“Will it be helpful?” he asks, before I can follow up. “The picture, I mean.”
“Oh, yes. It’s amazing. I can’t imagine doing something this big.”
“You could, though. You could do it.”
I feel a warm flush of pleasure at his quick, unfiltered confidence in me, but deflate when I think of that big, blank wall in Lark and Cameron’s bedroom. “I like the scale I work in, usually. But these, they have something to teach me.”
“How do you mean?”
“They have to make such an impact, so quickly. Striking enough to make a pedestrian look up, but not so striking that they have to stop and decode it. Memorable but simple. There’s a real balance to that.”
Reid makes a slight humming noise, a thoughtful assent. “The librarian I spoke to—she had a lot of materials to recommend about sign painters. Books about the profession, and also some old volumes about the craft itself. I could send you her information. I should have done that.”
I’m quiet for a few seconds, and so is he. If I say,Yes, send it to me, I think this would end with an e-mail, or a text message, my last communication from Reid the name and number of a librarian. He wouldn’t push it. He thinks he’s done enough to end this.I wish you every success.
I hate thinking of him out there, miserable in his misunderstanding of this city.
“Reid,” I say, not ready yet to hang up, but also not ready yet to ask him what I want to ask him. I look down at the photograph, at the letters there. “Tell me one thing you like about it here. One thing.”
I hear him take a breath. A big inhale, a quick, almost frustrated-sounding exhale. Damn these earphones. They’re just as intimate.
“I like the food,” he finally says. His voice—I’d thought of it as flat before. But it’s not, not really. It’s deep and quiet and purposeful, nothing wasted. “Not the fancy, expensive restaurants. I like that you can walk into some tiny place that’s three-quarters kitchen and get a huge plate of food for cheap, and it’s good, too. It has to be good, for it to survive in this city. The food here, in those kinds of places—it’s a meritocracy.”
I can picture the exact kind of place Reid is talking about. I’ve been in and out of those places the whole time I’ve lived here, and I like them, too. Places so worn-out and dumpy looking you can’t imagine at first why your mailman or your bodega guy or your brow waxer or your boss basically shouted in your face about how youhaveto try it; you’re an absolute philistine because you haven’t yet.
But then you do. You wait in the long line, you stumble through your order while all the regulars are rolling their eyes at what a rookie you are. You stand at a narrow counter inside with a plastic fork and taste food that’s better than anything you’ve ever eaten, or at least anything you’ve ever eaten before the last place you went into like this. You get ready to shout in the face of the next person you see.
Reid probably doesn’t do that last part, but still. Handwritten letter of apology, photocopied photograph from the library, phone pressed to my ear: None of it makes me feel more connected to Reid than this small piece of information about his preferences in this place he says he hates so much.
“Okay,” I say softly, and I wonder if he can hear the smile in my voice. “You want to try again?”
Chapter 7
“Iadmit,” he says dryly, hunching his wide shoulders yet again to let another customer by, “that I generally get the food to go.”
Reid and I are standing—standingclose—inside a narrow corner storefront in Nolita, an Israeli place that ticks every box he and I discussed on the phone last night: tiny place. Big portions. Cheap. It’s a place he comes to somewhat regularly, he’d told me, and I’d checked my list and said I was certain I could find some good signs in the area.
It’d all seemed a good start for my suggestion to try again, a way for us to loosen up around each other with a meal we’re both likely to enjoy before we get out on another letter quest.
But now I suspect, given how stiffly both of us are taking the forced proximity, that neither of us really thought about the practical consequences of this reboot, because in the last five minutes alone, we have learned things about each other that are probably, at the very least, second-date territory for me personally. Reid, for example—thanks to the line that at first extended out the propped-open front door and a strong, warm spring breeze—knows how it feels to have a strand of my long hair against the skin of his neck, a development he greeted with what can only be described as aloof tolerance. He may have even winced as he leaned back on the heels of those same gray sneakers.
As for me? I now have been adjacent to Reid’s body for long enough to realize that there’s a faint smell of chlorine on him, a summer-day-at-the-pool smell, and between that and the light, spicy scent of his soap, I feel sort of the same way I did the first time I slow-danced with a boy in seventh grade.Boys smell likethis?I’d thought, new to the wonders of a modestly applied cologne, new to the feeling of wanting to press my face into another person’s skin.
“Do you live near here?” I say, determined not to think about pressing my face anywhere untoward, but when Reid looks down at me, his brow furrowed, I can only think about pressing my face into an ice bucket or an invisibility cloak. My cheeks heat in embarrassment.
“I mean, not because we’d take the food back there! I wasn’t . . . inviting myself over. Or trying to get into your business.”
His lips twitch, an almost smile. “Business,” he says, deadpan. “Dicey territory.” The almost smile grows. Crooked and a little sheepish. God, he is handsome.
“Reid,” I say, fighting my own smile and further face-pressing thoughts. “Did you make a joke?”
“Probably not,” he says, ducking his head and tugging on the sleeve of his jacket, pulling it over his watch. “I’m not known for my sense of humor.”
What are you known for?I’m thinking, but before I can ask anything, a loud voice shouts “MAG!” in our general direction.
I roll my eyes. “Mag,” I mumble to myself, moving through the crowd toward the counter, where a young man has set two gigantic cardboard squares of food. I’m pretty sure he knows my name isn’t “Mag,” but I’ve learned that mispronunciation of this nature is some kind of New York food-service ritual. I feel Reid at my back, hear him say “Pardon me,” as we move through a particularly dense clump of teenagers near the register. They’ll probably have to Google what that means.
We luck out, finding two stools side by side along the shop’s front window, the bar in front of us exactly deep enough for our plates. Despite our general awkwardness together, I’m comforted by the way we competently perform a familiar, casual-dining-out routine: I set my bag on Reid’s stool when he goes to the counter along the wall and grabs us napkins and plastic forks; I straighten our plates and reach an arm down the bar and grab one of the bottles of extra hot sauce that rests there, while Reid makes his way back and distributes his take between us.
