The clerk snatched the card and stalked to the back.
My hero cleared his throat.
“My name isn’t Blue Scrubs, by the way,” he said. “It’s Paul.”
“Paul?” I tested the word on my tongue to make sure I’d really heard it. “You don’t say.”
“Is that a problem?
I liked the way his eyebrows lifted. I liked his eyebrows, a few shades darker than his hair, slashing sturdily above his eyes, ever so blue. “No, no. Actually, it suits you.” Smile, Vivian. I held out my hand. “Vivian Schuyler.”
“Of Christopher Street.” He took my hand and sort of held it there, no shaking allowed.
“Oh, you heard that?”
“Lady, the whole building heard that,” said the clerk, returning to the counter. Well. He might have been the clerk. From my vantage, it seemed as if an enormous brown box had sprouted legs and arms and learned to walk, a square-bellied Mr. Potato Head.
“Great guns,” I said. “Is that for me?”
“No, it’s for the Queen of Sheba.” The parcel landed before me with enough heft to rattle all the little silver COUNTER CLOSED signs for miles around. “Sign here.”
“Just how am I supposed to get this box back to my apartment?”
“Your problem, lady. Sign.”
I maneuvered my hand around Big Bertha and signed the slip of paper. “Do you have one of those little hand trucks for me?”
“Oh, yeah, lady. And a basket of fruit to welcome home the new arrival. Now get this thing off my counter, will you?”
I looped my pocketbook over my elbow and wrapped my arms around the parcel. “Some people.”
“Look, can I help you with that?” asked Paul.
“No, no. I can manage.” I slid the parcel off the counter and staggered backward. “On the other hand, if you’re not busy saving any lives at the moment …”
Paul plucked the parcel from my arms, not without brushing my fingers first, almost as if by accident. “After all, I already know where you live. If I’m a homicidal psychopath, it’s too late for regrets.”
“Excellent diagnosis, Dr. Paul. You’ll find the knives in the kitchen drawer next to the icebox, by the way.”
He hoisted the massive box to his shoulder. “Thanks for the tip. Lead on.”
“Just don’t fall asleep on the way.”
GIDDY might have been too strong a word for my state of mind as I led my spanking new friend home with my spanking new parcel, but not by much. New York complied agreeably with my mood. The crumbling stoops gleamed with rain; the air had taken on that lightening quality of a storm on the point of lifting.
Mind you. I still took care to stand close, so I could hold my umbrella over the good doctor’s glowing blond head.
“Why didn’t you wear a coat, at least?” I tried to sound scolding, but my heart wasn’t in it.
“I just meant to dash out. I didn’t realize it was raining; I hadn’t been outside for a day and a half.”
I whistled. “Nice life you’ve made for yourself.”
“Isn’t it, though.”
We turned the corner of Christopher Street. The door stood open at my favorite delicatessen, sending a friendly matzo-ball welcome into the air. Next door, the Apple Tree stood quiet and shuttered, waiting for Manhattan’s classiest queens to liven it up by night. My neighborhood. I loved it already; I loved it even more at this moment. I loved the whole damned city. Where else but New York would a Doctor Paul pop up in your post office, packaged in blue scrubs, fully assembled and with high-voltage batteries included free of charge?
By the time we reached my building, the rain had stopped entirely, and the droplets glittered with sunshine on the turning leaves. I whisked my umbrella aside and winked an affectionate hello to the grime in the creases of the front door. The lock gave way with only a rusty minimum of rattling. Doctor Paul ducked below the lintel and paused in the vestibule. A patch of new sunlight shone through the transom onto his hair. I nearly wept.
“This is you?” he said.
“Only good girls live at the Barbizon. Did I mention I’m on the fifth floor?”
“Of course you are.” He turned his doughty shoulders to the stairwell and began to climb. I followed his blue-scrubbed derriere upward, marveling anew as we achieved each landing, wondering when my alarm clock would clamor through the rainbows and unicorns and I would open my eyes to the tea-stained ceiling above my bed.
“May I ask what unconscionably heavy apparatus I’m carrying up to your attic? Cast-iron stove? Cadaver?”
Oh! The parcel.
“My money’s on the cadaver.”
“You don’t know?”
“I have no idea. I don’t even know who it’s from.”
He rested his foot on the next step and cocked his head toward the box. “No ticking, anyway. That’s a good sign.”
“No funny smell, either.”
He resumed the climb with a precious little flex of his shoulder. The landscape grew more dismal as we went, until the luxurious rips in the chintz wallpaper and the incandescent nakedness of the lightbulbs announced that we had reached the unsavory entrance to my unsuitable abode. I made a swift calculation of dishes left unwashed and roommates left unclothed.
“You know, you could just leave it right here on the landing,” I said. “I can manage from here.”
“Just open the door, will you?”
“So commanding.” I shoved the key in the lock and opened the door.
Well, it could have been worse. The dishes had disappeared—sink, perhaps?—and so had the roommate. Only the bottle of vodka remained, sitting proudly on the radiator shelf next to the tomato juice and an elegant black lace slip. Sally’s, by my sacred honor. I hurried over and draped my scarf over the shameful tableau.
A thump ensued as Doctor Paul laid the parcel to rest on the table. “Whew. I thought I wasn’t going to make it up that last flight.”
“Don’t worry. I would have caught you.”
He was looking at the parcel: one hand on his hip, the other raking through his hair in that way we girls adore. “Well?”
“Well, what?”
“Aren’t you going to open it?”
“It’s my parcel. Can’t a girl have a little privacy?”
“Now, see here. I carried that … that object up five flights of Manhattan stairs. Can’t a man have a little curiosity?”
Again with the glittery smile. I pushed myself off the radiator. “Since you put it that way. Make yourself comfortable. Can I take your coat and hat?”
“That hurt.”
I slipped off my wet raincoat and slung it on Sally’s hat tree, a hundred years old at least and undoubtedly purloined. I placed my hat on the hook above my coat, taking care to give my curls an artful little shake. Well, you can’t blame me for that, at least. My hair was my best feature: brown and glossy, a hint of red, falling just so around my ears, a saucy flip. It distracted from my multitude of flaws, Monday to Sunday. Why not shake for all I was worth?
I turned around and sashayed the two steps to the table. Also purloined. Sally had told me the story yesterday, over our second round of martinis: the restaurant owner, the jealous wife, the