Page 51 of Gave Proof Through the Night

“Up,” I say.

“Up,” he repeats, like the word personally offends him. “You’re serious?”

“You’re a professional athlete. Athlete up.”

He goes first, because apparently chivalry survives even fire escapes, muttering something in Spanish about what I think translates to this being the craziest thing he’s ever done, and I choose to interpret that as a compliment. I follow, one flag sock catching on a rusted rung and tearing clean through at the ankle, which I decide is a small, patriotic sacrifice for a good view.

Five flights later we’re standing on a flat gravel roof with a view straight down the Mall, monuments lit gold from the setting sun, the crowd below a shifting sea of red and white and blue, small enough now to look almost peaceful, like a flag someone forgot to fold up.

He unties his jersey from around my waist and lays it flat on the gravel. We sit shoulder to shoulder, hip to hip, waiting for the sky to do something for a long, peaceful silence, bellies full of corn dogs and cotton candy.

“It seems unfair,” he says, after a minute. “You know my name and I don’t know yours.”

“I rather like that dynamic.”

I stand, stretch, walk a few steps toward the ledge to look at the crowd, mostly because sitting that close to him for one more second was going to require me to say something regrettable. I don’t get far. His hand closes around my wrist, gentle, sure, exactly the way it did the very first time, and he spins me so my back meets his chest, my whole body suddenly and thoroughly in his gravitational field.

“Tell me your name,” he says, low into the shell of my ear, and there is nothing gentlemanly about that voice.

“Where’s the mystery in that?” I deflect, hiding the absolute riot happening in my whole body.

His breath is warm and sweet against my neck. “I can’t very well keep calling you Sticky Fingers.”

I laugh, loud, undignified, the kind of laugh that would get me kicked out of fancy restaurants. “Is that what you’ve been calling me? In those lurid dreams of yours?”

He doesn’t deny it.

He doesn’t deny it. My mind takes that fact and runs several unauthorized laps with it. Does he lie there at night thinking about me the way I lie there thinking about him, replaying all our encounters like it’s the highlight reel of this whole year?

“Not Dangerous?” I ask, because I genuinely like that nickname for me.

“That too.”

“So you have been thinking about me.”

He turns us so we’re facing each other and just smiles. Doesn’t confirm it, doesn’t deny it, just lets the smile do the talking, and honestly, that’s more confirmation than words would’ve been.

“Okay then,” he says. “What do you suggest I call you?”

Here’s the thing about my name. It’s the one honest thing I’ve got left to give him in a summer built almost entirely out of half-truths and strategic omissions. He doesn’t know what I do. He doesn’t know about the Friendship Jewel, or the provenance letters, or the fact that this whole gorgeous, corn-dog-scented day started as reconnaissance for a heist. But my name. My name I can hand over free and clear. So I do.

“America,” I say.

He scoffs. Actually scoffs, a full-body, disbelieving sound. “America.”

I shrug, like it’s just another odd fact about myself, filed somewhere between allergic to bees and cannot parallel park to save my life. “Born on the Fourth of July. Remember?”

He gives me a deadpan stare. “Okay. I get it. I’ll play along.”

“What? That’s my name.”

“Riiiight.”

“It is.”

“Okay.”

“Are you calling me a liar?”