“Here,” he said. “To make up for the years of systemic sexism.”
“Wanker,” said Cleo and took a bite.
“You’re in America now,” Frank said. “Here, I’m just an asshole.”
They walked with their slices up Elizabeth Street. Ahead of them a couple stood outside a bar in a pool of lamplight, performing a timeless two-person drama. The woman was clutching her heels to her chest and crying in long, high wails while her boyfriend shook her shoulders, repeating, “Tiffany listen, listen Tiffany, Tiffany listen …”
“I hate to say this,” whispered Frank as they passed. “But I don’t think Tiffany’s listening.”
Cleo turned back to look at them. “You think they’re all right?”
“They’ll be fine. New Year’s Eve is prime fighting night for couples. It’s like fireworks and fights. The two staples of a good New Year’s.”
“Did we just have our first fight?” Cleo asked.
Frank handed her a napkin. “I don’t know,” he said. “You did keep your shoes on.”
Cleo chuckled. “Would take a lot more than that to get me out of my cowboy boots.” She screwed up her napkin and flicked it expertly into a trash can on the corner. “Fighting can be a good thing, anyway. Look at Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera. They got divorced, got back together, split up again …”
“But did you ever think that they created their art in spite of the fighting, not because of it?”
“Who cares?” said Cleo between mouthfuls of dough. “Point is, they made it.”
Frank nodded vaguely. He took her paper plate from her and folded it into a neat square with his own. He hoped they’d pass a place to recycle soon.
“I’m dying to go to their house in Mexico City,” said Cleo.
“It’s packed with lines of tourists,” said Frank. “And Do Not Touch signs on every surface.”
“Bummer.” Cleo looked disheartened.
“But it’s still worth seeing,” added Frank quickly. “There’s this framed collection of butterflies hanging above Kahlo’s bed that Patti Smith wrote a poem about when she visited it. And all her clothes, of course. She had amazing style, kind of like you.”
Cleo smiled happily at the compliment. “Those, I would love to see.”
“Let’s go next week,” said Frank. “The whole city’s full of art. It’s the perfect place for you.”
“Next week? Just like that?”
“Sure. Why not? I closed the office, and I’ve got thousands of air miles I need to use.”
“Okay.” She laughed. “I’m in.” She shook out her hair. “Mexico fucking City!”
Frank, who had been planning to work all next week in the empty office, had never been much of a spontaneous traveler—but he liked the idea that he could be. He had the means, just not the incentive. And here was Cleo with the opposite. They both turned to each other at the same time. He hesitated, then pulled her in for a hug. Her hair smelled like soap and almonds and cigarettes. His chest smelled of damp wool and an expensive cologne she recognized, tobacco sweetened with vanilla.
“And I’m not trying to buy you,” he added, releasing her. “I’d just like to see it with you.”
“I know,” she said. “I’d like to see it with you too.”
They crossed the Bowery and wandered through the East Village, where the merriment on the street took on a subtle edge of aggression. People shouted outside bars and fell in and out of doorways. More couples fought on more street corners. At the entrance of the park, a group of crust punks, dressed in shabby military gear and studded leather jackets, gently waved sparklers above their matted heads. A pit bull wearing a neckerchief with the anarchy symbol drawn on it glanced up from the pillow of his paws to watch the sparks fall in mute wonder.
They arrived at a crumbling walk-up on St. Mark’s. The smoked glass of the front door was scrawled with incomprehensible graffiti. Frank wondered, not for the first time, what mark these anonymous scribblers thought they were making. Cleo turned to him, shy again.
“Do you want to sit in my lobby with me?”
“Why your lobby?”
Cleo hid her face in her hands.
“It’s nicer than my flat?” she said from between her fingers.
She slid her keys into the door and beckoned him in. Frank didn’t feel it was polite to point out that her lobby was just a stairwell. Cleo sat on the scuffed linoleum steps and lit a cigarette.
“You smoke in here?”
She shrugged.
“Everyone does.”
He watched her exhale twin streams of smoke from her nostrils. “I can’t believe I didn’t notice you at Santiago’s,” he said.
“I came late. I … It’s stupid, but I couldn’t decide what to wear. It’s a kind of social anxiety, I think. If I’m nervous about going to something, I change like a hundred times. It gets later and later, which of course only makes me more anxious. Usually, I end up hyperventilating over a pile of clothes on my floor. It sounds silly, but it’s actually quite terrible.”
Frank nodded sympathetically. “So what did you end up wearing?”
“Tonight? Oh, just this thing I made.”
“Can I see?”
Cleo raised an eyebrow. She pressed the cigarette between her lips and stood to unbutton the wooden toggles of her sheepskin. What she was wearing was not so much a dress as a net made of shimmering gold threads. It was woven just loosely enough to give a suggestion of the body within. He could see, very faintly beneath the shining lattice, the outline of her nipples and belly button. She was like a smooth, lithe fish caught in a glistening net.
“Let me come upstairs,” he said.
“No,” she said, sitting back down. “My roommates might be home. And”—she exhaled smoke seriously—“we’ll have sex.”
“What’s wrong with that?”
“I’m leaving in a few months.”
“I think we can finish before then.”
Cleo suppressed a smile. “I just don’t want to attach,” she said.
She looked down between her knees. Frank crouched in front of her. “I’m afraid it might be too late for that.”
“You think?”
“I attached the moment I heard you say aluminum.”
Cleo looked up at him from beneath her winged eyelids.
“Al-um-in-ium,” she said softly.
Frank clutched his heart. “See? I’m screwed.”
“No, I’m screwed,” she said. “I’m the one who has to leave.”
“Where will you go?”
“I don’t know. I heard Bali’s cool.”
She did not feel as casual about this as she sounded.
“Not back home to England?”
“England’s not my home.”
Cleo ground her cigarette out on the metal stair tread. He sensed there was more to the story there, but he didn’t pry. She checked her watch to avoid further questioning.
“It’s past midnight!”
“This isn’t right,” said Frank.
“Seriously,” she said. “We’ve been talking for like—”
“No, I mean, this. New Year’s Eve isn’t meant to be this good.”
“It’s meant to be bad?”
“It’s meant to be fine. You know? Just fine. It has never, not once in my life, exceeded my expectations.”
“You know, in Denmark they jump off a chair to signify jumping into the new year.”
“Are you Scandinavian?”