The A train jostles Addie out of sleep.
She opens her eyes just as the lights overhead flicker and go out, plunging the car into darkness. Panic surges like a current through her chest, the world beyond the windows dark, but Henry’s hand squeezes hers.
“It’s just the line,” he says, as the lights come on again, and the train settles back into its easy motion, and she realizes when the voice comes on the intercom that they’re back in Brooklyn, the last stretch of subway underground again, and when they get off, the sun is still safely in the sky.
They walk back to Henry’s, heat-logged and drowsy, shower off the salt and sand, and collapse on top of the sheets, wet hair cooling on their skin. Book curls around her feet. Henry pulls her against him, and the bed is cool, and he is warm, and if it is not love, it is enough.
“Five minutes,” he mumbles in her hair.
“Five minutes,” she answers, the words half plea, half promise as she curls into him.
Outside, the sun hovers over the buildings. They still have time.
 |
Addie wakes in the dark.
When she closed her eyes, the sun was still high. Now, the room is full of shadows, the sky a deep indigo bruise beyond the window.
Henry is still asleep, but the room is too quiet, too still, and dread rolls through Addie as she sits up.
She doesn’t say his name, doesn’t even think it as she climbs to her feet, holding her breath as she steps out into the darkened hall. She scans the living room, braced to see him sitting on the sofa, long arms stretched along the cushioned back.
Adeline.
But he’s not there.
Of course he’s not there.
It has been almost forty years.
He is not coming. And Addie is so tired of waiting for him.
She returns to the bedroom, sees Henry on his feet, his hair a mess of loose black curls as he searches under the pillows for his glasses.
“I’m sorry,” he says. “I should have set an alarm.” He unzips a bag, puts a change of clothes inside. “I can stay at Bea’s. I’ll—”
But Addie catches his hand. “Don’t go.” Henry hesitates. “Are you sure?”
She isn’t sure of anything, but she has had such a good day, she doesn’t want to waste her night, doesn’t want to give it to him.
He has taken enough.
There’s no food in the apartment, so they get dressed and head over to the Merchant, and there’s a sleepy ease to all of it, the disorientation of waking after dark added to the effects of so long in the sun. It lends everything a dreamy air, the perfect end to a perfect day.
They tell the waitress they’re celebrating, and when she asks if it’s a birthday, or an engagement, Addie lifts her beer and says, “Anniversary.”
“Congrats,” says the waitress. “How many years?” “Three hundred,” she says.
Henry chokes on his drink, and the waitress laughs, assuming it’s an inside joke. Addie simply smiles.
A song comes on, the kind that rises above the noise, and she drags him to his feet.
“Dance with me,” she says, and Henry tries to tell her that he doesn’t dance, even though she was there, at the Fourth Rail, when they flung themselves into the beat, and he says that is different, but she doesn’t believe him, because times change, but everyone dances, she has seen them do the waltz and the quadrille, the fox-trot and the jive, and a dozen others, and she is sure that he can manage at least one of them.
And so she draws him between the tables, and Henry didn’t even know that the Merchant had a dance floor, but there it is, and they are the only ones on it. Addie shows him how to lift his hand, to move with her in mirror motions. She shows him how to lead, how to twirl her, how to dip. She shows him where to put his hands, and how to feel the rhythm in her hips, and for a little while, everything is perfect, and easy, and right.
They stumble, laughing, up to the bar for another drink.
“Two beers,” says Henry, and the bartender nods, and steps away, comes back a minute later, and sets down their drinks.
But only one is a beer.
The other is Champagne, a candied rose petal floating in the center. Addie feels the world tip, the darkness tunnel.
There is a note beneath the glass, written in elegant, sloping French.
For my Adeline.
“Hey,” Henry is saying, “we didn’t order this.”
The bartender points to the end of the bar. “Compliments of the gentleman over…” he starts, trailing off. “Huh,” he says. “He was just there.”
Addie’s heart tumbles in her chest. She grabs Henry’s hand. “You have to go.”
