city. I hadn’t decided whether I would intrude on Eric’s workday to surprise him or not, but was considering it, beginning to imagine the look on his face as I stepped into his office. I was taken out of this reverie by hearing someone shout my name. I turned to see Katie Stone, a junior at Mather, and someone I knew from St. Dunstan’s parties, crossing the street and waving at me.
“I thought that was you,” Katie said, stepping onto the curb as a yellow cab hurtled by. “I didn’t know you were in the city this summer.”
“I’m not. I’m at my mom’s house in Connecticut, but my dad’s here and I had lunch with him.”
“Do you want to get coffee? I got let out of work early. God, New York’s depressing in August.”
We went to a chain coffee shop at the nearest corner and both ordered iced lattes. Katie prattled on about Mather students we both knew, and several I’d never heard of. She was a gatherer and purveyor of gossip, and I was surprised that she wasn’t asking me about Eric, so I asked her, “Do you see Eric much?”
Katie’s eyes widened a little at the mention of his name. “Oh. I wasn’t going to bring him up. No, not much, but a little. He works around here somewhere, you know.”
“Yeah, I know. Why weren’t you going to bring him up?”
“I just didn’t know how you felt, now that you’re not seeing each other. I didn’t know if you wanted to hear about him.”
A cold flush went over my skin. I very nearly told Katie that of course I was still seeing Eric but something stopped me. Instead, I asked, “Why, what’s going on with him?”
“Nothing that I know of. I’ve seen him a little, but he’s never here on the weekends. His dad’s sick. Maybe you knew that?”
“No,” I said. “What’s wrong with him?”
“Cancer, I think. Eric goes there every weekend. They must be close?” She phrased it like a question, and I managed to nod, despite the sudden need to get out of the coffee shop, and away from Katie. Fortunately, Katie’s cell phone began to ring, and as she dug within her enormous purse, I excused myself. I borrowed the key from the barista, then locked myself into the closet-size restroom. My mind galloped, desperately trying to understand the information I had just received, and while there was a part of me that was questioning what Katie had said—that it must be some ridiculous misunderstanding—there was a more logical part of me that knew it was true, that I had been a fool. Eric was leading two lives, and no one knew that he was seeing me on the weekends. After returning the key I saw that Katie was still on her phone, and I took the opportunity to tap her briefly on the shoulder, point at my watch, and move quickly toward the door. Katie lowered the phone and stood, but I simply mouthed the word “sorry” and kept moving.
Once outside, I went down a residential side street. One of the brownstones had stone front steps that were shaded by a leafy tree. I crouched high up on the steps, not caring if the owner spotted me and told me to leave. I don’t know how long I sat on those steps, but it was probably about two hours. I felt miserable for some of that time, but pretty soon I began to feel calm. I analyzed the situation. Eric had compartmentalized his life with me so that it only happened on the weekends and never in the city. It was the way he operated; it was the way he had operated at college. But why was he lying about where he was on the weekends? There could be only one reason—that Eric was involved with someone here in New York.
A little before five o’clock I walked down toward Eric’s office building. I knew the address but not what it looked like. I walked slowly, my eyes scanning the crowd. I knew that I would not be able to handle running into Eric, but I wasn’t ready to leave the city yet. I wanted to see where he worked, maybe even see him without letting him see me.
His office was in a nondescript four-story stone building next to a Gray’s Papaya. I sat on a bench across from its entrance, and pulled a New York Post from a nearby trash can, unfolding it in