The kids would smile shyly and nod, chew on a finger while dropping a parent-supplied dollar bill into the paper bag at the guy’s feet.
On the opposite side, a young bareheaded musical student (smart, Leo thought, his head of streaked blond curls was impressive) had a violin tucked under his elongated chin. He was playing popular classical riffs, lots of Vivaldi, a little Bach, and was very popular with the ladies not pushing strollers; the older ones in their fur coats, the younger ones wearing headphones or carrying reusable shopping bags.
The pelting rain that had been falling all morning was changing over to sleet. Whoever was on the other end of the phone number hadn’t called him back yet. He didn’t have an umbrella, didn’t even have a hat, and the shoulders of his expensive jacket were soaking wet. He paged through the contacts on his phone again, looked at Stephanie’s name for a few seconds, and hit “call.”
“THINGS MUST BE WORSE than I’ve heard if you’re begging to cross the bridge to Brooklyn,” Stephanie said to Leo. She picked up after only the third ring.
“I’m not begging. I need to spend time with somebody normal, somebody I actually like.” Stephanie didn’t respond. She wasn’t going to make this easy. “What have you heard anyway,” Leo asked, “about my situation.” He braced himself. This was another reason he needed to see Stephanie, to figure out how much of the story was out there, see if George had done what he promised.
“Hardly anything,” Stephanie said. “I heard you checked into Bridges. That’s it. Your consigliore is doing a good job. So how was it?”
“How was what?”
“The Carnival cruise,” Stephanie said, trying to decide how far she could push on the phone. Probably not very far.
“You are still not quite as funny as you think,” Leo said, trying to decide how much he’d have to cede before she invited him out. Probably not much.
“How was rehab, Leo? What else would I be asking about?”
“It was fine.” Leo’s fingers were starting to go numb in the cold.
“Are you all beholden to your higher power? Working through the steps?”
“It wasn’t really that kind of place,” Leo said.
“What kind of place was it?”
“Steph, I don’t know if you’ve looked out the window recently, but I’m standing outside in a monsoon of freezing sleet. I’m soaking wet. It’s really cold.” He stomped his feet a little to try to warm his toes. He wasn’t used to being in this situation, waiting on a request.
“Come out. You know where I live.”
“What subway do I take?” He cringed, hearing himself sound so eager and grateful.
“My lord,” Stephanie said, laughing. “Brooklyn and not via town car? I guess the mighty really have fallen. You know there aren’t tokens anymore, right? You have to buy something called a MetroCard?”
Leo didn’t say anything. Of course he knew about the MetroCard, but he realized he’d probably never bought one.
“Leo?” Stephanie asked. “Do you have enough money for a MetroCard?”
“Yes.”
“Come then.” Her voice softened a bit at the edges. “Take the 2 or 3 to Bergen Street. I’m roasting lamb.”
WHEN STEPHANIE’S PHONE RANG THAT AFTERNOON, she’d been throwing fistfuls of rock salt down her front stoop ahead of the purported storm. She knew before she answered that it was Leo. She was not a superstitious person, did not believe in second sight or premonitions or ghosts, but she’d always had an intuition around all things Leo. So she wasn’t surprised when she heard his voice, realized that some part of her was waiting for him to call. She’d run into his wife some weeks prior at a bistro in Soho and found herself on the receiving end of Victoria’s vituperative torrent—light on details, hard on recriminations.
“Good riddance to that narcissistic sociopath,” Victoria had said, sliding her arm through her apparent date’s, a television actor Stephanie recognized from one of those police procedurals. Victoria was vague when Stephanie asked why Leo was in rehab.
“Because he’s a coward?” she said. “Because he’d rather sleep it off in Connecticut and hope everyone forgives and forgets? As usual.”
“Forgives and forgets what?” Stephanie’d persisted. The bar was overflowing and the three of them, gently jostled by the crowd, were swaying as if standing on the deck of a boat.
Victoria stared hard at Stephanie. “You never liked me,” she said, crossing her skeletal arms and giving Stephanie the self-satisfied smile of someone who’d just realized the answer to a riddle.
“I don’t dislike you,” Stephanie said, which was untrue. She very much disliked Victoria or, rather, all Victoria represented, everything about Leo that was superficial, glib, careless. Everything about him that had gone so wrong once he sold SpeakEasyMedia and left everyone behind, including her. “I don’t even know you.”
“Well, know this, for when Leo inevitably reappears,” Victoria had said, leaning so close that Stephanie could smell garlic and shellfish and cigarettes on her breath, could see a tiny smear of dragon-red lipstick on one of her preternaturally bleached front teeth. “I’m getting everything, every last cent. Leo can rot in rehab or in hell for all I care. Pass it on.”
So when Leo called from the subway, sounding sheepish (by Leo standards) and needing shelter, she was curious. Curious to see if rehab had rendered him even the tiniest bit transformed—sober or renewed or regretful. She knew he was probably just the same old Leo, working an angle. Still. She wanted to see for herself.
And if she was being perfectly honest—and she was because she’d fought hard to value honesty above nearly everything else—she was flattered Leo had turned to her when he needed help. Grateful she was still on his list. And because of that, she’d have to be very careful.
LEO DIDN’T HAVE ANYTHING AGAINST BROOKLYN, he just preferred Manhattan, and he believed anyone who said they didn’t was lying. Still, as he walked from the Bergen Street stop into Prospect Heights and down Stephanie’s block, he had to admit that the rapidly falling snow did something decidedly romantic to the streets lined with nineteenth-century brownstones. The cars on the block were already hidden under a sodden layer of white. People were shoveling their walks and front stoops; the scattered rock salt looked like white confetti against the bluestone slate sidewalks.
Hands shoved in his pockets against the cold, Leo felt like a character from an Edith Wharton novel as he lifted the latch of the black iron front gate and walked past the gas lamplight in front of Stephanie’s house. The wooden shutters lining the curved bay window were open, and as he climbed the stoop, he could see into the living room where she had a fire going. He should have stopped to buy flowers or wine or something. He stood before the massive mahogany and glass front doors. Stephanie had hung life-size plastic glow-in-the-dark skeletons in the two center panes. He hesitated a minute and then rang the bell—three short ones, two long—the buzzer code they used for each other back in the day. One of the doors swung open. The skeletons clicked and swayed in the stormy breeze, and there she was. Stephanie.
He always forgot, when he hadn’t seen her in a while, how attractive she was. Not standard-issue beautiful, better. She was nearly his height and he was almost six foot. Her coppery hair and tawny skin made her a peculiar brand of redhead: no freckles, quick to tan if she ever spent time in the sun, which she didn’t. She was the only person he’d ever met who had one brown eye and one that was flecked with green. She was wearing admirably fitted jeans. He wished she would turn around so he could become reacquainted with her ass.
She greeted him by raising her hand, blocking him from crossing the threshold of the foyer. “Three conditions, Leo,” she said. “No drugs. No borrowing money. No fucking.”