“Thought you’d save him the time, huh?”
“That’s right.”
Ben didn’t respond, but he emanated unspoken opinion.
“What?” she asked.
“Nothing.”
“No, you have to say,” she insisted.
“You make friends with everybody you sit next to on the train?”
“No. Sometimes. This guy was really nice. He gave me his card.”
“How old was he?”
“I don’t know. Your age?”
“How old do you think I am?”
She welcomed the opportunity to study his face. Hard to tell, under all that stubble and grouchiness. She aimed high, adding a decade to test his reaction. “Forty-five?”
He cut her a killing look.
“You have a little gray in your hair,” she pointed out.
“Not much.”
“And crow’s feet around your eyes.”
The depression between his eyebrows deepened into a deep black V-shape.
May smiled. He was easy to rile. “Well, how old are you?”
“None of your business.”
He growled it. Her sister would get a kick out of this guy. He was so feral. Allie loved dogs with behavioral issues. “What are you so testy about? Afraid you’re losing your looks?”
“I’m not testy,” Ben said. Testily.
“All right.”
“It’s just that I didn’t have you figured for one of those women.”
“What’s that mean?”
“The type who plays games.”
“Okay, fine. I don’t really think you’re forty-five.”
“No, that’s not what I meant. I meant, I didn’t figure you for the kind of woman who pretends not to get it when a guy tries to pick her up.”
“So you’re saying … what? You’re trying to pick me up?”
“No, not me, genius, the cop.”
For a second, she thought Ben meant that he was trying to pick up the cop, which confused her further, because he hadn’t even been there. But then she figured it out. “He wasn’t.”
“He tell you to call him?”
“If I ever needed anything.”
“And I bet he wrote down his personal cell number on the back of the card.”
He had, but that didn’t mean … “He knew I had a boyfriend. He was just being nice.”
“You call him sometime,” Ben said. “I bet you ten bucks he asks you out.”
“Nah. I would notice if someone was trying to ask me out.”
“Clearly you wouldn’t, because you didn’t. One of NYPD’s finest put the moves on you, and you thought he was being nice.”
“He was.”
“Men are nice to old ladies for no reason. You’ve got blond hair and nine-mile-long legs. If a strange man is nice to you, he wants to get in your pants. If a cop gives you his cell number, he’s hoping you’ll use it.”
“Yeah, but—”
“And,” he interrupted, vehement now, “if a guy grabs you by the arm and starts dragging you into an alley, you’re supposed to kick and scream, not go with him and give him your fucking purse.”
“I thought he was security.”
“Next time? Check.”
May took a breath. Her face felt hot, the skin beneath her bra strap damp and itchy.
It was exciting, talking to Ben. Bickering with him. She never bickered.
“So what’d you do?” he asked.
“Hmm?”
“After you got your purse stolen.”
“I just started walking,” she said. “And now I’m here.”
Ben cupped his chin in his hand, scraping his fingers over his stubble. “Six weeks, you said you’ve been in New York?”
“Mmm-hmm. Well, in New Jersey, mostly.”
“You know anybody in the city besides Thor? Or over in Jersey?”
May shook her head. In the year Dan had been playing for the Jets, she’d established casual friendships with a few of the other players’ wives and girlfriends, but no one she’d want to call right now.
“And your family’s all back in Wisconsin.”
“Yeah. On the way to Michigan.”
“So you’ve got nobody to take you in.”
“Right. Except Dan.”
“Who you dumped with a note.”
“Yeah. Although he probably hasn’t read it yet.”
Ben knocked back the rest of his whiskey in two quick swallows and addressed his next comment to the ceiling. “You’re having a really shitty couple days.”
May nodded.
“You have anything else on your agenda? Now that you’ve committed assault, dropped your asshole boyfriend, and gotten mugged?”
“Not really.”
Surely there was a way to sort things out and still fly home, even on a holiday weekend, but she couldn’t imagine it would be easy. Bare minimum, she needed access to the Internet, because she didn’t know anybody’s phone number except her parents’, her sister’s, Matt’s, and Dan’s—and none of those were any use to her now. Her family and Matt would be headed up north to the cabin on the lake.