Chapter 14: Eleventh Floor

By nine that night we had moved into the hotel on the river.

The room was under my mother's maiden name, and we brought two bags and my father's rye.

I had photographed every page in the grey box and put every page back.

I had slid the drawer shut and smoothed the comforter flat.

I had not cried in front of the bed.

I had not said a word about the form with my name on it until we were in the elevator.

"A doctor I've never met says he examined me," I said then.

"We'll find him."

"I'll have a lawyer on it Monday. Until then it stays between us, and Valeria keeps thinking I've given up."

"Yes, ma'am," Rafe said.

I looked at him sideways, and the corner of his mouth was doing something.

The room was on the eleventh floor, with a wall of glass over the river.

The lights of the bridge lay on the water.

I did not draw the curtains.

Rafe set the bags down by the closet and stood with his back to the window, watching me take off my coat.

"You've been quiet since Cherry Street," I said.

"So have you."

"I'm not quiet. I'm deciding something."

"What?"

I hung the coat on the hook and crossed the room to him.

"Why you never divorced her," I said.

It was not what he expected.

His face went still, and I made myself wait.

"Because I'd have had to sign it alone," he said at last. "In a lawyer's office, with her chair empty."

"And?"

"I couldn't do it. She'd taken everything else. I wanted the last part to happen with her looking at me."

"That's a bad reason."

"It's the only one I have."

"It's an honest one," I said. "Take your jacket off."

He looked at me.

"Greer."

"You keep waiting for me to tell you what I want. I'm telling you."

He took the jacket off and let it fall on the chair.

I put both hands flat on his chest and walked him back until his shoulders met the cold glass.

He drew a breath through his teeth.

"Hands at your sides," I said.

"Is this in the terms?"

"I'm writing a new one. You don't move until I say."

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