Ben had been playing with the same three friends for the past ten years. It had started as a way to blow off steam when they’d all been working in the same hospital. Jenny was a plastic surgeon now and played the drums like a maniac, incredibly controlled and nearly militaristic one moment, then volatile and free-form the next. Wendell was on keyboards. He was a pediatrician and lived with his girlfriend and two daughters in Chelsea. Ivan played stand-up bass and was an ENT specialist who had recently gone into private practice in Brooklyn, where he lived with his boyfriend of seven years. The quartet played a schizophrenic mix of mid-century classics like Art Blakey and MJQ, then trotted out souped-up versions of pop singles by the likes of Taylor Swift and Kelly Clarkson that they transformed into lighthearted instrumental pieces.
Ben felt Claire before he saw her. She looked lost, in that elegant way of hers, poking her head into the darker part of the club, beyond the bar. He continued playing the selection he’d been riffing on as he watched her wend her way through the narrow spaces between the café tables. There was an empty spot along the banquette that ran the length of the exposed brick wall. He smiled when she looked up at him. She smiled back.
He was so screwed. Her smile was like one of those absurd shaft-of-light Hallmark cards when the Holy Spirit descends upon some unsuspecting sot. He must have missed a beat or picked up his pace because Jenny took it as a musical cue and launched into a crazy drum solo. Ben chanced another peek at Claire and tried to keep his fingers moving. He knew all the songs like he knew how to breathe. But since breathing seemed complicated, maybe that wasn’t saying much. It was much easier when he didn’t look at her.
Ben looked down at his own fingers, as if he needed to see the strings and his fingertips touching in order to play the notes. He could have played blindfolded with the guitar behind his back, but she didn’t need to know that. They played the full hour and a half without a break, and his three friends gave him a couple of leading glances as they put away their instruments to clear the small stage for the next group.
“Who’s the babe?” Jenny asked casually.
Ben looked across at Claire, who seemed as far from a
babe
as a woman could possibly be. He wanted to bark at Jenny that Claire was the daughter of a duke until he realized he was being completely ridiculous. “An old friend. Come have a drink with us.” He looked across to Wendell and Ivan, to include them in the casual invitation.
“Sorry, Ben. I’m on call tomorrow and Tuesday. Maybe next week. She looks charming.” Ivan winked. Wendell also said his regrets, so Jenny accompanied Ben and his guitar case over to where Claire was sitting.
Claire tried to stand, but she was tucked in behind the cramped table and it was an awkward business.
“Nice to meet you!” Jenny smiled. “I’m Jenny Donovan. The drummer.”
“You were amazing!” Claire cried. “Come sit.”
Ben was almost jealous—
why did Jenny get to sit next to her?
—then smiled, loving that Claire was genuinely excited by the music. He had spent so many years with Alice tolerating it, at best. Alice had always seen Ben’s guitar playing as an eye-rolling hobby to be borne. Claire seemed fired up. Her cheeks were flushed. She was speaking quickly, almost breathlessly, to Jenny.
“I mean, are you thinking? Or does it just come over you? What does it feel like?”
Jenny burst out laughing. “You’re a musician’s dream come true. Look at you! So turned on by the music.”
Claire flushed. “Oh. Sorry. Am I being inappropriately enthusiastic?” Ben almost dove across the table to get back that flushed excitement. Damn the person who ever made Claire feel like her enthusiasm was inappropriate. Whether it was her mother or her ex-husband or her whole damn circle of friends, Ben decided that a big part of his new position as her Very Good Friend was to fan the flames of her enthusiasm. He certainly hadn’t helped matters by being a moody bastard the day before.
Jenny laughed again and grabbed Claire’s upper arm. “Are you for real? You’re from another world. So upper crusty. I love it. Isn’t she divine, Ben?”
God. If Jenny only knew how divine he thought she was. Instead of mooning all over her, Ben reached out and took one of Claire’s nervous hands in his and patted her like an older brother would. “Yeah, she’s the best. We haven’t seen each other in over twenty years and we just bumped into each other yesterday.”
Jenny stayed for another twenty minutes, laughing with Claire about her first impressions of working in New York. Ben tried to act normal.
