Grabbing the keys, she throws her work into her tote and escapes the apartment, heading for the train.
After Bowery, the J clears out. Lili gets out at Canal, greeted by fluorescent lights, shiny plastic suitcases lined up on the streets for sale, alongside the callous leather of counterfeit handbags. Metal bar grating is pulled down over shuttered storefronts and nondescript shipping companies;awnings glow with Chinese characters and aggressive scrawls of graffiti, WeWorks and Duane Reades languish under construction scaffolding. Boys in worn Vans kick the wheels of their skateboards, smoking on the curb of Lafayette. Crowds of Citi analysts and downtown agency kids head towards the subway. It’s hot and humid, an exhale of night through the city. As Lili heads down Walker into Tribeca, the streets grow narrower, quieter. Little canyons in the city, slips of the moon between the buildings.
His street is empty. Lili peers into the darkened galleries, closed for the night. Places containing too little art to justify their rent: a spare canvas, maybe a sculpture or fiber art piece or two. At the end of his street, lingering outside the corner restaurant, there are men in suits and loosened ties, women in sleek dresses and high heels. Laughing, smoking: work dinners, expensive mezcal, high-end Mexican small plates.
When she goes to open his front door, she’s surprised by the doorman, welcoming her. Lili folds the keys awkwardly into her palm. Of course, his staff would still be here.
“Hi—um, Ale—Mr. Petrov gave me his—”
“Of course, Miss Marwan,” he says with a professional, solicitous smile. “Please, go right on up. My name is Louis. Let me know if you need anything.”
It’s dark and blessedly silent in the loft. Standing on tiptoe, Lili turns on the light above the Lacanche range he definitely doesn’t use. The scale of the open room—towering ceilings, low-slung furniture—is staggering. The intentional emptiness of wealth. She makes out the familiar shapes of the huge white couch and living room furniture, the wooden dining table stretching the length of the room. The tall windows, the sprawling Twombly canvas. The shadows of the loft feel teeming, intimate.
Hesitant to wander further, Lili sets her bag on the kitchen island. She runs her fingers over the thin veins of white and gold shot through the black marble. Opulent, ridiculous, but also—she grudgingly admits, alone—beautiful.
Shaking her laptop out of her bag—hoping whatever security cameras he has get a good view of the worn Bernie 2016 sticker slapped to the back of her computer—Lili starts working. The steady clatter of her keyboard is a quiet sound. When a severe weather alert blares from her phone, sheignores it. Flash floods, hurricane warning hitting the city: the same thing multiple times each summer.
It’s almost midnight when she gets up. The blue-light filter on her computer has turned her screen almost orange. Exhausted, she feels drained of her thoughts in a good, clean way; like she’s managed to grapple with her work, rather than be defeated by it.
Scanning Uber, surge pricing is exorbitant. She frowns, glancing out the windows. It’s raining hard. Vague concern gnaws—she’s going to be soaked by the time she gets home—but she packs up her things, heads downstairs. It’s only a five-minute walk to the subway. She’s shouldered worse.
“Miss Marwan, it’s looking bad out there,” Louis, the doorman, says. “Let me call the car around—”
“I’m fine!” she insists. “It’s just some rain, no one needs to drive in this.”
It is not just some rain. She’s soaked in seconds. She doesn’t make it a block before a surge of wind hits her, laden with vicious rain, so strong and furious she has to dig her heels in to keep from staggering backwards. She clutches her bag to her chest, trying to protect her laptop from water damage. Broadway is a mess, cars skimming through water, overflowing storm drains. The stairs down to Canal Street station are slick with runoff. Waiting on the platform, Lili watches water rise on the tracks, dripping down from the ceiling. The train is not coming.
Don’t be an idiot,she thinks.
It’s fine. It’s an emergency. She’d stay over at any of her friends’ apartments if she was stranded. Desperate times, desperate measures. He gave her his keys; essentially gave her license to burn his place down, make it a squatter’s paradise, restart Occupy Wall Street in his living room. She can stay one night.
Back at the loft, she texts Jackie.
(12:31 a.m.) hey, i’m going to stay at a friend’s tonight. don’t want to head out in this rain.
(12:31 a.m.) are you safe?
(12:33 a.m.) yes! i’m back home xx
(12:33 a.m.) which friend!
Using one of the guest bathrooms, Lili shucks off her soaked clothes, turning the shower as hot as it will go. Outside, a harsh hit of thunder cracks. It’s not soothing, the sound of this storm. It feels urgent and precarious, the hurricane straining the city to its limits.
In the shower, she lingers. Her apartment just doesn’t compare, the hard pressure and limitless hot water instantly available here. Heavy water beats down on her, and she exhales. She feels that edgy, irritated agitation, brewing but shoved down these last few days. Easy enough to ignore when she works, but harder in these moments.
Enough, Lili, she thinks.You’ve gone months without sex before. Pull yourself together.
After the shower, she wraps herself up in a large, fresh towel. She hangs her clothes to dry, yawning. She finds packaged toothbrushes in a drawer, probably touches of a thoughtful housekeeper.
Pausing in the guest room, she glances at the bed.
She needs to get good work done again tomorrow; she never sleeps well in a new bed.
His bedroom is dark, curtains partially drawn.
The storm still rages, humid and oppressive, but in this dim space, there’s a protective distance from the nightmare outside.
His bedsheets are pressed, the silk cool. Lili has to wrestle to get them untucked, like in a hotel room. Even in fresh sheets, his scent is there, along with her exasperated arousal. Stretching out, she tries to take up as much space in his bed as she possibly can. She huffs, unable to reach both edges of the bed at the same time.
