Visible City by Mirvis Tova

Author:Mirvis, Tova [Mirvis, Tova]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Published: 2014-03-18T00:00:00+00:00

The laws of probability, briefly suspended, were back in effect. It had been almost two weeks since Nina had run into Leon, and she looked for him on every corner, expecting him to turn up in the unlikeliest of places, pushing through the crowds at the Children’s Museum, walking through the gate of Hippo Park. After a few more days without crossing paths, Nina called Leon on his cell phone, tentatively mentioning the long-ago promise of a borrowed book.

“I was just thinking that I haven’t run into you in a while. Where are you now?” Leon asked.

“Broadway and 98th.”

“I’m a few blocks from there. A patient canceled and I have an unexpected free hour. I was going to walk to the boat basin,” Leon said.

“I’ve never been there.”

“How is it possible you’ve never been to the boat basin?” he said, and she heard the smile in his voice. She laughed; she could write a dissertation comparing the merits of each playground in Riverside Park, but the boat basin remained on the list of places she had yet to take the kids.

“I almost didn’t recognize you without your kids,” he said as she approached.

“They’re with Emma. They love her, and so do I,” Nina said, and told him how each time Emma came over, she was excited about the day she had planned. Even doing laundry or going to the park was made out to be such an adventure that she wanted to join them. Nina liked to tell herself that Emma could be so enthusiastic because she got to go home at the end of the day, but she knew it was more than that. When she relayed the kids’ antics, Nina felt how quickly Emma had fallen in love with her kids. It probably filled some other need inside her, but that was fine; it filled their needs as well.

As she walked next to Leon, the streets seemed newly strung with currents of attraction. The kids slipped from her mind. There was nothing but time, free and open. Shyness fell away; so did effort. On every street corner, at every passing, people looked each other up and down, invisible threads of energy connecting eyes to hips, eyes to chests, eyes to eyes. She initially checked out everyone approaching her for fear someone might recognize her, but she pushed the worry from her mind. What was there to see? she reassured herself; she was having a conversation, he was her friend. Even if someone saw her, who would linger long enough to notice the ways in which she leaned ever so slightly toward him or held a smile a second too long? What kind of security camera, mounted overhead, could catch something so imperceptible?

They walked under the highway overpass and along the promenade, surrounded on both sides by Rollerbladers and bikers. They walked down to the river and onto the pier. A few feet away, seagulls swooped down. On the pier, a man was fishing beside a sign that instructed No Fishing.

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