“You’re right. It is a pigsty,” I say.
“To be perfectly fair, I wasn’t expecting company.”
“I’m glad.”
“What strange creatures you Americans are.”
“No etchings,” I explain.
“Ah.” Peter laughs. “Don’t underestimate me. Come, I’ll show you the bedroom.”
I hesitate, part of me wanting to follow, part of me wanting to run for my life. But I follow.
Unlike the living room, Peter’s bedroom is surprisingly neat, the bed properly made, hospital corners.
“God, you’re lovely,” he says. His voice is frank, direct, secure in its own knowledge. “Let’s get you out of these wet clothes.”
I wince as he starts to unbutton my shirt. It has been six years since Conrad. And though I’ve had a few drunken kisses, I have never let a man touch me underneath my clothes.
Peter goes to unzip my jeans, but I stop his hand.
“Sorry. I thought—” he says.
“No. It’s okay. Just . . . I’d rather do it myself.” My fingers shake as I finish unbuttoning my shirt, pull down my jeans, step out of them. I stand in front of Peter in nothing but my underwear and bra. The rain is coming down harder now, a latticework of rills streaming across the enormous windows. Behind Peter, on a tall Tudor dresser, there’s an unopened carton of Rothmans, a half-eaten pear. I unclasp my bra, drop it to the floor. He comes to me, cups my breasts in his hands. My entire body is shaking.
“You’re cold.” He lifts me up, carries me to the bed.
He makes love to me slowly, fingers tracing my curves, letting me respond to him, our tall, lanky bodies wrapping into each other, the rain on the windows, the tang of tobacco, his powerful, muscular arms. I close my eyes tight, brace myself as he enters me. My sharp inhale of breath betrays me.
“Do you want me to stop?” he whispers.
“No.”
“We can stop,” he says.
“It hurt a bit, that’s all.”
Peter goes completely still. “Are you a virgin, Elle?”
I wish I could tell him the truth, but instead I say, “Yes.”
And so we begin on a lie.
1989. December, New York.
The 86th Street subway station is a bleak and dirty place, filled with gum-rubs and lifeless bits of paper on the tracks. The station empties out onto the four corners of a wide, ugly street. Anna and I exit the northwest corner into a blast of icy wind that whips up under the bottom of my down jacket. I’ve forgotten how cold New York gets. Outside on the street, the chestnut man is huddled by the warmth of his open stove, roasting fat, gaping nuts on a brazier. The night air smells sweet and delicious.
We turn the corner onto Lexington Avenue, picking our way around black-speckled snowdrifts in our high-heeled boots. At six p.m. the light is gone, replaced by the sheer acid halos of streetlamps and a swampy darkness.
“So, she was a total douche,” Anna says.
We’ve just had our annual Christmas Eve tea with Dad at his Greenwich Village apartment, where we were introduced to his new girlfriend. Mary Kettering is a redhead from Mount Holyoke with thin lips and a pencil-sharpened nose. When she smiled at us, her mouth became an angry line, revealing everything she was in an instant.
I’m carrying a shopping bag full of our presents. They are wrapped, but I know from the dead weight that it is books again. Our father pretends they are specially chosen for us, but we know he gets them for free from the giveaway table at his publishing house. Every year he gives us meaningless books with meaningful inscriptions written in blue fountain-pen ink. He has graceful, memorable handwriting and a way with words, if nothing else.
“She couldn’t stand us, either,” I say.
“Understatement of the year,” Anna says. “Could she have hated us any more? And when she started talking about the Hamptons?” Anna sticks her finger down her throat and gags. “And Southampton, not even Water Mill. How can he kiss her? Ugh. She’s like this horrible little bird skeleton.”
“You really are a cow.” I laugh. I have missed my sister more than words since I’ve been in London. “She might have been nicer to us if you hadn’t rolled your eyes every time she opened her mouth.”
To his credit, my father stuttered past the awkwardness, seeming genuinely happy and proud to have brought us all together. After tea, he poured two inches of bourbon into his teacup and played “Rock the Casbah” on his new turntable, dancing in embarrassing, awkward little jerks. He was barefoot, in a pair of old Levi cords, and the tops of his feet were hairy. Thick tufts grew up from each toe. It was mesmerizing. Mary beat the rhythm out with her Belgian loafer.