"I'd have to think about it. Was that a come-on line?"
Daniel asked, "You want some jam?"
Breakfast was coffee, pumpernickel bagels and smoked salmon. No onions. "Onions are a fourth-or fifth-date thing," Gabriela announced.
"Is this a date?"
She was thinking about last night. Her response was, "I don't know that we need to overthink it."
"Fair enough. Still, you manage an investment house and I run a venture capital firm. We're professional overthinkers. No?"
"True," she said.
"But it's not overthinking it to say we survived a completely excruciating night last night."
"No, that's accurate."
He frowned. "You're picking at your food. Can I have that piece of salmon? The lonesome one on the side?"
"Yours."
He speared and ate it. "What're your plans for today?"
"I pick Sarah up at one from dance class. And we spend the rest of the weekend together."
"You two have a great time. I can tell."
"Oh, we do." Her eyes grew wide. "We go to American Girl and FAO, naturally. But MOMA and the Met too. Sarah asks for the art museums. She's so smart. I have to keep reminding myself she's only six."
"Smart. So she's got your genes."
"She got my temperament genes. Ah, I think I just sniped at my ex again. I told myself I wasn't going to do that."
They nodded to the young male server for coffee refills. And thanked him. Daniel looked her over with a coy smile. "Is this where you tell me about the complication?"
Gabriela laughed hard. "You make your clients a ton of money, I'll bet. With that kind of insight."
"No engagement ring," Daniel said, glancing toward her finger. "You're beautiful--which by the way is less of a come-on line than 'Wow, you totally work out.' I just have a feeling there has to be a complication."
"Okay. There's this tiny complication."
"How tiny?"
"Stop it!" She laughed again. "His name's Frank. Frank Walsh."
"What an awful name," Daniel said, wrinkling his perfect nose.
"Are you listening?"
"Tell me about Frank," he said, thumping the last word with his lips. "I'm dying to know about complicating Frank."
"You're mean! We date some."
"Are you going to marry him?"
After a pause: "Fact is, he's a little more interested in me than I am in him."
"Never heard of that happening before," Daniel said sardonically. "I actually got proposed to by a woman on a first date. She popped the question as soon as she heard I had a job. I'm not making that up. But I should add that there was some tequila involved."
"Did you say yes?"
"To what?" Daniel asked with feigned innocence.
She continued, "Frank's quirky--he's a computer nerd. And reclusive. But he knows movies--which I love--and he's funny and considerate. You don't find that a lot nowadays."
"Here's my guideline," Daniel said. "The sweet factor."
"Sweet?"
"If you describe your present love interest as infuriating and exasperating, then you're in love. If you say he's sweet, it's doomed and you need to ditch him pronto--for somebody who infuriates you."
"I'm withholding all future adjectives about Frank for the time being." She glanced at her watch. "I don't have to be at the dance school for a while. Want to walk me back to my apartment?"
"Good idea," he said, "it'll help work some of that excess weight off your hips."
"Nice try. But you're not infuriating me. Yet." She took his fork, which contained his last piece of salmon, dunked the pink cube in sour cream and ate it fast.
II
CHAPTER 7
10:00 P.M., FRIDAY
11 HOURS EARLIER
YOU KNOW, I HAVE TO BE HONEST," Gabriela told Daniel Reardon. "This's been about as bizarre an evening as I can remember. Are you offended? I didn't mean to offend you."
He made no comment about her assessment. Instead he asked, "But was it a date?"
She thought for a moment. "It was date-like."
"Date-lite ?"
"Like," she corrected.
"Ah."
They were walking north on Broadway from Battery Park through the cool September evening. A checkerboard of windows in the nearby office buildings. Many illuminated, some dark. The worlds of law and finance never rest, even Friday night. The streets were still busy with traffic if dwindling of pedestrians. Limos queued in front of the posher buildings.
"Bizarre," he repeated quizzically. "The restaurant, you mean?"
