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Ruby follows him out of the bar, through the hotel lobby, and out onto the street, where the sun has just set. As they walk, Dexter explains that he's taking her to a Halloween flotilla parade.
Ruby's spirit lightens just a smidge and she turns to him, holding the strap of her purse across her body. "Oh! I've heard of that--it's gorgeous at night with the pumpkins all lit up. But we don't have one to send out on the water."
Dexter smiles at her, looking amused. "I think it's okay if we just observe. Unless you want to track down a pumpkin, carve it in a hurry, find a candle for it, and enter it in the flotilla parade."
Ruby grabs onto his arm with a laugh; Dexter is onto her, because thatwasher first thought, unreasonable though it is.
"Okay," she says. "Let's just go watch then."
"I thought it would be fun. Maybe we can sit on the grass and just take it all in while we chat."
They walk quietly for a couple of minutes, dodging other pedestrians and crossing the streets at traffic lights. At one point, Dexter reaches for her hand and holds it as they race around the bumper of a car and cut in front of a honking taxi with its headlights slicing through the twilight. Ruby forgets entirely that Banks is shadowing them, but when she remembers and throws a glance over her shoulder, he’s right there, watching her and everyone around her like a hawk.
"This city is an obstacle course," Ruby says breathlessly, following Dexter down into the subway. "We're not taking a taxi?"
"Let's travel like locals," Dexter says, swiping his Metro card three times so that they can both pass through the turnstiles and Banks can pass through after them.
"Youarea local," Ruby says, standing next to him on the platform and feeling the energy of the trains on their tracks in the distance as it courses into the soles of her feet and vibrates through her body.
"Stick with me kid—we'll go places," Dexter says in a deep growl, imitating a forties-style gangster movie. This makes Ruby laugh again, and she realizes that she laughs more with Dexter than she does in the presence of nearly anybody else.
"Alright," Ruby says, looking at him with a smile as he waits for the next train. "I'll stick with you."
When they exit the subway station at 86th Street they’re at the edge of Central Park, and even though it’s still the first week of October, there are kids everywhere dressed in costumes, with parents close behind carrying carved pumpkins. There are also adults in varying degrees of fancy dress: wigs, makeup, crazy clothes, and there’s even a man walking on stilts and wearing a gigantic cowboy hat.
“I feel underdressed,” Ruby says, glancing down at her black leather jacket-sweater-jeans-ankle boots look. “I mean, I’m in head-to-toe black, which can either be seen as standard New York attire, or I guess it could work for Halloween.”
“You look chic,” Dexter decides, looking her up and down. He’s wearing another variation of his jeans, army green overcoat, and boots look, but tonight he’s also got a blue Yankees cap pulled down over his dark blonde hair. “Let’s find a spot by the water.” Again, he takes her by the hand, pulling her through the crowd of people as everyone makes their way to a spot where they can either watch or participate in the flotilla parade.
Ruby turns to Banks, who is standing closer to her than usual, given the sizable crowd. “Is this fine?” she asks him quietly. Normally he prefers to know where they’re going in advance, but she and Dexter have been operating differently, and therefore she never knows where she might end up.
“This is fine, ma’am,” he reassures her, clenching and unclenching his jaw as his eyes graze the crowd around them. He’s so close that Ruby can smell his aftershave, while normally he stays back several paces.
Dexter and Ruby find a patch of grass to sit on, and Banks picks a spot beneath a tree where he can survey the area. They settle in to observe as people take their pumpkins down to the water’s edge. There, the organizers of the event are helping people get their candles lit and their pumpkins set on squares of foam that will float under the weight of the jack-o’-lanterns. Within minutes, the water is filled with little rafts of floating lights, the jagged smiles and elaborate faces of the pumpkins emitting a golden glow that sparkles and dances off the water against the evening sky.
“This is lovely,” Ruby says, sitting close enough to Dexter that she can hear him breathe. The night air is autumnal, but not yet cold. “Having something to watch while we talk is making this easier.”
“Good. I’m glad.” Dexter has his legs stretched out in front of him and he’s leaning back on his hands for support as he turns to look at Ruby. “I know some of these topics are ones you’ve been bracing yourself for, but I also know the book is going to be better for our ability to have an open conversation.”
Ruby nods and folds her legs into a criss-cross style. Her stretchy black jeans were the perfect choice for the evening, and she sits with her elbows on her knees, hands dangling towards the ground so that she can pluck little blades of grass as she listens.
“You know a lot about me already,” Ruby says, not looking at Dexter. “More than most people. We’ve covered so many things in our nightly talks, and you were there when I first read the letter from Jack. I trust you, Dex,” she says, calling him a nickname that she doesn’t normally use, trying it on for size so that she can gauge his reaction.
“I want you to know that you can trust me, and that I do value your feelings and your comfort with our discussions, as well as the integrity of this book—my earlier transgression aside.”
“No, no,” Ruby says, looking up at him as she drops the blades of grass in her hands. She’d had a few hours to herself after their time at Fort Tryon Park, and the memory of Dexter interjecting his personal opinion had played over and over in her mind. “It didn’t bother me that you did, I just wasn’t sure…how that might play out in your writing if you started to feel strongly one way or the other about things like my marriage.”
The unspoken words hang between them for a moment, and Ruby imagines that they’re both thinking them:And that our co-admissions of impartiality won’t impact our work together.
“I understand.” Dexter nods and presses his lips together as he watches a little girl of about eight or nine set her pumpkin on a flotilla and push it out into the water. It’s been carved to look like a fish bowl with bubbles and fish swimming all along the pumpkin’s skin. The girl is dressed like a mermaid. “I’ll try not to do it again, if you think it in any way jeopardizes our work together, but Ruby…”
“I don’t think that it does,” Ruby says quickly, filling the silence that she anticipated might be filled with something else. “I trust your judgment, your professionalism, and where this book is going. I truly do. You are an amazing writer, Dex,” she says, “and I want us to put out the best damn book possible. I mean you—I wantyouto put out the best book. Sorry, I wasn’t trying to make it ours or anything. You know what I mean.” Ruby blushes like a nervous teenage girl.
“It’s ours, Ruby,” he says, staring at her with a long look that’s full of meaning and unspoken words. “When you work this closely with someone on a project that’s this intimate, you don’t get to take full credit for it as an author. Is my name on it? Sure, but the world will know that this isourbook. We’ll do a press tour—if I can convince you to join me—and it will give you a platform to say whatever it is you might want to say.”
Ruby laughs. “You think I’ll still have more to share after we go over every single day of my life from birth to age fifty?”
“Probably. Because the minute the book is published, your life goes on. The days stack up, and you have more feelings, more life experiences, more opinions to share. This book won’t be a capsule of your entire life from start to finish, it will just be the highlights of the first half century.”