“What? Wait—”
But there is no time. She pulls him toward the door. “Addie.”
Luc cannot see them together, he cannot know that they have found—
“Addie.” She finally looks back. And feels the world drop out beneath her.
The bar is perfectly still.
Not empty, no; it is still brimming with people. But none of them are moving.
They have all stopped mid-stride, mid-speech, mid-sip. Not frozen, exactly, but forcibly stilled. Puppets, hovering on strings. The music is still playing; softly, now, but it is the only sound in the place besides Henry’s unsteady breath, and the pounding of her heart.
And a voice, rising from the dark. “Adeline.”
The whole world holds its breath, reduces to the soft echo of footfalls on the wooden floor, the figure stepping out of the shadows.
Forty years, and there he is, unchanged in the ways she is unchanged, the same raven curls, the same emerald eyes, the same coy twist to his cupid’s bow mouth. He’s dressed in a black button-down, the sleeves of his shirt rolled to the elbows, a suit jacket flung over one shoulder, his other hand hooked loosely in the pocket of his slacks.
The picture of ease.
“My love,” he says, “you’re looking well.”
Something in her loosens at the sound of his voice, the way it always has. Something at the center of her unwinds, release without relief. Because she has waited, of course she has waited, held her breath in dread as much as hope. Now it rushes from her lungs.
“What are you doing here?”
Luc has the nerve to look affronted. “It’s our anniversary. Surely you haven’t forgotten.”
“It’s been forty years.” “Whose fault is that?” “Yours, entirely.”
A smile tugs at the edge of his mouth. And then his green gaze slides toward Henry. “I suppose I should be flattered by the resemblance.”
Addie doesn’t rise to the bait. “He has nothing to do with this. Send him away. He’ll forget.”
Luc’s smile drops away. “Please. You embarrass us both.” He carves a slow circle around them, a tiger rounding on its prey. “As if I don’t keep track of all my deals. Henry Strauss, so desperate to be wanted. Sell your soul just to be loved. What a fine pair you two must make.”
“Then let us have it.”
A dark brow rises. “You think I mean to pull you apart? Not at all. Time will do that soon enough.” He looks to Henry. “Tick tock. Tell me, are you still counting your life in days, or have you begun to measure it in hours? Or does that only make it harder?”
Addie looks between them, reading the triumphant green in Luc’s eyes, the color bleeding out of Henry’s face.
She does not understand. “Oh, Adeline.”
The name draws her back.
“Humans live such short lives, don’t they? Some far shorter than others.
Savor the time you have left. And know, it was his choice.” With that, Luc turns on his heel and dissolves into the dark.
In his wake, the bar shudders back into motion. Noise surges through the space, and Addie stares at the shadows until she’s sure they are empty.
Humans live such short lives.
She turns toward Henry, who’s no longer standing behind her, but slumped in a chair.
Some far shorter than others.
His head is bowed, one hand clutching his wrist where the watch would be. Where it is, somehow, again. She is sure he didn’t put it on. Sure he wasn’t wearing it.
But there it is, shining like a cuff around his wrist.
It was his choice.
“Henry,” she says, kneeling before him. “I wanted to tell you,” he murmurs.
She pulls the watch toward herself, and studies the face. Four months she’s been with Henry, and in that time, the hour hand has crept from half past six to half past ten. Four months, and four hours closer to midnight, and she always assumed it would go around again.
A lifetime, he said, and she knew it was a lie. It had to be.
Luc would never give another human so much time—not after her.
She knew, she must have known. But she thought, perhaps he’d sold his soul for fifty, or thirty, or even ten—that would have been enough.
But there are only twelve hours on a watch, only twelve months in a year, and he wouldn’t, he couldn’t be so foolish.
“Henry,” she says, “how long did you ask for?”
“Addie,” he pleads, and for the first time, her name sounds wrong on his lips. It is cracked. It is breaking.
“How long?” she demands. He is silent for a long time.
And then, at last, he tells her the truth.
