Page 117 of Sing For Me

We’re sitting in my car on Cortland Street in Manhattan, outside a nondescript, beige building, smaller than the towers flanking it by half. Outside, a light snow falls, dusting the heads and shoulders of the steady stream of pedestrians heading into their office jobs.

“Reese, research is kind of my job. This is the building.”

“Right. Sorry.” Nerves tickle my stomach, right along the edges of the nausea pressing in at what I’m about to do.

“I still can’t believe he ended up working here, after all his big talk about ‘hating the man’ and ‘never conforming.’”

“Even a non-conformer has to pay the rent in Brooklyn,” Nora quips.

I laugh, shaking my head. But it doesn’t last. Neither has the thermos of coffee I prepared when we left Quince Valley at four a.m. this morning.

I watch as Nora fiddles with the settings on her camera. “Hey, Nor?”

“Yeah?” Nora looks up at me.

“Thank you for dropping everything to come with me.”

Nora smiles. “You’d do the same thing for me.”

“Yes,” I say without hesitation. “But I know you don’t love confrontation. If Michelle were in town I would have insisted she do this but…I also wouldn’t trust her not to jump out of the car and mortally wound Simon.”

“You don’t think I’d do that?”

“Nah. Not your style. You’d put him at ease by gently redirecting him while he mansplained librarianship to you. Then you’d get him talking about something completely inflammatory and somehow convince him that it would make sense to film the whole thing.”

Nora, to my surprise, lets out a big laugh. “I can’t believe you can read me so easily.”

I smile, squeezing her hand.

Then my stomach seizes, because right then, Simon walks out of the double glass doors of his building.

“Oh God, there he is,” I say, swallowing hard.

He’s wearing a coat that matches the dull beige of the building behind him, and a dark wool cap pulled over his forehead. But it’s hard to notice anything except the wide white bandage covering his nose, and dark circles under both eyes.

Dammit, Eli, why’d you have to be such a sure shot?

“Go.” Nora lifts up her camera. “I’ve got you.”

“Right,” I say, heart pounding. My hands shake as I pull my door open and hop out onto the thin layer of mid-November snow.

It’s freezing outside the warm bubble of my car, but I won’t be here long.

He’s walking fast, and I have to jog several feet to catch up to him.

“Simon!” I call.

Simon stops, turning at the sound of my voice. His eyes widen slightly, and he looks around, clearly worried. “Where is he?!”

I stop a few feet away from him, folding my arms, then thinking better of it and setting my shoulders back, my arms straight at my side.

“Eli’s not here,” I say. “Go ahead, look around.”

I give Simon a minute to examine the people walking by, the cars along the street. Nora’s visible in the passenger seat of my car, but she’s on the phone, talking animatedly to no one.

We spent the five-hour drive rehearsing all the ways this encounter could go. In all of them, she’s in the background, ready, for whatever happens next.

I angle myself so he’s forced to turn away from Nora, and behind him, she lowers her phone and pulls up her video camera instead, the lens pointing right at us. I don’t plan on using the footage; it’s for security only.

---