Truly(76)

She didn’t care for Chinatown or the Diamond District, but she pronounced the lighting district marvelously outdated and insisted he buy a lightbulb, just to keep it in business.

He fed her Mexican food and bought her a shot at the three-story tequila bar on Sixth Street.

“Where’s the limes?” she’d asked when her drink came, and he’d told her that this was good tequila, so she had to sip it, like cognac.

Her eyes got big. “I had cognac once,” she said. “It made my tongue numb.”

Then she started telling him a story about an exchange student who’d lived with her family and the trip she’d made to France with Allie at the end of that visit, how they’d stayed with the French family for two weeks and eaten all kinds of mysterious foods, capped with a long meal at a country restaurant that May described course by course until he was salivating.

For the food, for May. For the taste of cognac on her tongue.

They hopped on the subway and took the 6 train to the 7 over to Queens. May talked almost all the way there, telling him rambling stories about her sister and the guy she was about to marry, an old friend of May’s named Matt, as well as someone named Keller who may or may not have been a dog. Mostly he let the words wash over him and watched her face, the pleasure she took in sharing something funny or quirky, the way she leaned closer when she got to a good part, smiling in anticipation of his enjoyment.

They got off on the elevated platform at Court House Square, and May started peppering him with questions. “Are you looking for apartments here? Because I have to be honest, I’m starting to get worried about the apartment thing. I feel like maybe I’m getting in your way, and what happens if you don’t have one yet when Alec gets home? Do you—”

“May,” he interrupted. While she talked, he’d led her around the back side of a platform piling.

“What?”

“Shut up for a minute.”

He put both hands on her shoulders, holding her still so he could kiss her. She smiled as his face lowered toward hers. When their mouths met, her lips parted immediately, and the kiss bypassed slow and gentle and dropped into darker, hungrier territory.

He’d been staring at her mouth on the train, waiting for this moment. She tasted like smoky tequila, her tongue languid and relaxed. Her hands found their way to the hem of his jacket and inside to his back, her light fingertips exploring the bare skin just above his belt.

He didn’t allow himself to move his hands or grind his body against hers, but he kissed her for as long as he wanted to, which was an indecently long time, until her hands began to stroke higher up and then to clutch and pull him in.

He kissed her cheek, her neck. “We can’t here.”

“I guess not,” she said, her voice husky with arousal and disappointment. “But, man, do I ever want to.”

He dropped his forehead onto her shoulder and laughed. It was either that or cry. “You should’ve mentioned that before I brought you all the way to Queens.”

“I didn’t know we were coming here again! You didn’t say.”

“I thought you needed to go to a museum. It’s part of the tourist experience.”

She made a disgusted face. “I’ve already been to the Met, the Frick, MoMA, the sex museum, the Tenement—”

“This one’s different,” he promised.

Twenty minutes later, she was agreeing with him. “There is a hole,” she said. “There is a hole in the wall.” She squatted down next to it. “It goes all the way through to outside.”

“Yep.”

“Why is there a hole in the wall?”

“It’s an installation. PS1 is all about experimental art.”

“This is art? It’s a hole.”

“I know, but …”

“What’s it called?”

He found the placard. “It’s called The Hole at PS1.”

“That’s unhelpful.”

“I know. But the way the light comes through is kind of cool.”

“Like a laser beam.” She held her finger up in front of it, breaking the beam, and then spun around and smiled at him. “Show me something else.”

They strolled through the whole museum, taking in staircase murals, lighted globes with the word EXIT painted on them, an eerie stairwell covered in forest plants and black and white tree branches, and a video that was somehow projected into a mouse-size hole in the floor.

“What did she say?” May hunkered down by the hole and peered at the image of a nude woman swimming in what appeared to be lava.

“ ‘I am a worm and you are a flower.’ ”

“This is the weirdest place I have ever been.”