“Depends on what’s above Fourteenth Street,” she says, and he smiles. “Remember that huge storm in February? The one where they shut down the subway? I walked all the way up to Central Park in that. Took me ages. There was a foot and a half of snow by the time I got there, and I had to take a cab back home because I couldn’t feel my toes. But I worked out a whole song that day.”
Ben is looking at her with a strange expression. “So did I.”
She frowns at him. “You wrote a song?”
“No,” he says. “I trekked down to Central Park in that storm.”
“You did?”
He nods. “I love walking in the snow.”
“Me too,” she says. “The streets get so quiet.”
“And it feels like the city is all yours.”
She shakes her head. “I can’t believe you were there too.”
“It was pretty surreal,” he says with a faraway look, and she knows exactly what he’s talking about: the way the swirling snow had started to quiet just as it got dark, how—after hours of wind and noise—the world felt suddenly like the volume had been turned down. The lampposts were capped in white and gave off an otherworldly glow, and everyone she passed moved slowly through the heavy drifts, as if in a dream. It’s so strange to think now that one of them could’ve been Ben.
“Imagine if we’d run into each other,” he says as if he can read her thoughts.
“I don’t know. It’s a pretty big park.”
“Yeah, but that’s the thing about New York. It’s always bringing people together at unexpected moments. That’s part of its magic. I once ran into my best friend from second grade in the middle of the Great Lawn.”
She smiles. “Well, I was all the way down near Central Park South.”
“And I was all the way up near the top,” he says with a shrug. “Ships in the night, I guess.”
“Ships in the night,” she agrees.
Chapter Twelve
They ride the bus back to Juneau in their wet clothes, then linger on the boardwalk, watching the floatplanes take off from the harbor. It’s only five p.m., which means they still have four hours until their ship leaves. Ben attempts to leaf through his guidebook again, but the pages are so soggy it’s nearly impossible to turn them. The rain starts coming down harder, and they give up entirely.
“Let’s go find a bar,” he says, and they head up one of the main streets.
They pass up the first couple of places because they’re too crowded with tourists. The third one is emptier and looks straight out of an old western, with a fireplace in the corner and wood-paneled walls, antique mirrors with blurry reflections, and a bartender with a mustache so long it curls at the edges.
They order a couple of beers and carry their glasses to a table in the corner. It’s small and a little wobbly but close enough to the fire that Greta can feel the warmth starting to creep back from the outside in, first in her fingers and toes, then her arms and legs.
“What would you be doing on a normal Monday afternoon?” Ben asks as the door opens and a large group of men in fishing gear walk in, bringing the smell of rain and the sound of laughter.
“There’s no such thing for me,” she says with a smile. “That’s the best part.”
“Okay, but…what if you were in New York right now?”
Greta considers this. “Is it five o’clock in New York too?”
Ben waves a hand. “Sure.”
“I could be home writing, I guess,” she tells him. “Or out somewhere getting an early bite, if I have a show. Or maybe at the studio, depending on where I am in the process.”
“You have a studio?”
“I rent one. When I’m not on the road.” She takes a sip of her beer and tilts her head at him. “What would you be doing at five o’clock on a Monday in New York?”
His eyes drift to the tin ceiling, the rusty light fixtures that look like they’ve been there since the 1800s. “Well,” he says. “Six months ago, I would’ve been hurrying through the end of my European history seminar so that I could make the five thirty-two from Penn Station and get home in time for dinner with the girls.”
“And now?”
“Now,” he says with a rueful smile, “I’m usually driving my students nuts by going fifteen minutes over, then heading back to my depressingly bare faculty apartment and drinking a few fingers of Glenfiddich while I attempt to write something half as good as my last book.”
“Does the whisky help?”
“With the writing?” he asks with a laugh. “Or with everything else?”
She gives him a long look. “You know, when I’m stuck on a song, it usually has more to do with my life than my creative process.”
“Well, my life is a total mess right now, so I guess I should probably stop blaming Herman Melville.”
“I’m sure he deserves at least some of it. I mean, the guy hunted whales, right?”
“We all have our faults,” Ben says with a sardonic smile. “I certainly have mine.”
Greta studies him over the rim of her glass. “You seem pretty okay to me.”
“You should talk to my wife then. She’d probably have a few things to say about it.”
“Hard pass,” Greta says, but he doesn’t smile. She watches him spin his glass in a slow circle on the scarred wooden table. “What does she think of you being all the way up here in Alaska right now?”
He shrugs. “She’s used to the travel at this point. When the book came out, there was only supposed to be a five-day tour. But then it started to take off, which meant more cities and more speaking engagements.”
“And she didn’t mind?”
“No, she did,” he says, his shoulders tightening. “She blamed it for a lot of our problems at first. Even though they started long before that. We’d been growing apart for years, ever since the kids were born. But sometimes it’s harder to see that up close.”
“And easier when you’re out on the road.”
He nods. “It’s like that feeling of getting off a long flight and taking your first breath of fresh air. You were okay on the plane. You could breathe just fine. And you could survive like that for a pretty long time if you had to. But once you’re off, you realize you wouldn’t want to live that way forever. Not if you had a choice. I think being away did that for me. It helped me realize I hadn’t breathed—really breathed—in a very long time.”