Truly(12)

She needed to eat.

“How far can you walk in those?” Ben aimed a look of pure contempt at her feet.

May looked down to see what her toes had done to piss him off, but all she saw were her flats. Not the best shoes for walking in, but they could be a lot worse.

“I don’t know. How far is it?”

“Ten minutes, maybe? We could take the subway. It wouldn’t be faster, but you could sit.”

“I can walk for ten minutes.”

They stepped off the curb at a crosswalk, and May watched her feet, hyper-vigilant lest she give any sign of how hard the whiskey had hit her. It seemed important to be sober and smart—but she’d already failed at that. She could at least appear to have her shit together.

Then she remembered to look around for landmarks. If anything awful happened—if Ben suddenly decamped, say, or violent criminals attacked and kidnapped him, leaving her behind in the streets—she should have some idea where she was located.

At the next corner, the signs said WASHINGTON PLACE and SIXTH. They were near Washington Square Park. She’d been here before on one of her weekday outings while Dan was in Cortland for training camp.

“Where are we going?”

“There’s a place by NYU with good tacos. You’re not a vegetarian, are you?”

“No.”

“Good.”

He pulled her out into traffic against the light, ignoring the onrushing lights of a car barreling toward them.

“I don’t think—”

“It’s fine. Keep moving.”

She did, but she didn’t like it. Crosswalks had signals for a reason.

In the park, they moved rapidly toward the fountain in its middle, then past it and through the massive marble arch on the far side. Ben walked at a brisk pace, and May had to concentrate to keep up. A novel experience at her height.

After a few minutes of elegant brick NYU administrative buildings came a neighborhood of student-centered businesses that grew seedier with every block they walked. May noted three tattoo parlors on one, along with a pile of garbage bags waiting for pickup, and a discarded twin mattress. A delivery truck was parked halfway onto the curb, hazard lights blinking. She was so preoccupied with being annoyed at its intrusion, she nearly walked into an open set of cellar doors.

“Watch it.” Ben yanked her away.

“Sorry.”

Chastened, she wondered if she was the only one who felt assaulted by New York as she moved through it. Smells. Sounds. Disorder. The streets were so messy and chaotic, the result of all these people crammed so close together.

Manitowoc was far from glamorous, but the sidewalks were clean, and there was none of this patchwork asphalt or garbage bags awaiting pickup in the street.

For all its lack of sophistication, Manitowoc was so much more civilized. She missed it, the pain a sudden chill in her blood.

I made a mistake, moving here to be with Dan. The relationship was over before I even got here, and somehow I still managed to convince myself the move would be the glorious beginning of the rest of my life. It took the world’s worst drunk marriage proposal to clue me in. What does that say about my judgment?

She needed some time and space to figure it out. New experiences always had something to teach, even when they sucked. Someday soon, she’d be ensconced back in her tiny ranch house in Wisconsin, and she would wrap herself in a fleecy blanket, stare at the fire she’d laid in the tiled fireplace, and determine what the Lessons of New York were.

Tonight, all she had to do was endure some more of them.

Distracted, she stumbled over a crack in the pavement. Ben’s arm came over to steady her. “Easy there, champ.”

“Sorry.”

“You apologize for tripping?”

“Maybe? I’m not having my best day ever.”

They passed yet another tattoo parlor, and Ben pulled her hand off his elbow and moved around to her other side, pushing her to the curb and away from a man engaged in a screaming argument with a woman hanging from an upstairs window.

The shouting man turned as they passed, but Ben fixed him a withering look, and he turned back around.

It reminded her of what he’d said at the bar. 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.

So what did that mean, in relation to Ben?

Not that she’d ask him. Plus, it wasn’t as though he’d been nice to her. Nice wasn’t in his repertoire.

He pulled her across the street on a diagonal, toward a restaurant with a ragged green awning that said TACOS.

The restaurant smelled like hot meat, the atmosphere steamy and spicy and too close after their walk. Ben led her to a wobbly table in the back corner.

“How many do you want?”