Well, that was part of it. They'd eaten in a dive of an Indian place, curry and tikka and Kingfisher beer. The air had been tropically humid and heavy with sandalwood, the canned sitar music corny and the food perhaps the best South Asian cuisine she'd ever had. The feature dominating the room was a massive saltwater aquarium, easily ten thousand gallons. Gabriela had been captivated by the colorful fish, which eased, or darted, throughout the tank. Shrimp was on the menu, she noted, but no other seafood was represented. ("Good thing," she'd told him, nodding at the aquarium. "Just wouldn't be right.")
"Mostly by 'bizarre,' " Gabriela said, "I was actually referring to what happened before dinner."
"Oh. That."
And thinking back to those hours, while there were many memories, most prominent was Daniel's touch as he lifted a silk handkerchief and wiped the moisture from her brow. Once again she now felt the tumbling within her, low, as she had then.
Silence for a time as they walked toward subways--her station first. Daniel finally asked, "When you called your ex, I wasn't listening, but I noticed you didn't talk to your daughter for very long. Is everything okay?"
"Oh, she's fine. Sometimes, when her dad has her and he's nearby, she clams up. They get along fine. He's good with her. But you know how it is: exes."
Daniel's wryly twisted smile said that he knew all too well.
A mid-September breeze encircled them.
"You cold?"
"A little."
"Take my jacket."
"No." She pulled her own light tweed around her more tightly. "I'm fine."
He didn't persist; he'd probably sensed that once she'd come to a decision it would remain made. Which was largely true of Gabriela.
She gave a grimace and pointed to a plaza near Wall Street they were just passing. Bankers' Square. "See that building there?" She pointed to a squat structure situated next to the new stock exchange facility, still bustling with construction work, even at this hour. On the other side was a medical center--a branch of a major uptown hospital.
"I have that to thank for my ruined weekend."
"It doesn't look that intimidating."
"If you only knew."
In a few minutes they were at the subway station where she'd catch the train to the Upper West Side, the Eighth Avenue line. Daniel would walk home.
"Look," he said and fell silent.
Gabriela turned to him. She stepped aside so that the beam from a streetlight was not in her eyes.
"Look?" she prompted.
Daniel spoke like a patient saved by an emergency room surgeon: "I really owe you. For the Princeton Solution."
"It would've worked out," she said gravely.
"Not the way you handled it."
"Did the best I could under... let's say, difficult circumstances."
But the expression of gratitude was, of course, a prelude to the inevitable.
He said, "Okay, I find you very attractive. But that's only part of it. I like you. You're fun, you're artsy, you know business. So here's the thing: I'm not seeing anybody and I haven't been seeing anybody for a while. Can I call you?"
"Anybody can call anybody if they have the number," Gabriela said. "The question is, will I pick up?"
Daniel looked pensive. "Remember the days before caller ID? That was life on the edge, wasn't it? Do I pick up or not?"
She filled in, "Would it be a telemarketer, d
ate, ex-boyfriend? A job offer?"
"Or a wrong number."
"Or, God forbid, your mother." Gabriela winced. "We're soft nowadays."
"Cowards."
They stood three feet from each other. Businessmen scooted around them, cars shushed past.
It was time to part ways. They both knew it.
He leaned in for a cheek brush.
She felt heat, she felt a faint stubble. The residue of moisture from earlier, recalling his wiping it from their brows and cheeks. "Night." His word was spoken softly.
"Night."
She turned and started down the stairs, digging for her Metro pass. Then stopped. She called, "My shoes?"
"What?"
"That old Tiffany bag I had? With my grown-up shoes inside?" Earlier that evening she'd swapped her high heels for the Aldo flats she now wore. "I left it at the restaurant."
He grinned.
"No," she said, stifling a laugh. "Not on purpose."
"You sure? Maybe for another chance to see me again?"
Gabriela said, "Sorry. I wouldn't risk losing a pair of Stuart Weitzmans just to see a man again. Any man."
Daniel said, "How's this? We can avoid the phone call issue altogether. We'll commit now. I'll stop at the restaurant on the way to my home, pick them up and deliver them tomorrow at breakfast. How's Irving's Deli, Broadway. Nine?"
She paused then said, "I suppose."
