“Where are you staying?” he asked, and when she told him she was at the Algonquin he’d smiled and said, “Of course.”
Outside, the morning’s rain had returned as a luminous mist that filled the air, obscuring the city’s grit and dirt. The streetlamps glowed like moonstones in the fog, like echoes of the full moon overhead. When Gregory offered her his arm as they crossed Fifth Avenue and entered the park, it seemed rude not to take it, and when they reached the hotel, it seemed rude not to invite him up for a nightcap. Gregory called down to the bar to order a pair of old-fashioneds, and Ronnie went to stand by the window and look down at the city, so different from Boston, or from any other place in the world. She imagined she could feel the ground vibrate beneath her, all that coiled energy, all that striving, all the people dreaming dreams of fame and glory.
When the drinks arrived, Gregory handed her a glass and stood beside her. “It’s something, isn’t it?” he asked, his voice low.
She turned to him. The dim, pearly light from the street cast his face in shadow. All she could see was his profile—the broad shoulders and firm chest, the angles of his jawline and the straight line of his nose. And what she thought was, This is my reward. As much as the champagne and the movie deal and the money, she had earned this man, this night, through her determination and her hard work. When she put her hand on his cheek and drew his lips down to hers, Veronica felt like a queen, claiming the spoils of a plundered land.
They kissed, chests pressed together, one of her hands cupping the back of his head, one of his hands gripping possessively at her bottom. Lee was always so gentle and respectful, touching her with something close to reverence, always watching her face, touching her body, gauging her reactions, and making sure she liked what he was doing. Gregory was as intent on his pleasure as hers, and somehow, Veronica found that fiercely arousing. When he bit at her tongue, then her neck, with a sound somewhere between a groan and a growl, she grabbed him as hard as he’d grabbed her, pulling him toward the bed, where Gregory knelt and pulled off her boots. He raised her foot, pressed a kiss to her instep, and began kissing and licking his way up her leg. “Veronica,” he whispered, and slid his hand up her thigh.
“Now,” she said, imperious as an empress, as he pulled them off. She propped herself on her elbows, watching as he unbuckled his belt. “I want you inside of me now.”
She tried not to think about how different he was from Lee, with his curly hair and his sloping shoulders and his gentle eyes, gray-blue behind the glasses that he’d worn since he was eight years old. She told herself that she wasn’t cheating, because she was not the woman Lee knew. There, in Boston, she was Ronnie, a sister, a daughter, a PhD candidate, and soon, she suspected, a fiancée; a bride, a wife and a mother. There, in spite of her achievements, she would be Mrs. Levy; another woman driving carpools in a wood-paneled station wagon, carting cut-up oranges to soccer games, bringing banana bread to the bake sale. She’d seen it happen to her friends, fellow PhD students, some who’d published their work. Put a ring on their finger and, through some dark magic, they turned into wives and mothers, and instead of talking about Elizabethan poetry or symbolism in Shakespeare’s sonnets or how the market economy had shaped post–Civil War America, it was all teething and toilet training and which towns had the most desirable school districts.
Veronica wasn’t ready for that. She wanted to be what she was in the city: a bestselling author, a woman who’d been paid two hundred thousand dollars to write books and would make even more from the film adaptation, a woman who was ambitious and accomplished and hungry for everything the world could give her. She loved Lee, she wanted a life with him in Boston; children, a house, family vacations, all of it. But, before she succumbed, didn’t she deserve a little time to be the star of her own life? Didn’t every woman deserve that—a few days or months to feel remarkable?
She and Gregory met four or five times over the next year. Veronica was scrupulous about not inventing excuses or lying to Lee. Every time she told him she had to be in New York for work, she was telling the truth. He’d see her off at the train, and kiss her goodbye, and then, somewhere between Hartford and New Haven, she’d slip her Ronnie skin and turn into Veronica.
She and Gregory would meet for drinks, sometimes with Emily or Alice or Gregory’s other colleagues, other editors or agents or authors, New York people who made conversation about books and authors, who read novels and poetry and did not just use their New Yorkers as ornaments for their coffee table, set dressing that would signal certain values to any visitors. She and Gregory were careful not to look at each other too much, or to touch, although sometimes, Gregory would let his fingertips linger on her shoulders as he pulled out her chair, or trail against the back of her neck as he helped her on with her coat. Sometimes they’d go to dinner, at restaurants Gregory chose, Greek or French or Italian, and, once, sushi, which Veronica had never eaten before. Gregory fed her bits of slippery fish from his chopsticks.