“I forgot. Did he come tonight?”
She knew he was in San Francisco. She would drive in and stay with him at his pied-a-terre tonight.
“He’s got a meeting in the city,” Brady said. “He’ll come tomorrow night.”
“You did a wonderful job,” the woman said, her hand still holding Josie’s arm. “At the point when Brady says, ‘Do you love me’-or ‘Will you love me’-what is it…”
“ ‘Love me,’ ” Brady says, his voice soft, his eyes hidden behind his curtain of hair.
“That’s it,” his mom went on. “When he said that to the girl-who was very good, what a beauty she is-well, I almost cried. I don’t know why. It just… touched me somehow.”
“It’s a good moment in the play,” Josie said.
The woman was lovely. She was warm and straightforward and vibrant. Josie had wanted a shrew. Instead, this woman smiled and said, “You have a gift.”
They climbed the stairs to the third floor. Josie looked at every apartment door of this Russian Hill town house and silently pleaded,
He unlocked the door to his apartment and she dashed into the dark room. He reached for the light switch on the wall and flicked it on, closing the door behind him. Then he wrapped his arms around her from behind.
“You’re shaking,” he said.
“I’m scared. I feel like a thief breaking into someone’s house.”
He turned her around. “Look at me.” He lifted her chin.
She looked into his eyes and smiled. He made it easy. He looked so sure about this, as if there was no question in the world they should be standing here, wrapped in each other’s arms, gazing at each other. Maybe her fears were childish, immature. An older woman would be able to do this without trembling knees.
“I met your wife,” she said.
“Shh,” he said, leaning down to kiss her. She could feel her heart pounding against his chest. And then, lost in the kiss, she forgot everything for a moment. When he pulled his mouth away, she caught her breath.
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
“This is her place,” Josie said.
“No. It’s mine, really. I mean, it’s ours, but she rarely uses it. I stay here when I have late meetings or early meetings. On a rare occasion we stay here when we come in for a show or dinner.”
Josie pulled away from him and looked around. The room was masculine-all leather and dark wood, with a cool blue ocean painting that filled one wall. A model airplane hung from a wire in the middle of the room. Josie reached up and touched a wing; it spun in the air.
“I have a pilot’s license,” Simon explained. “That’s a model of my Cessna.”
Josie looked at him. “Your wife is perfect,” she said. “I mean, she’s not what I expected.”
“What did you expect?”
“Someone I could hate.”
“I didn’t fall for you because I hate my wife.”
“Why did you fall for me?” Josie turned away from the long, cresting wave of the painting and looked into Simon’s eyes.
“I couldn’t help myself,” he said simply. “I saw you onstage that day-I don’t know-I was starstruck. Can that happen?”
“Have you brought other women here?”
“No. I told you. I’ve never done this before.”
“I’m an idiot. I believe you.”
He pulled her into his arms. “I promise you.”
They kissed and she pressed herself into his body, wrapping her arms low around his waist, pulling him closer. She felt too many layers of clothes between them. She started to pull off his coat.
“Wait. There’s a Murphy bed. I have to pull it down.”
She turned around, surprised. It was a one-room studio and, sure enough, there was no bed.
Simon walked to the wall unit, then slid the bookcases aside, revealing a bed built into the wall.
“Amazing,” she said.
He pulled a cord and the bed descended gracefully. It was neatly made, with pale blue sheets and a gray blanket.
“I can’t,” Josie said. She could feel her throat tightening.
Simon looked at her.
“It’s her bed. It’s where you sleep with your wife.”
“Josie.”
She shook her head. “I feel like Goldilocks in someone else’s house. I can’t do this.”
“The sheets are fresh. I made the bed this morning.”
“No.”
He came toward her and took her in his arms again.
“She’ll never know,” he said.
“Let’s go. Somewhere else. Anywhere else.”
Later, in their room on the fourteenth floor of the Clift Hotel, they lay in each other’s arms after sex and Ghirardelli chocolate and scotch and more sex.
“How did Brady do?” Simon asked.
Josie looked at him. “I wondered why you hadn’t asked.”
“I should have been there.”
“You’ll come tomorrow.”
“I didn’t want to be there with my wife. I didn’t want to stand next to her and shake your hand. She knows me too well.”
Josie climbed on top of him. She looked down into Simon’s face.
“We can’t do this, can we?”
“We have to do this.”
He pulled her face to his and kissed her.
“Why?” Josie asked.
“Because I have to trust this. I know what love is-I love my wife, I love my son-I won’t lie to you. But I’ve never felt this-I don’t know-
Josie watched him for a moment. “I don’t know what this is,” she said. “I’ve had boyfriends, but this is not what that was. What is this?”
“Kiss me,” Simon said.
Josie can hear the shoe saleswoman and the tutor talking to each other. She hears the words
The tutor doesn’t correct her. “No,” he says. “She’s not feeling well today.”
Josie rinses her hands in the tiny sink in the back of the store and considers slipping a pair of shoes into her bag. She has never shoplifted in her life, but who knows what she might be capable of now? The saleswoman didn’t want her in the bathroom of her piggy store, but Josie had marched through the curtains anyway and found a toilet to throw up in rather than the white marble floor. She picks up a pair of red shoes-Dorothy-in-Oz shoes-and clicks the heels.
There’s no place like home.
Why should she fly home on Sunday? Why not stay in Paris and become Nico’s girlfriend and shoplifter of expensive shoes?
She puts the shoes back on the shelf. She steps back into the showroom.
