moved to start a job in editing at Boston’s biggest publishing house. After emptying the van, she’d said: “Now I owe you. As soon as I get settled let me make you dinner. I can’t wait to use the kitchen in this place.”
“You don’t owe me anything,” Corbin had said, and returned to his own apartment. He hoped that his coldness would eliminate any further contact.
It did, for a time. He passed Audrey in the hall and in the courtyard, and they were always civil, if not overly friendly. Whenever he saw her, she was alone, usually carrying a manuscript or a book. He began to imagine her life, alone in a new city, and felt a little bad for his aloof behavior on the day she’d moved in.
The second winter after Audrey’s arrival was one of the worst in Boston’s history, snow piling up and day after day of subzero temperatures. The largest of the storms began on a Thursday night in January and paralyzed the city all through the weekend plus most of Monday. It was during that weekend that Audrey, after saying hello to Corbin in the front lobby, showed up twenty minutes later at his door.
“I’m so stir crazy that I made enough chili to feed the entire building. Please come over and have some.”
“I . . .”
“I’m not taking no for an answer—unless you have other plans—and I’m not hitting on you, I promise. You don’t have to stay long.”
Corbin agreed to come over at six. He found a good bottle of red wine and changed out of his workout clothes into jeans and a flannel shirt. He knocked on Audrey’s door at five minutes past six and she let him into her place, considerably smaller than Corbin’s massive end apartment. NPR was playing through her speakers, and Corbin wondered if that was a deliberate choice, so that their eating dinner together would seem less romantic. If it was, it backfired. Something about Audrey tending to the chili while Corbin made a salad, the news of the day prattling on in the background, made them seem like an instant couple, comfortable with each other and comfortable in their own skins. Corbin stayed till midnight. They finished his wine and drank another bottle that belonged to Audrey. She admitted that she’d been lonely in Boston, but not unhappy. He told her that he loved his solitary lifestyle. Back in his apartment, while brushing his teeth, Corbin felt a sharp pain in his chest. He thought it was heartburn and pressed a hand against his pectorals. To his shame, tears filled his eyes. The night with Audrey had made him realize how lonely he’d become.
They didn’t see each other for over a week, not till Corbin was opening his door to let Sanders, who’d been scratching for at least ten minutes, into his apartment. Audrey was walking down the hall, stripping off a long, padded jacket that was damp with the latest snowfall.
“Hey, stranger,” she said.
He’d invited her in, since she hadn’t seen his apartment yet, and they ended up drinking wine and ordering a pizza.
“I like you,” she said to him at the end of the night. “Even though I can’t read you at all. You’re a complete mystery.”
“I’m not, really,” Corbin said.
“No, you are. Are you going to kiss me?”
He did, and Audrey stayed the night. After she fell asleep, Corbin went to the bathroom on the distant side of the apartment, sat on the toilet lid, and cried again; his chest felt like there was a knife in it. Several knives.
“Do you mind if we talk a little bit?” Corbin asked Audrey as she was getting dressed the next morning. He hadn’t slept at all.
“That was soon,” she said. “You have a girlfriend? You’re gay? You just got out of a really damaging relationship?”
“None of those,” Corbin said. “But I have a strange request, and I will completely understand if you want nothing to do with me after I request it.”
“Okay,” she said, her voice wary. Audrey stood in just her jeans and a thin pink bra that she hadn’t clipped at the back yet. Corbin noticed the faint scar from an appendectomy above her right hip.
“I’d really like to continue seeing you, but I think we should only see each here in this apartment building. At my place or your place, but not in public. I know that sounds horrible, but I have a reason, and it’s a reason I can’t tell you.”