“Ezra? I’m sorry to bother you.” The deep, uninflected voice of Meg Sand was on the other end. He was briefly even more confused, and then strangely comforted that it was only her. “I know I shouldn’t be calling this late. I tried calling two other people before I called you.”
“Is it late?” he asked. “I don’t even know what time it is.”
“It’s 11:47,” she replied. “It’s almost midnight.”
As she was speaking, he saw that the time had been right in front of him all along, tucked away in a corner of his vast computer screen. “Look at that,” he said aloud. Then he realized: “I think the last meal I ate was breakfast.”
“I’m sorry,” Meg said again, and fell silent before announcing, “But I’ve been robbed.”
He flew across the city in the back of a Lincoln Town Car whose shocks seemed in need of immediate replacement. The traffic lights turned green one after the other, benevolently synchronized, as if wishing him Godspeed as he drew ever closer to Meg’s apartment. He didn’t know what he would find there. A jimmied lock, a gaping window, stuff spilling out of drawers, strewn across the floor, or…? Darkened blocks scrolled past the smudged glass. With a sense of deliverance he understood that, whatever crisis he encountered, he’d be able to help. And if it turned out that in the end he couldn’t—well, she was just a friend from the gym. Teeth rattling, he hurtled forward, at once weightless and full of purpose.
Her address was on York Avenue, which despite its Manhattan zip code appeared to be even more desolate and remote than where he lived. The car jerked to a stop in front of her building; he looked up at its expanse of monotonous midcentury brick and felt depressed for her. She was waiting in the lobby, dressed in her jacket and boots. He almost didn’t notice the doorman sitting wordlessly at his station but then found himself wondering about him as they rose upward in the elevator. On the seventh floor, she led him down a carpeted corridor to her apartment door, which she unlocked with trembling hands. It swung open onto a single room that contained her entire life: stove, bed, clothes rack, television, all laid out plainly before him. On the wall hung a poster-size reproduction of a black-and-white photo of the Flatiron Building, framed. The bed was piled high with expensive-looking pillows of different shapes and sizes that she must have acquired through her job. She went to the little stove and started boiling water—not in a teakettle but in a saucepan.
“I hope you like chamomile,” she said. “It’s all I have.”
He couldn’t find an obvious place where he was meant to sit. He couldn’t figure out what had been stolen. The room had a slightly tousled look but seemed otherwise intact.
“How did they get in?”
She turned from the stove and looked at him uncomprehendingly.
“The—robbers.” He corrected himself. “Intruders.” But maybe it had been someone working solo. “Intruder,” he said, finally.
She blinked once, then twice, as if trying to bring him into focus. “It happened on the subway,” she said. “Is that what you mean?”
“I don’t mean anything. You’re the one who said you were robbed.” He glared at the apartment around him, searching for signs of entry. “And I said that I would come right over. Which I did.”
“Thank you,” Meg said. “Thank you for coming over. You didn’t have to. I feel bad that it’s so late.”
“I don’t care what time it is. I’m just not understanding what you—”
“It happened on the subway,” she repeated. “It must have happened when I was on my way home from work. Because then I got back and took a shower and ordered Thai and when I went to pay the delivery guy I reached into my bag and it wasn’t there.”
“Your wallet?”
“Yes. It was gone. The last time I had it was when I pulled out a token.”
“You think someone stole it on the subway,” he said dully. “Hours ago. Like a pickpocket.”
“Yes,” she answered solemnly, and handed him his cup of tea. “I do.”
Before taking the cup, he put down his backpack, heavy with the hammer and nails he had brought. The tea smelled medicinal and was too hot to drink. He had paid thirty-eight dollars for the car service, with tip. He was overcome by the sudden, profound tiredness that comes right after a stupid expenditure of energy. Meg was now sitting on the edge of her bed, still wearing her jacket, as if she, too, were a guest. Without asking, he sank down beside her and placed his cup on the floor. He was too exhausted even to be angry anymore.
“So,” he said. “This is your place.”
“Welcome,” she said, and with a little sigh rested her fragile head of hair on his shoulder. “I’m glad you’re here.”
At least that’s how Ezra’s wife has imagined it, their unpromising start. Some details, such as the poster of the Flatiron Building and the mound of fancy pillows, she is familiar with from the video; some—the lat machine, the good purse, the booths at the Polish restaurant—she knows firsthand; the rest are the result of inference and extrapolation. It is rare for her to think at all of Meg Sand anymore, but the mention of Julia Roberts there in the dark has brought her back.
When Ezra recalls his years in graduate school, his memory has occasionally confused or conflated the two of them—her and Meg. To be fair, the instances have been very few. In one case, she had to remind him that they didn’t watch the Knicks lose to the Spurs in the finals; she was in Florida with her parents. Also, she can say with certainty that she’s never discovered a mouse behind the toaster oven. Or been pickpocketed on the subway. She
