the menu.
“I’m still hesitating between the chateaubriand and the pork tenderloin,” Andrew answered distantly.
“I was talking about your life.”
“I got that.”
“Well?”
“What do you want me to say, Simon?”
“Each time I broach the subject of your marriage, you dodge the issue. I’m your best friend, okay? I just want to know how you’re feeling.”
“Liar. You’re scrutinizing me like I’m some lab rat. You want to know what’s going through my mind in case this kind of thing happens to you one day.”
“No risk of that!”
“I could’ve told you that months ago.”
“Okay, you’re my lab rat. So what really made you take the leap?” Simon quizzed, leaning closer to his friend. “Tell me: do you feel any different since you made this decision?”
“Look, we’re both in our late thirties. The way I see it, we’ve only got two options. Either we keep screwing around . . . ”
“That’s an attractive prospect!” Simon exclaimed.
“ . . . and turn into one of those aging Lotharios who think fooling around with girls thirty years their junior will help them recapture their lost youth. Or we settle down.”
“I’m not asking you to give me your theory of life. I’m asking if you love Valerie enough to want to spend the rest of your life with her.”
“If I hadn’t asked you to be my best man, I’d probably say that’s none of your business.”
“But I am your best man!”
“The rest of my life? I’ve no idea, and anyway that doesn’t only depend on me. What I do know is that I can’t imagine my life without her anymore. I’m happy. I miss her when she’s not there. I’m never bored in her company. I love the way she laughs, and she laughs a lot. I think that’s what I find most attractive in a woman. As for our sex life . . . ”
“Okay, okay,” Simon interrupted, “you’ve convinced me! The rest of it is definitely none of my business.”
“But are you the best man?”
“Yes, but I’m not responsible for what the two of you get up to in bed when the lights are off.”
“Who said anything about turning off the lights?”
“Okay, stop. Too much information. Can we change subjects?”
“I’m going to go for the pork tenderloin,” Andrew said. “You know what’d make me really happy?”
“Me writing a great speech for your wedding?”
“No, I won’t ask for the impossible. What I’d really like is to wind up this evening at my new favorite bar.”
“That Cuban place in SoHo?”
“Argentinian.”
“I’d had something else in mind, but it’s your night. Your wish is my command.”
Novecento was jam-packed. Simon and Andrew managed to elbow their way through to the bar. Andrew ordered a Fernet t
opped up with Coke. Simon tasted it, made a face, and ordered a glass of red wine instead.
“How on earth can you drink that stuff? It’s bitter as hell.”
“I’ve knocked back a lot of these in Buenos Aires lately. You get used to it, believe me. Even end up liking it.”
“Speak for yourself.”
Simon spotted a Bond girl lookalike with a lot of leg, and peeled off with barely an apology. Andrew smiled as he watched his friend walk away. There was no doubt which of the two options he’d mentioned earlier Simon had chosen.
A woman sat down on the bar stool Simon had just vacated and flashed Andrew a smile as he ordered a second Fernet and Coke. They exchanged some small talk. The young woman said she was surprised to see an American liking that drink; it was pretty unusual. Andrew replied that he was an unusual kind of guy. She smiled some more and asked him what made him so different. The question caught him off guard, as did the depth of the woman’s gaze.
“What do you do?”
“Uh, I’m a journalist,” Andrew stammered.
“That’s an interesting job.”
“Some days, yeah,” he answered.
“Financial?”
“Oh no. What made you think that?”
“We’re not far from Wall Street.”
“If I was having a drink in the Meatpacking District, would you think I was a butcher?”
The young woman burst out laughing. Andrew liked the way she laughed.
“Political?” she asked.
“Not that either.”
“Okay. I like guessing games,” she said. “You’ve got tanned skin, so I’m guessing you travel.”
“It’s summer. And you’ve got a tan too. But you’re right, my job does take me abroad.”
“I’ve got olive skin, but that’s genetic. Got it: you’re an investigative reporter!”
“You could say that.”