“Wait, he’s a Mergers and Acquisitions lawyer living in a walk-up with two babies?”
“Funny you should mention that. Polly often noticed the same thing. But Skip refused to move to a building with an elevator until he’d paid off all his school debt. I think that happened the next year, when Nanette was born.”
“I’m trying to imagine it.”
“You can’t. Anyway, that’s when I quit smoking. I’m sure Polly did me an enormous favor.”
“And when did you start again?”
Eddie tipped up his chin, exhaled. “Maybe six weeks ago? I’d have to do the math. I only smoke on an as-needed basis. Absolutely minimal, I promise you, nothing to worry about. The only place to smoke in New York is on the street, and I don’t want to be outside walking around at all hours.”
“Did something happen?”
“When?”
“Six weeks ago.”
He shrugged. “A bad day,” he said. “I thought, There was a time when I would have had a cigarette on a day like today, and then I thought, Why not? What substantial damage can a cigarette do to me now? So I bought myself a pack. Do you have any idea how much a pack of cigarettes costs these days?”
“No clue.”
Eddie started to give me a number and then thought better of it. “I’m not going to tell you. You’ll lose all respect for me. Do you want one?”
I declined.
“Good girl,” he said.
Eddie stopped to look in the window of Sephora. “Do you remember when this was a bookstore?”
“I do not.” I had bought moisturizer there, shampoo. I did not say this to him.
“Closed in 1988. What a blow. This used to be the Scribner building, and downstairs, they had the most beautiful bookstore you’ve ever seen in your life. I used to come here on my lunch hour, leave all those books in my office so I could come over here and look at books.”
“What did you edit then?”
His face was bathed in the light reflected off skin care products. “Novels. Novels then and novels now. I would edit collections of short stories when my authors turned collections of short stories in, and later, when memoirs became a thing, I edited those. Collections of essays, all of that. But all the while I tapped them ever so gently in the direction of novels because that’s what I loved. That’s what I was good at.”
“Writing?”
“Reading.” He shook his head. “I wish you could have seen this bookstore.”
“I was seventeen in 1988.”
“That’s why your mother and I should have stayed married. It would have been a stretch, I realize that, but I would have shown you New York before it was devoured by skin care emporiums and nail salons.”
I had more questions than I knew words to ask, but I decided to start with the obvious one. “Tell me more about the Hotallings.”
“Oh, them.” Eddie stared at a pyramid of little white tubs of grapefruit facial scrub, as if he could will them into being books.“They’re my best friends. They’ve always been there for me. They have also been a great source of pain. I think that pretty much covers it.”
We walked again. Eddie held on to the filter of his cigarette until we passed a trash can. I added in the place card. “Let’s go to the Plaza and have a drink,” he said. “Do you want to?”
I’d already had more to drink than I usually have over the course of a month, but I told myself the walking helped. Eddie said we were going to go to the Oak Bar, but when we arrived, the hotel was in the full swing of celebration and the celebration called to us. Two doormen pulled open the heavy glass doors fitted in brass and welcomed us in.
“They’re expecting us,” Eddie said, sotto voce.
I scanned the milling crowd, men in tuxedos, women in cocktail dresses, long dresses. “Maybe we should find some other hotel,” I said. “We could try the Sherry-Netherland.”
He took my arm. “Act natural.”
