3 by Julie Hilden

Author:Julie Hilden
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781472105561
Publisher: Little, Brown Book Group

Part 3

One day in early May, about eight months after Ilan’s death, the buzzer sounds, interrupting my writing. I am working on a piece based on another interview with the gay star, who now claims he’s actually bisexual, and I am annoyed to be interrupted.

I look down from the window to see who it is – a woman I don’t recognize. I take the elevator down, and open the door to the street.

The woman has straight auburn hair and fair skin. The bright pink sweater she wears is a color I thought was forbidden to redheads, but it suits her.

I don’t need a scale to weigh her, or a tape measure to know her height is precisely the same as my own. She is 5'9", 130 pounds – exactly. If she were to wear my clothes, they would fit her perfectly. She could impersonate me, seamlessly replace me in the world.

Uncertainty skitters in me: what is she doing here, now? She is from a past that can’t exist anymore.

‘Hi,’ she says, and smiles. Her smile has pain flashing in it, pain and uncertainty. We resemble each other even in the incompleteness of our pleasure.

She glances down at the scrap of paper in her hand. A set of shiny bangles on her wrist shifts as she scrutinizes it. I can see that it bears an address, and in a moment I make out that it is ours. And that is Ilan’s handwriting, I’m sure of it – as another little fishhook leaves another little scar.

‘You’re Maya.’

‘Yes.’ I open the door wider. She slips past me, into the building’s foyer.

‘I’m Olivia. Is Ilan here yet?’

‘No. I’m not expecting him either.’

‘I’m sorry,’ she says, flustered. ‘He asked me to come today, I’m sure it was today. Didn’t he tell you? He said you’d be expecting me.’

‘I might have forgotten.’

‘Do you mind if I come upstairs? I’m curious to see the apartment. A triangle, isn’t it? It sounds very cool.’

‘Sure,’ I agree. ‘Come on in.’

The small elevator seems uncomfortably close as we ride up. I usher her into the loft.

There I ask her, in a tone I hope is casual, ‘When did you meet Ilan?’

‘Oh, nine or ten months ago. At a bar, I forget which one.’

He met with her shortly before he died, I realize. And he broke his own rules: the rule that I would meet the woman first; the rule that she could not know his name, or mine. But these are such small infractions now, interesting only as evidence. They don’t touch on the real questions: why didn’t he cancel? Did he intend for her to come here even after he had died?

‘I thought it was weird the date was so far in the future,’ she continues. ‘But he said he’d be away for the time in between. Didn’t he tell you I might be coming by?’ she presses, uneasy.

‘No. What did he say when you met?’

‘Look, is something wrong? I could go.’

‘He left me. Just after he met with you.

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