31 Hours by Masha Hamilton

Author:Masha Hamilton [Hamilton, Masha]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: (¯`'•.¸//(*_*)\\¸.•'´¯)
Publisher: Unbridled Books
Published: 2009-06-05T14:00:00+00:00

NEW YORK: 6:25 P.M.

MECCA: 2:25 A.M.

Jake had been consumed by trying to figure out exactly how to present the facts to Carol so she wouldn’t get too upset and they could logically discuss what to do next, and because of this he hadn’t given a thought to what it might feel like to be standing outside his old building until he was there. It was odd that in all this time, she’d never moved and even odder to think that he could have continued coming here every evening after work forever. In that case, this would just be an evening like any other instead of an evening that marked the first time he’d been here in, what? Fifteen years? In this other, no-divorce reality, they might be upstairs watching the news together, having already talked through what to do about Jonas, or they might be bumping hips in the kitchen, making a cheese-and-mushroom omelet to share.

Probably romanticized visions, all, but how could he be anything but romantic standing in front of the building that had contained him during the most hopeful days of his life? The name over the buzzer still combined hers and his. Carol Meitzner. She’d never changed it back to her maiden name, and that moved him in a way that he suspected it probably should not. She would say even noticing was a sign of his self-involvement, but she was still the only woman he’d ever given his name to—or ever would, he suspected now—and he had to admit he felt pleased that she’d kept it. He thought about ringing the buzzer in their code pattern: three short and one long. That game had enabled them to skip the step of pressing the intercom button and calling, “Yes?” Before Jonas, it allowed one to greet the other naked, if they wanted, because the unspoken rule was that you used the code only if you were coming up alone.

But if he used the code, she might discover how tightly he still clung to old dreams, and consider him pathetic. Or he might discover she’d forgotten it, which would feel—just wrong.

Whatever. It was too cold to be out here musing, so he leaned on the buzzer, waited a second, and then gave it a last short tap for good measure.

“Hello?”

“It’s me,” Jake said, and she buzzed him in.

It remained a nice building, well maintained, he noticed as he got into the elevator and pushed the button for the eleventh floor. The aroma of spaghetti sauce clung to the elevator just as it had when he’d lived here.

She was waiting for him in the hallway when the elevator door opened. Still slender, with hair that hung to her shoulders. He took in these details even though he knew what she looked like—Jonas showed him photographs every so often.

“I kept thinking you’d call,” she said. “Was he there?”

“No. Can I come in?”

She waved her hand.

Inside the door, he pulled off his coat and dropped it on a tan leather easy chair he’d never seen before.

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