bustling flow of midtown pedestrians.
People say you never forget your first kiss, but that wasn’t the case in Noah’s life. Superficial things don’t carry enough weight to make a lasting memory. For him the first kiss had faded gradually into the hundredth, the faces and names and situations long ago blending together into a vague, pleasant, collective event. A little thrill, a tentative awkwardness, those sweet few seconds of breathless discovery shared with another, and a momentary sense of what the immediate future together could hold, however brief that time would likely be.
This wasn’t like that.
Molly looked into his eyes, and what he saw in her was a perfect reflection of a wanting that he also felt, so there was no delay of invitation and acceptance. It was a different sort of desire than he’d known before, an understanding that something now needed to be said that no language but the very oldest could possibly convey. He bent to her, closed his eyes, and her lips touched his, gently, and again more urgently as he responded. He felt her arms around him, her body yearning against his in the embrace, a knot like hunger inside, heart quickening, cool hands at his back under the warmth of his jacket, searching, pressing him closer still.
With everything to see and hear around them there at the very crossroads of the world, soaring billboards, scrolling news crawlers, bright digital Jumbotrons that lined the tall buildings and blotted out the whole evening sky, it all disappeared to its rightful insignificance, flat as a postcard. That place was left outside their small circle, and if asked right then he might have stayed there within it forever. But he felt her smile against his lips as they were brought back to where they stood by the brusque voice of a passing man, who advised in his native Brooklynese that maybe they should go and get a room.
A light drizzle had begun to fall, and down the block they found a coffee shop with two seats by the window where they could wait out the patch of rain. When he returned from the counter with their cups he found her sitting with a folded newspaper, not reading it but lost somewhere in her thoughts. It was a while before she spoke.
“Noah?”
“I was starting to worry you’d forgotten I was here.”
Molly took a deep breath and seemed to collect herself for a moment. “I need to ask you something.”
“Okay”
“If we hired you, your company, what would you tell us to do?”
He frowned a bit. “You mean if you and your mom hired us?”
“It’s more than just the two of us, you know that. A lot more.”
“I don’t know,” he said. “What is it you want to accomplish again?”
“We want to save the country.”
“Oh. Okay. Is that all?”
“That’s where we start, isn’t it? With a clear objective.”
“That’s right.”
“So?”
“Okay. Let me think for a minute.”
Molly had become deadly serious; this wasn’t party talk. She didn’t take her eyes from his as she waited.
“I guess,” he said, “I’d begin by sitting down with all these different groups and trying to focus everyone on the things they agree on-the fundamentals. A platform, you know? Make it easy for people to understand what you’re about. Propose some real answers.”
“Give me an example.”
“I don’t know-start with the tax code, since your mom is so passionate about that. How about a set of specific spending cuts and a thirteen percent flat tax to start with? Get that ridiculous sixty-seven-thousand-page tax code down to four or five bullet points, and show exactly what effects it’ll have on trade, and employment, and the debt, and the future of the country. And I’m winging it here, but how about real immigration reform? The kind of policies that welcome people who want to come here for the right reasons, and succeed.
“Get the fear out of those big questions, and talk about a brighter future, you know? In our business we call it the elevator pitch: how you’d explain your whole outlook, features, and benefits if you had only a ten-floor elevator ride during which to get it across to a stranger. So start with a platform. At least that way they can start to speak with one voice occasionally. You have no political power otherwise.”
“And what next?”
He held up his hands. “Slow down for a minute.”
“No. What next?”
“Do you see that you’re maybe putting me on the spot a little here?” Noah tried to take a sip of his coffee, but it burned him. It was still much too hot to drink. “And what did you mean, save the country, by the way? Save it from what?”
She looked at him evenly. “You know what.”
“Oh, come on now, Molly. Please tell me you’re not really one of those people, I know you’re not-”
“I know there was a meeting at the office yesterday afternoon,” she said, lowering her voice but not her intensity. “I saw the guest list on the catering order. I know who was there. I know you were in it. And I think I know what it was about.”
“Okay, yes, big surprise, there was a meeting, but I wasn’t there for all of it. And do you want to know something else? I don’t even know what it was all about, so how could you?”
“Then let’s both find out.”
“What?”
“Prove me wrong. Let’s go right now and find out.”
“I can’t do that.”
“Yes, you can. We’ll go to the office right now, and you’ll show me that I’ve got nothing to worry about. If that’s the case then that’ll be the end of it.”
“You’re not listening to me, I said I can’t-”
“You would if you knew how important it was.”
“No, I wouldn’t. There are a lot of things I’d do for you, but I can’t do that.”
“When are you going to grow up, Noah? I know you’re not who your father is, but then the next question is, Who are you? It sounds to me like you knew the answer to that when you were in the fifth grade, but you’ve forgotten now that it’s time to be a man.”
“I am a man, Molly, but I’m not going to risk everything for nothing.”
“Do you want me to leave?” Her voice was tight and there were sudden tears in her eyes. “Do you never want to see me again? Because that’s what this means.”
Now they were starting to attract the attention of those nearby.
“That is so incredibly unfair. Did you even hear what you just said? I can’t believe you’d put me in a position like that.”
But he’d lost her already. She got up as he was speaking, turned from him without a word, and walked straight out the door.
Noah watched her through the glass and let himself hope for a few seconds that she’d have a change of heart and turn back into his waiting arms so all could be forgiven. But, just like falling in love with someone you’ve known only for a single day, those things really happened only in the movies.
She was going to leave him sitting there. She wasn’t coming back. By the time he’d decided what he had to do, Molly had all but disappeared into the river of weekend tourists and theatergoers flowing through the heart of Times Square.
CHAPTER 19
“You must be out of your mind,” Noah said, under his breath. He was addressing himself directly.
Molly was right behind him, holding tight to his hand as he led her through the aisles and racks of designer skirts and blouses toward the store’s back rooms.
“You’re doing the right thing,” she whispered.
He’d elected to avoid the main lobby entrance at 500 Fifth Avenue; too many cameras there, not to mention
