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“Price point?”
“Doesn’t matter.”
The man nodded, his bald pate so clean it caught the light. “Cashmere.”
“I like how you think.” Drew followed him to a display of sweaters.
The man introduced himself, not ironically, as Leon and suggested a pale-gray or burgundy V-neck with a white or pale-blue dress shirt underneath. “Tie?” he asked.
“No tie.”
“Very well.”
Drew bought all of Leon’s suggestions and left the store wearing gray and white. He had just enough time to drop off his purchases at the hotel before sauntering into Hippy Eats and lucking out with an open table by one of the front windows.
Seattle strolled by — middle-aged millionaires surprised by their good fortune, silver-spoon-sucking twenty-somethings taking money for granted, the muttering homeless losing arguments with themselves. It was a town filled with dichotomies, made rich and unaffordable by billionaires desperate to fix the problems they’d inadvertently created with their own success.
Drew glanced at his phone. Twelve twenty-three. He sipped the coffee the waiter set down in front of him. Its warm, acrid aroma mingled with the restaurant’s scents — grilled veggies, lentil stew, and fresh bread.
He frowned and returned to scanning the sidewalk, not really noticing anyone because none of them were Zelda. He knew her face, her figure, and her voice, could pick her out in a crowd.
His girlfriend, Livi, resented his infatuation. She more or less ignored the infrequent lovers he took, but something about Zelda stuck in her craw.
“What the hell bothers you so much about her?” he’d asked a few nights ago.
Livi shrugged, her straight platinum hair swinging across her back. “It’s not her that bugs me. It’s you.”
“Me?”
“You’re always different when you talk about her.”
“Different how?” He knew the answer, but he wanted to know if she did.
Livi had sat up and pulled her silk robe around her thin shoulders. “She’s all you think about after you’ve talked to her. You’re not like that with other lovers, and she’s not even your lover!” She’d thrown up her hands and slipped from his bed, gone to the window and stared out at a rainy day as she lit a cigarette.
“Don’t smoke in the apartment. You know it violates my lease.”
She flipped him off, but stubbed it out anyway and opened the window. The noise of Manhattan rolled in — cars, horns, people — a ceaseless cacophony. The noise irritated him more and more lately.
So did Livi.
She crossed her arms and leaned against the sill, facing him. “Why don’t you just fuck her already?”
“She has a boyfriend.”
“So?”
“So she doesn’t sleep with other people. She’s devoted to just him.”
Livi’s lip curled. “Old-fashioned. She sounds boring. Why do you obsess over someone who’s so fucking dull?”
He fell back into the pillows and put his hands behind his head. “Zel’s not boring or old-fashioned. She’s ... perfect.”
“Ugh. You sound like a middle schooler with a crush. Fuck her mouth. Eat her pussy. Tell her it’s not sex, so she wasn’t cheating, and get over your stupid infatuation with her. It’s been going on for too fucking long and I’m sick of it.”
She’d left to meet up with her Norwegian boyfriend, and Drew had flown to Seattle.
Now he sipped a dirty coffee and scanned the sidewalk.
