Page 5

5

ADAM

W hen we’re settled in the limousine, I glance sideways at Anna. “Where are you from originally? Do you live in New York?” That accent is …

She shakes her head. “I grew up in Russia. Honestly, I’m not sure I belong anywhere. I’m on the road a lot.” She gives a small, forced laugh. “But I keep the apartment here, so I have somewhere to come back to. My visa allows me to come and go, and I’ll apply for a green card once I’m not traveling so much.”

“That sounds …” I want to say lonely, but what do I know? Her life could be crammed with good people, and she might have lots of friends in New York and on the tennis circuit. However, if that was the case, why did she invite me to this?

As if she can read my mind, she says, “Yeah, I don’t think tennis is conducive to steady relationships.”

I chew my lip. I know nothing about steady relationships. Although at one time I would have called myself a relationship guy, my trust was torched. So, what am I now? I don’t know how men can do one-night stands, and I don’t understand women at all. I’m like an odd creature that lives under a rock and comes out blinking into the sunlight once a year. There’s no way I would ever be on the radar of a woman like Anna Talanova, gorgeous as she is. The thought almost makes me laugh out loud. “Are you in town for anything in particular this time?”

She turns to me with a small smile. “A break before Christmas. I’ve been competing on the international tennis circuit for seven years. I’ve just come back from the Billie Jean Cup. I’m gathering that you’re not a tennis fan?”

A cup, huh? That sounds impressive. “Sorry, I’m so out of touch. Did anyone pass on to you that …”

“You’re a very boring computer guy?”

I chuckle through my wince, and Anna laughs. “Don’t worry. I understand the obsession with the thing you’re doing. I’m fairly nerdy about tennis. The problem with my line of work is, when you spend eight hours on court every day practicing, and the rest of the time traveling, some people take exception to that.”

By some people does she mean men?

“Anyway,” she adds, “the Billie Jean Cup is the main international team competition in women’s tennis.”

My eyes go round. God, half the world must be watching her play. “It’s finished? Crap. I’m sorry, I didn’t know that. That’s incredible. Holy shit, Anna, playing in something like that. Congratulations!”

She makes a face at me. “I sort of messed it up. We lost spectacularly badly.”

Oh! Damn . I rub my hands together. “Well, I think I’d take a gold medal in messing things up myself.”

She laughs. “Really? Why’s that?”

“I don’t want to get into how bad things are with my company right now.”

She raises her eyebrows. “I looked your business up. It looks amazing. Super complicated.”

The idea that she looked at my nerdy electronics website makes my heart ache. She turns in her seat. “Tell me about what you do.”

Oh dear. “There’s these things called printed circuit boards that connect together all the components used in electronic devices.” I wave my hand around the car, then fish the PCB out that I dropped into my pocket earlier as I was leaving the office and hand it to her. She turns it over in her palm. “I design these and then write the code that makes them do something interesting. We sell these alongside components for people who want to learn, experiment, or prototype. It’s a nice community, and we do online tutorials, too. It’s as nerdy as all get-out.”

She laughs. “Wow, Adam. You must be very smart.”

“Not so smart in business, I think.” Why am I telling her this? “But my marketing manager, Susie, bends over backward to make what we do sound exciting.”

She blows out a long breath. “I have a good marketing team, too. Sometimes the expectations are a bit much, aren’t they? The technicalities of tennis … how hard I have to work. I’m expected to do well, so they try and knock me down a little. My team is good at handling all that for me.”

They knock her down? Jesus. “How on earth do you cope?”

“I keep my head down and ignore it. I’m lucky enough to have had success in the past and sponsorship so I can pay for people to take some of the heat. At one time, my parents did a lot for me. Sometimes I have to do these things …” She waves her hand around the car. “… but mostly I just practice and play.”

I stare out of the window. “Yeah. Gloss over the shit bits, right?”

Her eyes widen. “I didn’t mean to imply that going out with you isn’t enjoyable, I …”

I shake my head. “I didn’t take it that way at all. There are parts of my job I dislike, too.”

She laughs. “Yes! Losing. Doing deals, like sponsorship. I hate that. I have an agent, so that makes it less …” She waggles her hand back and forward. “… Like I’m selling my soul.”

I laugh. “What’s this event tonight?”

“A sports personality award.”

“Are you up for it?”

She shakes her head. “I haven’t even been shortlisted. But one of the brands that sponsor me sponsors this event, so …”

“Anything I need to be aware of? People you want to stab, dicks we’re avoiding, that kind of thing? ”

She bursts out laughing. “Interesting question. It would be sensible to chat about it.”

And we’re off as she fills me in on all the people who will be at the awards and the various rivalries going on between them. It’s riveting.

