The Zero Hour

“Henry J. Hardenbergh,” he said. “One of the great architects of the time. And… I seem to recall something about how Clark bought the adjoining land and had a couple dozen row houses built on it. Then he put this immense power plant in the basement of the Dakota to supply electricity not just for the Dakota, but for all the neighboring row houses. That’s some serious urban planning.”

“Isn’t this where John Lennon was killed?”

“That’s right… Sarah, no offense, but I have a feeling you’re not terribly interested in an architectural tour right now. Something wrong?”

“No, I’m fine.”

“Is it Jared?”

“Oh, no, Jared’s doing fine.”

“That was your ex who called, wasn’t it?”

“Yeah. I don’t know how the hell he tracked me down, but he’s a resourceful guy. And it’s not like I’m in the Federal Witness Protection Program or anything. I just… mostly, I guess I wish he’d leave us alone.”

“He isn’t the jealous type, is he?”

“Oh, he is. He’s also the violent type.”

Brian stepped to the curb to hail a cab. “Great,” he said. “I could barely handle prepubescent thugs. I doubt I could stand up to a jealous cop.”

***

There was a break after the A Minor Quartet. Brian whispered, “Boy, that slow movement isn’t easy to listen to.”

“What do you mean?”

“I think it’s the most difficult passage in all Beethoven. Someone once compared this piece to a man who’s trying to see how slowly he can ride a bicycle without falling.”

Sarah laughed gently. The longer she watched him, particularly when he was animated by enthusiasm for whatever he was talking about, the more appealing she found him. The difference between him and Peter was so enormous it wasn’t even funny. How could the same woman be attracted to such entirely different men? In the park the other day, she had pitied him, felt a sort of contempt for him, bumbling and ineffectual as he was. Yet he had been wonderful, attentive, caring, when he took them to the emergency room.

After the Grosse Fuge, the concert ended with the C-sharp minor Quartet, which Sarah considered one of the greatest pieces of music ever written. “Amazing, isn’t it?” Brian said, taking her hand. “The adagio is one of the saddest things I’ve ever heard.”

Sarah squeezed his hand and nodded.

They took a cab to his apartment, just off Sutton Place. She had promised herself she wouldn’t end up at his place or in a hotel room, but she felt comfortable with him, and Brea, the babysitter from Marymount Manhattan College, had said she didn’t mind if it was a late night.

His apartment was small but elegantly furnished, with a lot of books, mostly on architecture, and beautiful, comfortable furniture. She went into his kitchen and made a phone call to check on the babysitter, then returned and sank into a wonderfully overstuffed couch while he got some brandy.

“I like it,” she said, indicating the whole apartment.

“Oh, it’s not mine,” he said. “I think I mentioned this colleague of mine from Edmonton-he and his wife are here on sabbatical, but they’re spending the summer in residence at Taliesen, the Frank Lloyd Wright house in Wisconsin. They’re only too happy to have me take over the rent for a few weeks.”

“Well, you’ve seen the way I furnished my apartment,” Sarah said. “Milk crates and moving boxes, right? It must be nice to be living in a place so finished.”

He poured out two snifters of brandy and handed one to her. “Look, Sarah, we hardly know each other, so this may be way too aggressive, but let me just say this.” He sat down on the couch beside her, at what seemed the perfect remove, neither menacingly close nor exaggeratedly far away. “I pick up vibes that you don’t want to talk about whatever it is you do, whether you really work for the FBI or not. If that’s the way you want it, that’s fine. But I don’t want you to think I’m not interested, okay?”

Sarah couldn’t help smiling appreciatively. “Okay.”

“So let’s talk about the weather or something.”

“Well,” she said, “do you mind if I ask you something personal?”

“Me? I’m an open book.”

“Your limp. You’ve had it for a while, right? Did you get hit by a car or something?”

“A couple of weeks after my wife’s death, I got really high and drove into a telephone pole. Next thing I knew, I was in the hospital, and a couple of policemen came to visit me, and they told me that they hadn’t found any skidmarks at the accident scene.”

“Meaning what?”

“I didn’t try to stop. I just drove into the telephone pole at sixty miles an hour.”

“Trying to kill yourself.”

“I don’t remember it, but yeah, that’s what they were saying.”

“You loved her.”

“Yes, I did. She was a wonderful, wonderful person.” He hesitated a moment, a catch in his throat. “But that was a different part of my life, and this is no time to talk about all that, all right?”

“All right.”

He got up to put some music on. For a few minutes he rummaged through a large collection of CDs.