"I know," he said, his face growing grave. "You're thinking: Will breakfast be as dull as tonight?"
"Nothing could be as boring as the past three hours," Gabriela replied and disappeared down the subway entrance.
CHAPTER 6
6:30 P.M., FRIDAY
3 HOURS, 30 MINUTES EARLIER
THE AQUARIVA SUPER CUT an uncompromising swath through the dusk of New York Harbor, Daniel Reardon at the helm.
"How fast are we going?" Gabriela called over the sexy rumble of the engine, the wind, the waves.
"About forty."
"Knots per hour?"
Daniel shouted, "You don't say that. Knots include miles and hours. Forty knots. It's about forty-five miles an hour."
Gabriela nodded, smiling at the speed. "Feels faster."
"Then you'd like the boat I keep in Connecticut. It'll do seventy."
She didn't bother to ask knots or miles. Probably didn't matter at that velocity.
There was no passenger seat in the front of the beautiful Italian speedboat as such--just a leather U-shaped banquette encircling the rear of the open cockpit. Gabriela could have squeezed in next to Daniel on the driver's seat but she preferred to remain standing behind him, close, gripping his seat back, her head near his ear.
The thirty-three-footer, with her black hull and rich wood deck, plowed effortlessly through the temperate waves. The surface of the water was like dark linen and the cloudless sky over New Jersey glowed lava orange from the vanishing sun, the vista split by two purple exclamation marks of fume from distant smokestacks.
It was a photograph waiting to happen, though not to be shot by Gabriela. She worked exclusively in black and white, and this scene was about color only, without substance. Pretty didn't interest her.
She turned her attention back to Daniel. He was a superb driver--which is what pilots of boats like this were called, she'd learned. He anticipated the drift and power of each wave, as if it were an opposing player on a sports field. Sometimes he crashed over it, sometimes he eased up onto a crest and used the mound of water itself to speed the boat forward.
She found his handling of the wheel and chrome controls intensely sensual, and felt that low unfurling within her as she noted his firm grip, half smile, utter concentration. The blue eyes were focused on the water, the way a lion sights for prey.
Gabriela leaned closer yet and smelled past his aftershave to his hair and scalp and skin.
"What do you think?" he asked.
"I've been on rowboats in Central Park," Gabriela told him. "I'm not qualified to judge performance."
The words might have been taken as flirt. He gave no response. She wondered how she felt about that.
She continued in a shout, "But on the surface--so to speak--"
He laughed.
"Incredible."
Daniel throttled back and for a time they cruised. They could speak without raising voices now. He said, with a grim expression, "Well, hate to ruin the mood, but I don't have much time left. I really need your help." A reminder of the conundrum he'd mentioned earlier.
He nodded at a thick binder sitting on the floor of the boat between them.
She said firmly, "You have to go with the Princeton formula."
"Princeton?" He frowned.
"Look on page thirty-eight. That's the answer."
He balanced the binder on his lap and flipped through pages. At one he stopped and stared down. "You're sure? Princeton?"
"Absolutely no doubt."
"That's pretty risky, don't you think?"
"Which is why I suggested it."
He seemed uncertain.
Gabriela said, "But it's your decision."
"No, no." Daniel looked around him. "Okay. I'll go with it." He laughed. "The Princeton Solution." He added, "You're a lifesaver."
She blinked at the word. "Could you pick another figure of speech? I mean, considering we're in the middle of New York Harbor and happen to be sailing toward that really big ship."
He looked up. "It's a mile away. That reminds me, I forgot to ask: Can you swim?"
"How bad a sailor are you?" she asked.
"I just mean I'll give you a PPD."
"Pee-pee what?"
"Personal protection device. Or, your word: lifesaver."
"I can swim," she said.
"Hold on." When he noted her firm grip on the handholds, he steered into an impressive wake, took it head-on. The boat nearly caught air and slammed into the water on the other side of the crest. Spray dashed onto their faces.
"Come here." Daniel reached into his breast pocket and withdrew a white silk handkerchief. "Decorative only," he said, smiling. She leaned forward and he wiped the salt spray from her forehead and cheeks, then his own.
