Nathan’s light was off, and along the corridor Ilaria’s TV burbled distantly. Sam and I tiptoed through the large hall, past the kitchen and down to my room. I changed into a T-shirt, wishing, suddenly, that I slept in something a little more sophisticated, then went into the bathroom and started to clean my teeth. I wandered out, still brushing, to find Sam sitting on the bed, staring at the wall. I looked at him as quizzically as you can, when you have a mouthful of peppermint-flavoured foam.
‘What?’
‘It’s … strange,’ he said.
‘My T-shirt?’
‘No. Being here. In this place.’
I turned back to the bathroom, spat and rinsed my mouth.
‘It’s fine,’ I began, turning off the tap. ‘Ilaria is cool and Mr Gopnik won’t be back until Sunday evening. If you’re really uncomfortable tomorrow I’ll book us a room in this little hotel Nathan knows two blocks down and we can –’
He shook his head. ‘Not this. You. Here. When we were at the hotel it was just like you and me as normal. We were just in a different location. Here, I can finally see how everything has changed for you. You live on Fifth Avenue, for crying out loud. One of the most expensive addresses in the world. You work in this crazy building. Everywhere smells of money. And it’s totally normal to you.’
I felt oddly defensive. ‘I’m still me.’
‘Sure,’ he said. ‘But you’re in a different place now. Literally.’
He said it evenly, but there was something in the conversation that made me feel uneasy. I padded up to him in my bare feet, put my hands on his shoulders and said, with a little more urgency than I had intended, ‘I’m still just Louisa Clark, your slightly wonky girl from Stortfold.’ When he didn’t speak, I added, ‘I’m just the hired help here, Sam.’
He looked into my eyes, then reached a hand up and stroked my cheek. ‘You don’t get it. You can’t see how you’ve changed. You’re different, Lou. You walk around these city streets like you own them. You hail taxis with a whistle and they come. Even your stride is different. It’s like … I don’t know. You’ve grown into yourself. Or maybe you’ve grown into someone else.’
‘See, now you’re saying a nice thing and yet somehow it sounds like a bad thing.’
‘Not bad,’ he said. ‘Just … different.’
I moved then so that I was astride him, my bare legs pressed against his jeans. I put my face up close to his, my nose against his, my mouth inches from his own. I looped my arms around his neck, so that I could feel the softness of his short dark hair against my skin, his warm breath on my chest. It was dark, and a cold neon light beamed a narrow ray across my bed. I kissed him, and with that kiss I tried to convey something of what he meant to me, the fact that I could hail a million taxis with a whistle and still know that he was the only person I would want to climb into one with. I kissed him, my kisses increasingly deep and intense, pressing into him, until he gave in to me, until his hands closed around my waist and slid upwards, until I felt the exact moment he stopped thinking. He pulled me sharply into him, his mouth crushing mine, and I gasped as he twisted, pushing me back down, his whole being reduced to one intention.
That night I gave something to Sam. I was uninhibited, unlike myself. I became someone other than myself because I was so desperate to show him the truth of my need for him. It was a fight, even if he didn’t know it. I hid my own power and made him blind with his. There was no tenderness, no soft words. When our eyes met I was almost angry with him. It is still me, I told him silently. Don’t you dare doubt me. Not after all this. He covered my eyes, placed his mouth against my hair, and he possessed me. I let him. I wanted him half mad with it. I wanted him to feel like he’d taken everything. I have no idea what sounds I made but when it was over my ears were ringing.
‘That was … different,’ he said, when we could breathe again. His hand slid across me, tender now, his thumb gently stroking my thigh. ‘You’ve never been like that before.’
‘Maybe I never missed you that much before.’ I leant over and kissed his chest. It left salt on my lips. We lay there in the dark, blinking at the neon strip across the ceiling.
‘It’s the same sky,’ he said, into the dark. ‘That’s what we have to keep remembering. We’re still under the same sky.’
In the distance a police siren started, followed by another in a discordant descant. I never really registered them any more: the sounds of New York had become familiar, fading into unheard white noise. Sam turned to me, his face shadowed. ‘I started to forget things, you know. All the little parts of you that I love. I couldn’t remember the scent of your hair.’ He lowered his head to mine and breathed in. ‘Or the shape of your jaw. Or the way your skin shivers when I do this …’ He ran a finger lightly down from my collarbone and I half smiled at my body’s involuntary reaction. ‘That lovely dazed way you look at me afterwards … I had to come here, to remind myself.’
‘I’m still me, Sam,’ I said.
He kissed me, his lips landing softly, four, five times on mine, a whisper. ‘Well, whichever you you are, Louisa Clark, I love you,’ he said, and rolled slowly, with a sigh, onto his back.
But it was at that point I had to acknowledge an uncomfortable truth. I had been different with him. And it wasn’t just because I wanted to show him how much I wanted him, how much I adored him, though that had been part of it.
On some dark, hidden level, I had wanted to show him I was better than her.
14
We slept until after ten, then walked downtown to the diner near Columbus Circle. We ate until our stomachs hurt, drank gallons of stewed coffee and sat opposite each other with our knees entwined.
‘Glad you came over?’ I said, like I didn’t know the answer.
He reached out a hand and placed it gently behind my neck, leaning forward across the table until he could kiss me, oblivious to the other diners, until I had all the answer I needed. Around us sat middle-aged couples with weekend newspapers, groups of outlandishly dressed nightclubbers who hadn’t been to bed yet, talking over each other, exhausted couples with cranky children.
Sam sat back in his chair and let out a long sigh. ‘My sister always wanted to come here, you know. Seems stupid that she never did.’
‘Really?’ I reached for his hand and he turned his palm upwards to take mine, then closed his fingers over it.
‘Yeah. She had this whole list of things she wanted to do, like go to a baseball game. The Kicks? The Knicks? Some team she wanted to see. And eat in a New York diner. And most of all she wanted to go to the top of the Rockefeller Center.’
‘Not the Empire State?’
‘Nah. She said the Rockefeller was meant to be better – some glass observatory thing you could look through. Apparently you can see the Statue of Liberty from there.’
I squeezed his hand. ‘We could go today.’
‘We could,’ he said. ‘Makes you think, though, doesn’t it?’ He reached for his coffee. ‘You have to take your chances when you can.’
A vague melancholy settled over him. I didn’t attempt to shake it. I knew better than anyone how sometimes you just needed to be allowed to feel sad. I waited a moment, then said, ‘I feel that every day.’