“I’m not even sure we’ve actually met. We’re neighbors of yours.”
“Well, hi,” Bruce said. “Sorry I didn’t recognize you.”
“This is Nora,” the woman said. She gestured at the little girl.
“Hi,” Nora said, scowling at him.
Bruce felt the sun’s heat on the top of his head. The weight of it reminded him of the child’s game, the one that consisted of one person widening his fingers over the crown of another person’s head, insinuating the spread of a yolk. He felt better, now that he could see Charlotte, but he still wished the woman and her child would go away.
“Bruce has been following me,” Charlotte said.
She smiled up at him. Her expression was so sweet that Bruce forgot not to smile back, despite the fact that she meant to embarrass him in front of this stranger.
“Mm?” Iris said.
“He gets worried about me in the big bad city,” Charlotte said. “Don’t you,” she said to Bruce.
Bruce smiled at Iris. Looking into Iris’s face, which held an open friendliness in its heart shape, in the freckled darkness around the eyes that made Bruce think suddenly that she was old to be the mother of such a young girl, he thought it might be easier to simply confess everything. If Charlotte was bent on talking about this, he might as well be allowed to speak from his own point of view. “I told her that it makes me nervous for her to take the subway by herself. You know, at this point. I’ve seen how people won’t give up their seats. It’s just—”
“I get exhausted taking the subway myself,” Iris said. “It can feel like a battle.”
“Yes,” Bruce continued, encouraged. He kept his eyes on Iris’s, which were catlike, flecked with tiny shards of yellow and green. “Exactly. I asked Charlotte to take a cab uptown if she had to go, and then she walked out the door, and I had this feeling that she hadn’t listened to anything I’d said.”
“You followed me to the Christopher Street stop,” Charlotte said. “And don’t talk about me like I’m not here. I’m right here.”
“I did follow her. I mean you,” he said, turning to Charlotte. “I did. And I was right. You were going down the steps into the subway.”
“He practically jumped behind a trash can when I turned around,” Charlotte said. “Oh my God. You should have seen yourself.”
She started to laugh then. When Iris started laughing too, Charlotte bent forward a little, her knees bending to support her. Nora looked from Iris to Charlotte and back again.
Charlotte straightened. She stopped laughing and looked at him, her hand rising to shield her eyes from the sun.
“You shouldn’t do that,” she said.
“New York can be a tough place,” Iris said.
“I’m sorry,” Bruce said. Charlotte was right, but his voice was more defiant than apologetic.
“Don’t do it anymore.”
“You two are cute,” Iris said. “If my husband had worried about me for one second, who knows, we might still be married.”
Nora began to tug on Iris’s arm again. “Mmah,” she whined.
“You followed me here, too,” Charlotte said. “How else would you know I was here?” She looked into Bruce’s eyes. Bruce could see something dissolving in her face, some hope leaking in. She likes for me to be stronger than I am, Bruce thought. That is the only way.
“I didn’t follow you,” Bruce said. “I came to find you. There’s a difference.”
This morning, by the kiosk outside the Christopher Street subway entrance, Charlotte had told him she needed to be alone, then walked slowly toward the corner, turned it, and moved out of sight. He had waited for her, back at the apartment. Hour after hour went by. He straightened up, wiped the coffee cup rings off the glass-topped table with a paper towel, sat down on the couch. The air conditioner chugged through its cycle, quieted, then whirred on again. Ice crystals formed on its filter. There was only the sound of the air conditioner and Charlotte’s words: I need to be alone. By the time he moved to unlock the door and walk out to find her, he was shaking. She had left her cell phone on the hall table, the one that he’d provided her with for these final months and weeks. The keys jangled a little before he slid them into his pocket, before he let himself onto the street like any husband, on any Sunday. He made himself walk like any husband. Maybe he would bump into his wife while he was out