Page 77 of The House on Sunset Lake

‘Me, you, the uptight staff.’

‘I noticed that,’ he said, as the bartender gazed determinedly through him.

‘Do you want to stay here?’ she whispered.

‘There’s about a dozen people who give a shit about places like this clamouring to get in at the door.’

‘Then we should do our bit for the community and give them our table,’ she smiled, finishing her drink and picking up her clutch bag.

As they left, Jim approached an anxious-looking man in the atrium.

‘Give the name Connor Gilbert at reception and have a nice night with your girl,’ he said.

When he got out on to the street, Jennifer was waiting for him. He wondered if they had been too rash in leaving. Maybe she just wanted to go home.

‘Fancy grabbing some pizza?’ Not his best line.

‘Pizza?’

‘You know, big, round, tomatoes and cheese on the top. Tend to be the size of dinner plates in London, coffee tables in New York.’

‘You’re on.’

‘How about here?’ he said pointing at a typical by-the-slice pizza parlour.

People were staring as they waited by the counter. If Jennifer noticed, she pretended not to. Jim ordered a full-size cheese pie and handed over twenty dollars. On the street, he opened the box and handed her a slice, gooey strings of hot mozzarella stretching out as he pulled it from the round.

‘You look like Holly Golightly,’ he grinned, thinking of the famous scene in Breakfast at Tiffany’s.

‘She was eating a doughnut,’ Jennifer quipped back.

‘To the sound of “Moon River”,’ said Jim quietly, without even thinking.

‘Is that our soundtrack?’

‘Maybe,’ he replied as a string of cheese burned the back of his hand. ‘Shit,’ he said, shaking it.

‘Are you OK?’ She pulled a tissue out of her bag and handed it to him. ‘Pizza pies. Not the easiest thing to eat in the street. We should have stuck to Krispy Kremes.’

‘What am I going to do with this?’ he laughed, balancing the brown box on his free hand.

‘Why don’t we finish it at mine? We’re just round the corner. You haven’t seen our house yet.’

* * *

The Wyatt-Gilbert residence was a town house on 61st Street. It had a shiny black door, a run of arched windows and a plastic surgeon next door, or so said the discreet gold sign on the brickwork. The whole street reeked of money, as did the fragrant smell of expensive candles when Jennifer let him into the hall.

A shaggy copper-coloured dog ran up to them. Jim wasn’t much of a pet person, but this one was cute. It jumped up at him, excited by the smell of the pizza.

‘Mars Bar, get down.’

‘Your dog is called Mars Bar?’ He laughed.

‘I’ll get some plates,’ she said, already in the kitchen.

Jim peered down the long corridor, mentally comparing it to his own one-bedroom walk-up in the Village. In his line of vision he could see a Picasso and an elevator door, as if to emphasise how far apart their lives had become; or perhaps it was that they had maintained the status quo from when they had first met.

He turned left, to the room nearest him, and went in. A living room, the sort of space realtors called ‘the snug’. More expensive art and, on a sideboard, a row of photographs of the happy couple. A tasteful black-and-white of their wedding day that was so hard to look at he had to move away.