“So, what if . . .” I say, “he’s the caretaker of the garden. The horticulturist. And she’s the caretaker of the lady in the wheelchair. Who wants to be brought to the Cloisters each week. They see each other a dozen times. I’m talking lingering glances, a couple of ‘excuse me’s.’ Each is forming opinions—all wrong!—about who the other is. And then one day . . .” I trail off, thinking. “What happens? Who would break the ice? Maybe it’s the old lady. She wants to live to see her granddaughter find love, so she slips the gardener the girl’s number?”
“I like it,” Noah says, no trace of sarcasm in his voice.
“It could work, right?” My heart and confidence soar.
“Maybe you should write it,” Noah says, crouching to study a medieval aloe plant. “Or offer it to another writer you work with?”
And . . . heart and confidence now plummeting down to the core of the earth. Invitation to Italy spontaneously combusting. “Why not you?”
Noah circles the fountain, arms crossed over his chest. “I’m not trying to make this harder. But recently, I’m finding myself less interested in the meet-cute as an engine.”
Two weeks ago, I would have found this comment obnoxious, dismissive of the books I love and he claims to love, too. I would have fought back: The meet-cute is everything! All good love stories need one.
But today is not about me. It’s about helping Noah get inspired.
“And you’re finding yourself more interested in . . .” I offer.
He looks at me. His green eyes flash. “The full rhapsodic spectacle of life.”
Well, he was ready for me there.
“Okay,” I say slowly. “Yeah, that can be romantic, too.”
He tips his head for me to follow him, and we walk out of the garden, toward an elevated stone walkway that overlooks the Hudson River. It’s a gorgeous day, a spectacular view. I resist the urge to tell him this is one of the highest points in all of Manhattan.
“My mom is sick,” Noah says, leaning his elbows on the railing by the river. “She has Alzheimer’s. And recently, she’s taken a turn.”
I stand near him, feeling crushed on his behalf. “I’m so sorry.”
“I’m not telling you to make excuses. I only want to explain. My mom is the reason I started writing.”
“Really?” I’ve always wondered about the Noa Callaway origin story. Everyone at Peony has.
“Her first name is Calla,” he says. “I wrote Ninety-Nine Things because of her. She likes love stories. She used to, anyway.” He rubs his jaw, and gazes out across the water. Sorrow shimmers from him. I recognize it well.
I know the best that I can do is listen.
“If this book is the last book I write that she gets to read,” he says, “I want it to speak to the scope of love, not just to its beginning.”
“The epic of a heart,” I say, as my skin pricks with goose bumps. It’s not bad. It’s very good.
He nods. “I don’t know who the characters are, or what the circumstances would be. . . .”
For a few moments we say nothing, but it doesn’t feel like one of those silences you look for ways to fill. It feels like we are letting this quiet upper reach of Manhattan take our hard conversation in its gentle hands.
“Tell me about your mom,” I say. “You said you were raised by a house full of women?”
“After my dad left,” he says, “Mom and I lived with two other ladies from her nursing school. Aunt Terry and Aunt B.”
“Back up. Aunt . . . Terry?”
Noah smiles, enjoying my surprise. “We were this crazy, estrogen-rich, romance-loving household. My mom and my aunts’ favorite thing to do was swap novels and argue over plots and characters. It was like a book club that never ended.”
“And eventually,” I say, “you got inducted?”
“I read Clan of the Cave Bear in first grade.”
“Those books are so underrated!” I say. “Jondalar was my first fictional crush.”
“Oh, is that your type?” he jokes and I turn red, thinking back on those notoriously steamy cave scenes that I read at least three thousand times.
“So when you started writing . . .” I say, putting a corner piece of the Noa Callaway puzzle into place.
He nods. “I’d fallen in love with love. Though, obviously, at twenty, I didn’t know a thing about it.”
I picture Noah at twenty, not knowing a thing about love. It’s sort of cute.
“When I showed the first draft of Ninety-Nine Things to my mom,” he says, “she didn’t believe I’d written it. If my own mother couldn’t see it, what reader would want to open the back flap and see me?”
I consider what his author photo might look like. Smoldering green eyes flirting with the camera. Dark curls just long enough to suggest untamed. Black turtleneck. No, a button-down showing a little bit of chest hair . . .
He’s right. His author photo would give his readers a shock.
“Alix didn’t know I was a man until after she’d bought the manuscript,” he continues, another key piece falling into place. “We had no idea Ninety-Nine Things would take off the way it did. I never thought I’d make a career of it. Once upon a time . . .”
“It was just a love story?”
“Yes,” he says, meeting my eyes. It feels as if this is the first time we’ve ever really looked at each other. “It was just a love story.”
We keep walking along the river, the sun high and bright overhead, the view of the George Washington Bridge growing in the distance.
“It’s your move,” he says, catching me off guard.
“What?”
“In chess.” He waves his phone. “It’s been your turn for over a week. You’re about to forfeit the game.”
“Oh! I’ve been—”
“Paralyzed by my impending victory?”
“More like trying not to distract you with push notifications! Also, I don’t want to completely crush your confidence in this delicate creative moment. You’ve lost—what?—the past six games in a row?”
“That’s only because I can’t use my intimidation tactics over the app.”
“And those would be?”
Noah squares off to face me, crosses his arms, and raises one eyebrow dramatically with an exaggerated tilt of his head. All he needs is a monocle to complete the look of total lunatic. I burst out laughing.
“I’m scared now,” I say.
“See?”
“Scared for you that you think that’s an intimidation tactic. You look like an Angry Bird.”
“Fine, but I am a better chess player in person. The game of kings needs human beings.”
“Well, if only you hadn’t pissed me off so much that day in Central Park,” I say, feigning a sigh. “We could have already put this argument to rest.”
“I’m afraid there’s only one solution,” he says.
“Are you challenging me to a game of chess?” I say, feeling my competitive spirit rise.
He nods. “And hoping you like sushi, because I’m starving, and Saturdays are for sushi.” Then he does the thing with the eyebrow again until I crack up and agree.