towards him and looked suitably impressed. ‘You can let go now,’ I said, when people started to stare.
‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘It’s been a while.’
I had forgotten how much he preferred to listen than talk. It took a while before he offered up anything about himself. He finally had a new partner. After two false starts – a young man who’d decided he didn’t want to be a paramedic, and Tim, a middle-aged union rep, who apparently hated all mankind (not a great mindset for the job) – he had been paired with a woman from North Kensington station who had recently moved house and wanted to work somewhere closer to home.
‘What’s she like?’
‘She’s not Donna,’ he said, ‘but she’s okay. Least she seems to know what she’s doing.’
He had met Donna for coffee the week previously. Her father was not responding to chemotherapy, but she had disguised her sadness under sarcasm and jokes, as Donna always did. ‘I wanted to tell her she didn’t have to,’ he said. ‘She knows what I went through with my sister. But,’ he looked at me sideways, ‘we all cope with these things in our own ways.’
Jake, he told me, was doing well at college. He sent his love. His dad, Sam’s brother-in-law, had dropped out of grief therapy, saying it wasn’t for him, even though it had stopped his compulsive bedding of strange women. ‘He’s eating his way through his feelings now. Put on a stone since you left.’
‘And you?’
‘Ah. I’m coping.’
He said it simply, but it caused something in my heart to crack a little.
‘It’s not for ever,’ I said, as we stopped.
‘I know.’
‘And we’re going to do loads of fun stuff while you’re here.’
‘What have you got planned?’
‘Um, basically it’s You Getting Naked. Followed by supper. Followed by more You Getting Naked. Maybe a walk around Central Park, some corny tourist stuff, like the Staten Island ferry and Times Square, and some shopping in the East Village and some really good food with added You Getting Naked.’
He grinned. ‘Do I get You Getting Naked too?’
‘Oh, yes, it’s a two-for-one deal.’ I leant my head against him. ‘Seriously, though, I’d love you to come and see where I work. Maybe meet Nathan and Ashok and all the people I go on about. Mr and Mrs Gopnik will be out of town so you probably won’t meet them but you’ll at least get an idea of it all in your head.’
He stopped and turned me to face him. ‘Lou. I don’t really care what we do as long as we’re together.’ He coloured a little as he said it, as if the words had surprised even him.
‘That’s quite romantic, Mr Fielding.’
‘I tell you what, though. I need to eat something pretty fast if I’m going to fulfil this Getting Naked bit. Where can we get some food?’
We were walking past Radio City, surrounded by huge office buildings. ‘There’s a coffee shop,’ I said.
‘Oh, no,’ he said, clapping his hands together. ‘There’s my boy. A genuine New York food truck!’ He pointed towards one of the ever-present food trucks, this one advertising ‘stacked burritos’: ‘We make ’em any way you like ’em.’ I followed him and waited while he ordered something that appeared to be the size of his forearm and smelt of hot cheese and unidentified fatty meat. ‘We didn’t have plans to eat out tonight, right?’ He wedged the end into his mouth.
I couldn’t help but laugh. ‘Whatever keeps you awake. Though I suspect that’s going to put you in a food coma.’
‘Oh, God, this is so good. Want some?’
I did, actually. But I was wearing really nice underwear and I didn’t want bits of me hanging over the top. So I waited until he had finished it, noisily licking his fingers, then tossing his napkin into the bin. He sighed with deep satisfaction. ‘Right,’ he said, taking my arm, and everything felt suddenly, blissfully normal. ‘About this naked thing.’
We walked back to our hotel in silence. I no longer felt awkward, as if the time apart had created some unexpected distance between us. I didn’t want to talk any more. I just wanted to feel his skin against mine. I wanted to be completely his again, enfolded, possessed. We headed down Sixth Avenue, past the Rockefeller Center and I no longer noticed the tourists who stood in our way. I felt locked into an invisible bubble, all my senses trained on the warm hand that had closed around mine, the arm