In no time at all, the limousine pulls up at the American Museum of Natural History, cameras flashing outside the car’s tinted windows. A man in a tuxedo opens Anna’s door, and she steps out onto a red carpet. Everything slows like molasses, my breath a strange rasp in my head as my shoe lands on a strangely synthetic sea of red, and I pull myself upright, blinking like a mole as lights flicker and pulse and people shout from all sides.

And then we have to stand and pose. People shout questions at Anna about who’s accompanying her tonight—I realize with a start they mean me—and about where someone named Arty Maroz is, but she only smiles back. When we get inside, the main hall is like a coral sea, multicolored lights panning across the ceiling with a huge blue whale suspended over the space, beautiful yellow flowers on every table. Everything shimmers: the people, the lights, the dresses.

And the evening morphs into a whirlwind of faces and names. At some point, Anna’s fingers curl around my arm and I keep her tucked up under my elbow, my eyes fixed on her as she transforms into the confident chatty person I saw in the post-match interviews. Thank God I don’t have to be on like this in my work, it would be exhausting, and I’m warm and light inside as I stand and watch her talk and smile and nod. No one is interested in me. I’m just the arm candy. I chuckle to myself: I wonder whether Janus had these exact same thoughts when he did this. If only my business could follow in his footsteps so easily.

And later, when the car pulls up to take us home, a man and a woman I don’t recognize climb into the back seats with us.

“Adam, this is June and Damian. They work on my social media and PR.”

June nods at me and smacks gum. Damian’s gaze tracks down my body and smirks. Okay . I nod at them as though having two marketing people in a limousine with me at midnight happens every night of the week. As soon as we’re settled, they start scrolling through their phones and talking to Anna about the coverage that’s appearing, comments about her hair, her dress, my suit, who I am. It sounds terrifying. As we drop them both off in Harlem, June blows Anna a kiss and promises a full report tomorrow. When the door shuts, Anna leans back on her headrest and closes her eyes. I study her pale face. The last thing she needs is to feel she has to talk to me, too. I turn my head and examine my reflection in the car window as the lights of the store windows zip past.

“Thank you for tonight. You’ve been very easy and supportive and that’s made everything so simple for me,” she says quietly, and when I twist my head toward her, her eyes are still closed.

I have? I provided my support to another lady once. Unease spreads across my shoulders.

“My pleasure. It was good to meet you. I was happy to help out.”

“Janus is a godsend.” A smile curls over her lips. “He’s completely smitten with his fiancée. God, I followed all the comments about that relationship so closely. When he did that thing with the Wall Street Journal …” She waves her hand. “That was so romantic.”

The hairs on the back of my neck prickle. Was she ever in a relationship with Janus ? Perhaps that’s why he was insistent about this favor, and it was nothing to do with encouraging me to get out more.

“Did you and Janus ever …”

But she shakes her head before I finish. “No. He’s an amazing guy but energetic and impatient and completely subsumed in his company. Don’t get me wrong, I really recognize the drive and admire him for it, but I don’t think either of us would have thought we were right for each other.” She laughs. “And there’s the small matter that I travel for ten months of the year.” She stares out of the window. “All the girls adored him, though.”

“The girls?”

She turns her head on the back of the seat with a quirky grin. “The women he accompanied to events.”

“I still can’t believe this happens.”

“Word gets around about the jackasses. It’s actually kind of essential. ”

Yeah, that makes sense. A frown drifts across her face, so I shift the conversation back to Janus. “Women loved him at college, too … once he lost the weight.”

“Lost the weight?”

“Yeah, he was in bad shape when he started at NYU. Our friend Fabian forced him through a daily gym routine and a strict diet. The soundtrack of college for me was him grumbling about eating rabbit food.”

“Wow. I can’t imagine him like that, big, I mean.”

I smile at her. “I think we’ve all changed a bit since college.”

She nods and closes her eyes again as she says, “What were you like in college?”

An idiot? Sucked in by a woman and unable to see the reality?

“Quiet.”

“The silent brooding type, huh?” Her eyes pop open, twinkling at me, and I laugh.

Her eyes drift shut again as we weave our way through the cross streets and past gleaming store windows. After twenty minutes or so, the car pulls up outside my apartment building. Thank God she can’t see the tiny space I inhabit here, one I can only afford because I took it when nobody wanted to live in the Meatpacking District. The place was full of drug addicts, and pedophiles used to prey on young girls in the park across the road. I think the guy I rent it from has sort of forgotten I’m here. But I’m also a reliable tenant: I sort stuff out for him, so he’s let me keep living here, despite the way the area has gentrified over the last ten years.

Her eyes blink open. She must have dozed off a while ago.

“God, I’m sorry. Did I fall asleep? Is this your building?”

I nod. “It was great to meet you, Anna.”

She reaches out her hand and squeezes mine. “Thank you.”

I step out of the car and stand on the sidewalk. As the driver pulls away, she gives me a little wave.

And I’m not sure why I feel so unbearably sad, like I missed something important in that whole conversation.