After Jenny left, he moved around to the banquette to sit next to her and tried to act like it was because the music from the next act was a little too loud and he couldn’t hear what she was saying. Of course, he was just trying to get as physically close to her as he could without frightening her.
She had pulled her hair back into a practical ponytail and was wearing a long-sleeved white T-shirt and a pair of blue jeans. She couldn’t have looked more pedestrian if she had tried. Ben had the distinct impression she had tried.
“I’m starving. Have you eaten dinner yet?” Ben asked, forcing himself to look away from the curve of her fitted white T-shirt and away from the train of thought that made him question why she was trying to make herself nondescript. It was impossible anyway. His stomach lurched with desire at a white T-shirt and jeans. What would he do in the face of a black thong and bra? Or just a pair of shorts. He shook his head and scowled at himself.
“Are you okay?” Claire asked. “You look a little…”
“What?”
“Angry.”
Ben shook his head and tried to shake off his irritation with himself. “No. I’m just trying to shake off a week’s worth of irritation, I guess.”
“Oh.” Claire looked down at the soggy napkin beneath her wine glass. “You looked like that yesterday, and I thought you were aggravated, you know, with me.”
Ben was totally out of his depth. He wanted her, obviously. She didn’t want him. Obviously. Or so he thought. He smiled, the big one, which seemed to put her at ease. “It’s all just work and the usual crap,” he tried. “Let’s go get something to eat and forget about life for a while.”
Claire smiled, but there was something wistful and disappointed when she did. Ben stared at her gray eyes.
“What is it, Claire?”
She shook her head and tried to look away and then stared into Ben’s eyes, as if it were a dare. “You used to say that. Do you remember? When we were in France. When we were so young?”
“What, that I was hungry?”
Claire’s face clouded, as if she’d gone too far and the world would never really understand her. “No. Oh, forget it. I sometimes think the world is full of a million memories and most people remember five hundred thousand particular memories, and I remember the other five hundred thousand.” She shook her head again. Her long, blond hair swung against her shoulder. “I sometimes think I should try to remember the other five hundred thousand, to be a part of the world.” She smiled—a sad, lost smile—then shrugged. “But I guess we can only remember what sticks, you know?”
Fuck
, Ben thought. He was a mess.
He stared at her lips. Why did they have to be so plump? If she was a hard, cold, strident woman, it just didn’t make sense that she would possess a pair of kissable, red, trembling lips.
“Ben?”
“Yes,” he answered firmly. “Sorry, I was just remembering…the same things. I remember it. I remember how you and I could forget everything,”
when we kissed
, he wanted to add. “You aren’t the only one who remembers that…those…the memories. I mean, well, let’s go get something to eat, eh?”
Claire smiled and Ben recognized it for what it was. The full, real one, not the cool stubborn one she used as a mask to protect herself from the world. “Yes. Yes, please.”
Ben put a few bills on the table for the two beers and Claire’s wine, and they walked out of the bar and into the cool night.
They went to a Japanese noodle shop on Second Avenue and laughed about Claire’s first two weeks of work and how ridiculous it was to be almost forty years old at her first job.
“I keep forgetting I’m not supposed to say I’m almost forty! Thirty-eight!” Claire cried, then laughed. “Boppy ordered me to say just thirty-eight!”
They laughed through most of the next hour and ate spicy food and drank lots of water and Claire asked about the band and how they’d all joined together and about Ben’s job and his apartment. And they kept it…friendly. By eleven-thirty, Claire was starting to fade, so Ben got the check and insisted on paying for it. It wasn’t much, but he felt like—friends or not—he wanted to pay or be the man or something stupid like that. Claire shook her ponytail, not quite understanding him, and then said thanks. They walked out to the sidewalk and plenty of available cabs were cruising by.
“How did we do?” Ben asked.
“Good, I think. What do you say? Can we be friends?” Claire asked. She reached up to settle a strand of hair behind her ear that the wind had pulled, and Ben had the fleeting moment of thinking she was reaching up to touch his hair instead of her own. Wishful fleeting moment of thinking.
“I say yes,” Ben said.
“Good!” Claire said, relieved. “I’m so glad. I hated the idea of…whatever that was yesterday. That was awful. And I could use a friend.”
