Page 22 of The New Couple in 5B

I’m embarrassed but I tell him the truth. “It’s a charm my grandmother sent to protect me from—”

His hazel eyes are full of love, curiosity. I feel my cheeks burn. “From?”

“From evil.”

I practically choke on the word because it’s silly, isn’t it? There’s no such thing as spiritual evil. No pouch of herbs or stones can protect us from the real dangers of this world.

Chad glances back and forth between me and the pouch, then he shrugs his broad shoulders. “Well, we can use all the help we can get.”

I don’t tell him that it’s useless now that he’s touched it, moved it from its place over the door. It came in the mail, and I handled it very carefully as my grandmother’s note instructed. I never opened it, because you’re not supposed to. It’s my grandmother’s charm, her energy and magic, not to be meddled with. I don’t say any of that because that’s just more silliness.

“True,” I say. “Here, I’ll put it in my bag.”

He hands it over and I drop it in my tote next to my laptop. It jingles softly. I should just throw it in the trash.

“It holds on, doesn’t it?” he says.

I nod. He puts a cool hand to the back of my neck. Chad was raised Catholic, but he’s lapsed, both his parents gone in a car wreck while he was finishing high school. He still crosses himself when something bad happens to someone, runs into churches we pass to light candles for his parents. We can try to escape what we come from, but it stays with us in all sorts of ways.

“Let it all go, Rosie,” he says, bright, hopeful. “It’s a new day for us. Can’t you feel it?”

He’s been a bit down about the commercial, but he has a big audition tomorrow, this one for the lead in a television series.

I’m about to agree but he moves in fast and sweeps me off my feet. I am laughing and shrieking as he carries me out the door.

He does it again at the threshold of the new place, earning whoops of delight from Ella, Charles and Abi, who have all gathered to welcome us.

“You were never romantic like that,” Ella teases Charles, watching from our shared foyer on the fifth floor.

“I was!” Charles says, his voice gravelly, his German accent light from so many years in the States. “Iam, my love.”

He’s elegant in a cashmere sweater and pressed wool pants, white hair slicked back dramatically. Tall, powerful.

“Let’s leave these two to get settled,” he says. “And I’llshowyou how romantic I can be.”

I hear her giggling like a much younger woman as the door closes behind them. Abi, who has ushered us up, says his goodbyes, as well, and disappears into the elevator.

“We’re home,” Chad says when we’re alone, putting me down on the shining wood floor of the small foyer.

The natural sunlight is bright and streaming in through the big windows. The hunks have not yet arrived, though they left before we did, so everything is white and new—a blank canvas, an empty page—full of endless possibilities.

I allow myself a rush of joy.

The rest of the day passes in a blur—the hunks arriving and hauling our stuff up in the service elevator, in through the back door, through the kitchen.

Ella and Charles come by around noon with a picnic basket of sandwiches and wave off our offer for them to stay, saying we need the day to ourselves to settle in but come by for a quick welcome cocktail tonight.

“Come as you are!” Ella is stylish in her black jumpsuit and pointy flats. “Do not dress up.”

When the movers place the couch, it’s perfect for the room. It had been way too big for our place, dominating the space and making it impossible for us to have end tables or shelves.

It’s aspirational, Chad used to say.It’s for the apartment we wish we had.

Well, here we are.

The hunks assemble the bed, flop the mattress on top, lug the dresser in, careful not to nick the newly painted walls or chip those original wood floors.

The only thing we’ve kept of Ivan’s is the dining room table he said had been there from the previous owners. It was, according to Ivan, custom built for the narrow space, which is little more than a passage from the kitchen to the living room but has big windows and an elegant metal chandelier.