He now steered parallel to Manhattan. They took in the otherworldly sight of the lights of the city coming alive and growing brighter. In the deepening dusk, Gabriela was cold. She shivered and pulled her black-and-white jacket around her more tightly.
Daniel consulted his watch. Seven forty. "You still up for dinner?"
"Oh, by the way. I don't get seasick."
He frowned. "Should've asked too. Oops."
"I would've told you. I just mean, in answer to your question, yes: I'm starving. And we should get back soon. On the nights I don't have Sarah, I call her before she goes to bed. I never miss it."
"I try to do the same, with the boys."
He turned south down the Hudson and back into the harbor proper. Daniel eased the throttle forward. He had a devilish smile. "Fifteen minutes more?"
"Sure."
He steered to the right, closer to the container ship she'd seen earlier, which was steaming at a good clip toward the Verrazano Narrows.
"God, it's huge."
"That one's a post-Panamax. Means she won't fit through the Panama Canal."
"How high is it?" She was staring up as they approached the massive hull, red and scabby, laden with containers of all colors.
"I don't know," Daniel replied. "Ten stories maybe. Probably more. They're classified by length and breadth, not height. She's probably a thousand feet long, a hundred twenty wide."
" 'She'? Are all boats girls?"
"No. They're women." Without a millisecond of hesitation.
Got me there, she thought. And had to laugh. "It's magnificent and it's ugly," Gabriela called. "She is, I mean." Then she tapped the dashboard. "Your boat--what's her name? I didn't look at the back."
"Boat."
The wind gusted. She shouted: "Right. What's her name?"
"No, Boa
t's her name."
"That's all you could come up with?"
"It's all I wanted."
"And 'Boat' wasn't taken?"
"It's not like you have to trademark names. But, no, I've never seen Boat. Most people are more creative." He described and spelled some. "Irritable Bow. A Crewed Interest. Charley's Tuition. Nauty Call."
She groaned.
"Hold on. Here comes the monster's wake."
Impressive crests of water charged them.
She knelt, gripped more tightly yet, the backs of her hands pressed against his shoulders. It seemed that he settled back firmly against her knuckles. Daniel straightened the craft and expertly tricked the engine and wheel as they met the first wave.
Boat crashed into and over the swell. Gabriela felt her breath leave her lungs as they landed hard.
Another dozen collisions, each tamer than the one before.
The boat settled into a gentle rocking.
"Look," he said with admiration bordering on awe in his voice. If the Chinese sea monster was impressive, the ship they saw to their right was breathtaking.
"It's as big as a city," she called. "What's that one?"
"A VLCC. Very large crude carrier. A tanker. And see how high she's riding? She's in ballast--no oil on board. She off-loaded in Jersey."
"Going to the Panama Canal?"
"She's not going to fit either. She's headed to the Mediterranean or all the way around the Horn."
"Titanic."
He laughed. "Titanic was half her size"--nodding at the supertanker.
"How fast is she going?"
"Even full they can do eighteen knots. Empty, twenty-five, I'd guess. If I was alone I'd race her to that buoy."
"Why?"
Daniel shrugged. "Because it'd be fun."
"No, I mean why only if you were alone?" When he hesitated she added, "Go ahead. Do it."
"Race?"
"Sure."
"I don't know."
She whispered, "You have me to thank for the Princeton Solution, remember? You owe me."
Daniel steered toward the buoy and throttled back, as if giving the VLCC, which must've outweighed Boat by a hundred thousand tons, a head start. The speedboat's exhaust bubbled, the wind hissed and behind them gulls shrieked a plea for chum.
"Ready?"
She cried, "Go!"
Daniel rammed the throttles forward and Boat sprang away, her needle-shaped bow lifting high as they sprinted for the buoy.
Boat and the massive tanker were on intersecting forty-five-degree courses. Every second it grew bigger and darker as they wedged toward each other. Soon the VLCC was an otherworldly thing, visible only in outline and running lights and occasional amber dots of windows. An unstoppable shape, absorbing the entire sky, yet still growing, growing.