Ben must have looked frozen, trying to hold himself together as best as he could. He was beginning to despise this whole friend concept.
“I mean,” Claire added quickly, “I don’t want to
use
you. Oh dear, that came out all wrong. I am so awkward around you!” She laughed, then took a deep breath. “I think I’ll get a cab. Thanks, Ben. I’m so glad we got together.”
“Claire.”
She had turned toward the avenue to hail a cab then turned back at the sound of his voice. “Yes?”
“I’m so sorry about yesterday, about everything.”
“Oh.”
She stared at him in the most all-encompassing manner, taking in his shoulders and hips. It was disconcerting in that adolescent way; he felt horribly aware of his physical self, as he rarely did as an adult.
“I’m the one who should apologize.” The street noise seemed to quiet around them. “I’m just…” She looked around, as if she might find assistance. “I’m out of practice…of being with people. I’m a bit rusty.” She smiled, and Ben felt his heart crack a bit.
She was so tender, so fragile. And not in the manipulative, bitchy way he’d totally misconstrued every bit of her coolness the day before. She kept her distance because it had become a form of self-preservation.
“Oh, Claire. I’m—I’m so happy you moved here. I’ll call you this week. We’ll do more friend things. Okay?”
She looked so deeply relieved. It appeared that anything more than friendship was entirely beyond her range of motion just now.
“Oh, Ben. I’d love that.”
He reached out to pull her into a fraternal one-armed hug. “Here’s a cab, Princess—”
She looked stricken at the moniker.
“I meant it kindly,” Ben said, his arm still hanging loosely around one shoulder. “You kind of are a princess. So just think of it as a nickname. Okay?”
He was holding open the taxi door, and Claire was looking up into his eyes.
“Okay. Just don’t make fun of me…or not too much. Okay?”
He kissed her on the crown of her head. Brotherly. “Okay. Now get in the cab. I’ll see you soon.”
“Okay. Bye, Ben.”
Claire fell asleep in a fog of pleasure and anxiety. Ben had been so kind and attentive. She’d only seen a few moments of that stormy gravity pass across his face, and now that Sarah had planted the seed of the idea—that his bouts of temper were really a screen for his attraction—Claire didn’t know if that made it more or less disturbing. She rolled over a couple of times. She could still smell him on her shirt and dipped her nose to her sleeve to inhale more of him. It was faint but it was there. She slept in her long-sleeved T-shirt and dreamt of an imaginary time when the man and not just the scented hint of his memory would be wrapped around her.
She got to work early, feeling ready for anything. There was a package from a messenger service waiting for her on her desk. She was the first to get there, and she looked at it with wary concern before she saw it was from Ben. Claire’s heart sped up, and then she realized it was probably the samples she’d asked him to take a look at while they’d been arguing on Saturday afternoon. Rather than something…romantic.
Claire shook her long hair away from her face and set her large paper coffee cup down on her desk. She’d decided to give up straightening her hair and she felt entirely liberated. It gave her an additional thirty minutes in the morning to lounge around and read the paper. At first, she’d worried she might look a little unkempt, but then decided she didn’t really care. Everyone in the office was coming to see that she was meticulous and precise in any assignment they gave her. If her hair wasn’t equally fussy, then so be it.
“Hey! Great hair!” Roberta called as she sat down across the room. “You look hot.”
“Thanks. I think.” Claire smiled and continued to withdraw samples and signed purchase orders from the packet Ben must have put together yesterday and sent over first thing this morning.
“How did it go with Pinckney?” Roberta asked without looking up from her own work.
“Surprisingly well.” Claire smiled to herself as she tried to sound casual.
Roberta swiveled slowly. “Reeeeally…you and Ms. Pinckney hit it off? I wouldn’t have expected that.”
Claire turned to face her new friend. “She traded her weekend…I got the dentist husband.”
“Ex-husband,” Roberta clarified with a suggestive waggle of her eyebrows.
Claire blushed uncontrollably.
“Oh my god!” Roberta cried. “Did you screw the dentist?”
“Ew, Roberta! Stop that. You’re so crass.”
Roberta burst out laughing. “You’re such an easy target, Claire,” she said as she turned back to her computer screen. “I mean, god forbid I said something about blow jobs or a bit of rough—”