When we rounded the next bend, a man was standing under the bare branches of a tree, watching the birds. He wore a blue parka and a ratty knit hat. At first I didn’t recognize him. Then he looked up, and I felt it, a jolt in my ribs.
It was Wendell. He was alive, and—by all appearances—still sober.
He grinned when he saw me. “Well I’ll be damned,” he said. “It’s good to see you!”
“You too!”
He nodded at a patch of snow where three gulls were fighting over what looked like a half-eaten bagel. “Left one’s the meanest,” he said. “But the little one? She’ll outlast them all.”
I smiled. Pietro watched the exchange, his eyes moving from Wendell to me and back, clocking every gesture.
Wendell said, “You look good. New coat?”
“Borrowed,” I said.
He nodded. “Looks better than the old one. And I see you have new gloves.” He winked, then looked at Pietro. “This your man?”
Pietro held out a hand. “Pietro.”
Wendell shook it. “Wendell,” he said. “I work the city. She’s one of the good ones.”
I felt my face flush, and not from the wind. Pietro smiled, that secret small smile he saved for moments he wanted to keep to himself.
“Thank you,” he said.
Wendell looked at our hands, then at the lake. “If you’re going to the glass house, take the south path. The north’s all torn up, construction or something.”
“Thank you,” Pietro said again.
Wendell shrugged, like he didn’t need thanks, then said to me, “You take care, okay? The city’s full of assholes, but not all of them.”
I nodded. “See you, Wendell.”
He gave me a salute with two fingers and limped away, melting into the thin crowd near the next street.
We walked in silence for a bit.
After a minute, Pietro said, “You like him.”
I shrugged. “He’s a good person. He just didn’t get the right luck.”
Pietro thought about it, then stripped off his gloves—the nice ones, black and new. “Wait for me.”
He ran back, and I watched as he handed Wendell the gloves. Gratitude was written on the old man’s face as clear as day.
When he returned, I said, “Thank you,” and meant it.
We walked south, the wind at our backs now, which made everything easier. The path curved into a park, nothing green about it, just frozen grass and the spindly ghosts of trees. Ahead, the Conservatory rose out of the flat earth, its glass dome almost glowing against the winter sky. It looked like a piece of a different century, something Victorian and optimistic, dropped here by mistake.
Insidetheglasshouse,the first thing that hit me was the heat. It punched through the layers, through the wool coat, through the shock of leaving the winter behind. I had to blink twice to clear the sting from my eyes. Every surface foggedover—my glasses, the inside of the glass doors, the pale cement tiles slick with water.
We stood in the entry for a second. I tugged off the gloves, then the scarf, then started on the coat. My hair, which had just started to unfreeze, went immediately damp at the roots. The air was rich and green and alive, like being dropped into the middle of a rainforest. You could hear the drip of condensation from the steel ribs of the dome, the dull echo of kids’ voices from another room. The coat, suddenly, felt like a mistake.
I shucked it off and held it in my arms. Pietro had already shrugged out of his own, folding it over one arm. He wore a navy crewneck and jeans, nothing dramatic, but he looked more at home in here than I did.
He looked at my face, then at the coat, then back at my face. He smiled, and for a second, I thought about the way I must look—overheated, hair a mess, cheeks already flushed. It should have been embarrassing, but it wasn’t.
He said, “Better, yes?”
