I nod, reaching for both of our glasses and pressing hers into her hand. "Bottoms up," I say. "To artists who cancel, and the artists who seize the opportunities they leave behind."
She raises her glass. "To friends who have each other's backs."
The computer screen in front of me fades in and out of view, my eyes struggling to focus. I lean back in my office chair and close them. The emails and memos can wait. They'll have to, because I don't have any more in me tonight. Running on empty.
It's past midnight and I should be in bed.
Had been, in fact, until the cold premonition that always signaled a bad night drove me out of it again. The best thing to do on such nights is to avoid my bed until I finally fall into it so exhausted I sleep like the dead. It keeps me from dreaming of them.
I run a hand through my hair. Where is she?
Cecilia hadn't mentioned where she'd be tonight and Bonnie hadn't known either. I'd called Steven, but he hadn't driven her anywhere. No notes left behind on the kitchen counter either.
Her schedule is usually predictable. Reliable. She's here when I get back home, chatting with Bonnie in low, cheerful tones in the kitchen or, in the last week, sitting on the couch in the living room with a book in hand. She always shuts her bedroom door by ten p. m.
And on her way up the stairs to go to bed, she always pauses at my half-open office door. "Goodnight," she says.
It had annoyed me at first, but she'd kept at it, professional and kind, like clockwork. I always say it back. "Goodnight." And then I listen to her soft steps heading upstairs, the sound of another person living in my apartment. Making it feel like a home.
But not tonight.
I push away from the desk and head into the kitchen. Maybe what I need is a cup of coffee. The clock on the microwave assaults me with a time that's far too late, showing twenty past one.
We have never discussed this. To keep or not to keep one another informed. But surely she should recognize that herself? Cecilia Myers, who is the paragon of organizational virtue and forethought. Who had run my life so smoothly I didn't know to miss her as my assistant until she left.
She might be in trouble.
Possible scenarios flash through my mind, of Cecilia lost in the city, her phone dead, her wallet a beacon to thieves. Cecilia in another man's apartment, in his arms, giving him all of her laughs. And then, my brain unable to stop, the image of her in a car wreck, her body bent and broken.
I wrest my mind away from that image.
Reach for my phone and find her number.
I drum my fingers along my kitchen counter as the signals go forth. One, two, three…
She answers on the fourth, but I don't hear her voice. I hear the pulsing of heady music. "Cecilia?"
"Victor?"
"Wait a minute!" The beat of tropical house blasts and her words are muffled by laughter and the shuffle of bodies.
She's at a nightclub. "Where are you?"
"Where are you, Cecilia?"
"I'm at Ivory!"
I grit my teeth. "Are you coming home tonight?"
"Yes, of course I am. I'm just going-" The rest of her words are unintelligible, lost in the beat and laughter.
"How are you getting home?"
"Taxi. I can't hear you very well." Her voice is giggly. Like she'd been after Conway's dinner, only worse.
"I'll come pick you up."
"I'll come and pick you up!"
Her voice turns into a squeak. "Now?"
"No. When you're ready to leave."
There's the sound of shuffling again, and then a door shuts. I hear a woman yelling about someone cutting in line. "Now I can hear you better," Cecilia says, her voice dropping. "Hi, Victor."
"Hello. Text me twenty minutes before you want to leave and I'll pick you up, okay?"
"Okay," she breathes. "That's very kind of you."
"I don't want you out in the city alone at night."
"I'm with friends."
"Still. Text me."
"Okay. I'll send you-" The call clicks off, and she's gone on the other end, lost in a bathroom stall at a club downtown.
I shouldn't have offered. Shouldn't have insisted. But here I am, pulling on my jacket and grabbing my car keys. I pass the hideous glass dick vase on my hallway table. She put it back after I threw it in the trash.
It sets my nerves on end. Teasing me. She's teasing me.
The elevator takes me down to the garage and the black Range Rover I use too rarely. Steven is more convenient day to day, skilled at parking and discreet.
The engine purrs to life under my hands.
She might not have texted yet, but I'm not going to sit at home and wait. Better to be in the city, to be moving. The streets of New York are filled with taxis and mopeds, delivering late-night food to drunkards and partygoers.
I weave through traffic with one hand on the wheel. Refuse to think about what I'm doing, the boundaries I'm crossing. Cecilia and I are not friends. Cecilia and I cannot become friends.
I pull up outside of the innocuous black facade of the club my GPS tells me is Ivory. The music is pulsing from inside, faint but noticeable, even through my car.
A cab driver gives me a dark look for occupying a spot, and I stare right back at him. He's the one who caves first.
It takes another ten minutes before my phone vibrates in my pocket.
Myers: I'm ready now. Thank you!
I wait a few minutes. Not nearly enough to make it plausible that I left when she texted, but I'm not willing to leave her waiting in the club.