“Oh, is that your type?” he jokes and I turn red, thinking back on those notoriously steamy cave scenes that I read at least three thousand times.
“So when you started writing . . .” I say, putting a corner piece of the Noa Callaway puzzle into place.
He nods. “I’d fallen in love with love. Though, obviously, at twenty, I didn’t know a thing about it.”
I picture Noah at twenty, not knowing a thing about love. It’s sort of cute.
“When I showed the first draft of Ninety-Nine Things to my mom,” he says, “she didn’t believe I’d written it. If my own mother couldn’t see it, what reader would want to open the back flap and see me?”
I consider what his author photo might look like. Smoldering green eyes flirting with the camera. Dark curls just long enough to suggest untamed. Black turtleneck. No, a button-down showing a little bit of chest hair . . .
He’s right. His author photo would give his readers a shock.
“Alix didn’t know I was a man until after she’d bought the manuscript,” he continues, another key piece falling into place. “We had no idea Ninety-Nine Things would take off the way it did. I never thought I’d make a career of it. Once upon a time . . .”
“It was just a love story?”
“Yes,” he says, meeting my eyes. It feels as if this is the first time we’ve ever really looked at each other. “It was just a love story.”
We keep walking along the river, the sun high and bright overhead, the view of the George Washington Bridge growing in the distance.
“It’s your move,” he says, catching me off guard.
“What?”
“In chess.” He waves his phone. “It’s been your turn for over a week. You’re about to forfeit the game.”
“Oh! I’ve been—”
“Paralyzed by my impending victory?”
“More like trying not to distract you with push notifications! Also, I don’t want to completely crush your confidence in this delicate creative moment. You’ve lost—what?—the past six games in a row?”
“That’s only because I can’t use my intimidation tactics over the app.”
“And those would be?”
Noah squares off to face me, crosses his arms, and raises one eyebrow dramatically with an exaggerated tilt of his head. All he needs is a monocle to complete the look of total lunatic. I burst out laughing.
“I’m scared now,” I say.
“See?”
“Scared for you that you think that’s an intimidation tactic. You look like an Angry Bird.”
“Fine, but I am a better chess player in person. The game of kings needs human beings.”
“Well, if only you hadn’t pissed me off so much that day in Central Park,” I say, feigning a sigh. “We could have already put this argument to rest.”
“I’m afraid there’s only one solution,” he says.
“Are you challenging me to a game of chess?” I say, feeling my competitive spirit rise.
He nods. “And hoping you like sushi, because I’m starving, and Saturdays are for sushi.” Then he does the thing with the eyebrow again until I crack up and agree.
* * *
Noah tells the cab to stop at Ninety-Fifth and Broadway.
“What are we doing here?” I ask as he opens the door.
“This is where I live.” He leads us toward a black iron gate tucked into the center of a two-story Tudor-style apartment building. The place looks out of time, dwarfed by taller and more modern buildings on all sides.
I’ve been here before, I realize. This is the entrance to Pomander Walk, the pedestrian enclave of row houses Meg brought me to once for a party. It had been on my list of Fifty Ways to Break Up Noah and His Writer’s Block. He crossed it out.
“You don’t live here,” I say as Noah takes out a key and unlocks the gate. He leads me up a set of brick stairs, which open to a private garden the length of an avenue block. “You live in a penthouse on Fifth Avenue overlooking Central Park.”
“I write in a penthouse on Fifth Avenue overlooking Central Park,” he says. “I live in a studio, right there.” He points to a quaint brick façade halfway down the walk, with the sweetest little apple tree out front. “It’s tiny, and I rent, but”—he looks around at the garden, as if it’s still a wonderful surprise to him—“I’ll never give it up.”
Which explains why he was walking around the Upper West Side with his bunny while I was at Emergency Brunch.
Recalibrate, Lanie, I tell myself.
I was expecting a doorman, an elevator, expensive steel and glass. I was expecting to be annoyed by my envy of his wealth, which I assumed he spent in flashy, impersonal ways. But now . . . something about entering Noah’s garden-level studio apartment is disorienting. It’s so intimate. Maybe too intimate.
He’s unlocking his door. I need to decide whether to call this off right now.
“There’s the sushi,” he says, glancing behind us at a figure bearing take-out bags, waiting at the garden gate. “I’ll get it. Go on in. Just close the door behind you so Javier Bardem doesn’t get out?”
“Sure,” I say, accidentally deciding not to call it off. I step inside Noah’s apartment and close the door. “What is happening?” I whisper as I attempt to acclimate to my surroundings.
It must be said: It’s a beautiful studio apartment. Polished wood floors, a working fireplace, low ceilings but lots of natural light. The furniture is elegant mid-century, the kitchen tiny but well appointed.
It’s very nice, but it’s not so much nicer than my own apartment. I have more square footage, and an actual wall between my bed and the front door—so where does he get off demanding that we never meet at my place again?
But then, I think about our day today—how nice it’s been, our rapport so different than it was at my apartment. There is a chance that I misread something about Noah’s attitude that day.
I tour his apartment cautiously. There are certainly more plants than I expected—succulents and baby palms, orchids and bamboo, all of them thriving and green. There’s framed art on nearly every inch of wall space—including a masterful Kehinde Wiley that I recognize from his Ferguson series. There’s a surfboard in the corner, a metal trashcan with pictures of all the presidents up to Reagan, which tells me Noah’s probably had this since he was a little boy. There’s a beer-making kit on the windowsill that looks like he took it out of the box but never actually brewed anything. There’s a stack of old Playbills under a lamp—the one on top is from Oh, Hello, the Broadway show Rufus and I laughed our asses off at a few years ago on his birthday. There’s no bookshelf that I can see, only a short stack of poetry books on the coffee table. Lucille Clifton, Paul Celan, Heather Christle. I approve.