Lights Out (30 page)

“I’m really happy for you, man,” Peter said, consciously trying to talk like Hector, even taking on a bit of Puerto Rican accent.

“Yo, I owe you, man,” Hector said. “Serious. Anything you want’s on me. Tonight, do any pay-per-view, take whatever you want from the mini bar, whatever, and you won’t get charged for nothing. ... “

“That’s okay—I’m just glad I could help you out. I’ll talk to you later, all right?”

Peter took the elevator up to the twelfth floor and went into his suite. He was still very excited about how well everything had gone with Katie and he couldn’t stop replaying their conversation in his head. There wasn’t one thing he’d said that he regretted; if he’d written his lines in advance and read from the script it couldn’t have gone any better. Again, he took out the business card with her name on it and, touching the writing gently with his forefinger, he had to resist calling her. He wanted to hear her voice. He wanted to know if he she sounded different on the phone than in person and he wanted to make sure she was okay. Of course, he didn’t think anything
bad
had happened to her, but suddenly he felt protective over her, as if she were his child, and he knew it would make him feel better, more relaxed, if he could just talk to her.

But he reminded himself that this was only the beginning. There would be days, months, years, a whole lifetime of talking on the phone. Soon they’d have so many phone conversations that calling her would be something he wouldn’t even have to think about or prepare for; it would come as naturally as eating or breathing.

Peter felt grimy from the city so he took a quick shower. Afterward, he opened the closet which he had filled with his new wardrobe—upscale, conservative clothes that he knew Katie would like—and picked out beige chinos and a black mock turtle-neck. He didn’t want to leave anything to chance. If something went wrong between him and Katie and things didn’t work out as perfectly as he imagined, he didn’t want to look back later and wish he had done something differently. He knew there would be a greater chance of winning Katie over if he looked and acted the right way.

He was planning to have a mellow day alone. He figured he’d take a walk downtown, hang out for a while at a Barnes & Noble or a Starbucks, grab some sushi for dinner, and then maybe go to a movie. He had to go somewhere because if he stayed in his hotel room all day, he knew he wouldn’t be able to stop thinking about Katie and he didn’t want to do something stupid that he’d regret.

It was a beautiful November afternoon—clear sky, chilly but not too cold, leaves whipping around on the sidewalks. On his way downtown, Peter decided to stop by the co-op he had purchased in the brownstone on East Twenty-second Street, to see how the renovations were coming along.

He opened the door to the building and went up to the second floor. The door to the apartment was propped open with a piece of wood and a worker was using a power tool in one of the back rooms. Peter checked out the dining room and kitchen, very pleased with how things were progressing. The crown molding was up and all the painting was done and the new Brazilian cherry strip floors had been laid down. The new silestone breakfast bar had been installed in the kitchen and all of the maple cabinetry was in place and looked great. The stainless steel refrigerator and Viking stove hadn’t been delivered yet, but that was scheduled to happen sometime next week.

Peter went down to the main bedroom where two Mexican men were installing shelves in the walk-in closet.

“Como estan?”
Peter said to the men.

“Muy bueno,”
the older man said.
“Gracias.”

“Me gusta todos.
Seriously—it really looks great.”

“Gracias.”

“Cudndo listed acabard?”

“Dos dias. Quesas tres dias.”

“Ah, muy bueno. Muchas gracias. Estoy muy, muy feliz.”

Peter peeked into the master bath, glad to see that the renovations were about halfway done and looked fantastic, and then he went across the hall to one of the bedrooms, which he planned to use for a home theater. The two leather chairs from Restoration Hardware had been delivered and were facing the wall where the sixty-four-inch LCDTV would be placed. He imagined he and Katie, wearing comfy sweaters on a cold winter night, sipping hot chocolate while watching a movie, a love story, and then he peeked into the room across the hallway that would be their first child’s room. The room was empty now, but he imagined it filled with toys, a rocking chair, a crib. It was going to feel so great to sit in the rocking chair and rock his child to sleep, knowing that the baby was his
and
Katie’s, that they had created a life together.

After spending another several minutes checking out other odds and ends, he left the apartment and continued downtown. He walked around Gramercy Park and then went along Twentieth Street for a few blocks before cutting over toward Union Square. Although he’d only been living in New York at the hotel for about a month, and before then had only been to the city several times— a few short trips with his parents when he was very young, and then, more recently, the trips in from Mexico to look at apartments and to close on the co-op—he already felt very comfortable in New York, like a native. This surprised him a lot because when he was growing up he could never have imagined living in Manhattan, or anyplace urban. He always imagined himself living in the mountains, maybe in Vermont or New Hampshire.

A few months ago, he’d been planning to move back to New England, but then, surfing the Net one day in Guadalajara, he decided to Google Katie Porter. He didn’t found out much about her, except that she had gone to college at Wesleyan and was living in Manhattan, but he knew he had to be with her, that he couldn’t live without her. He also knew that he would have to reinvent himself in many ways to win her over, and becoming a New Yorker was one of them. Since she obviously viewed herself as “a city girl” nowadays, he figured if he was “a city guy” she would be much more likely to fall for him, and he also knew it would be nearly impossible for any single girl in Manhattan to resist a guy who owned a huge, spectacular apartment. So Peter shelled out the 975,000 dollars for the co-op, figuring he’d unveil it to her at the perfect time, when all the renovations were complete and their relationship was in full swing.

As Peter walked through the Saturday afternoon farmer’s market at Union Square, he decided that waiting until tomorrow night to ask her out could be a big mistake or, at the very least, create unnecessary awkwardness. He knew, from following her around, that she usually went to the gym on Saturdays and Sundays. This didn’t necessarily mean that she would work out tomorrow, but she was a very regimented person, sticking to a tight routine for most of her activities—leaving for work between eight-ten and eight-fifteen every morning, stopping at the same coffee cart outside her office for a breakfast of coffee and a raisin bagel “nothing on it,” returning from work every day between five forty-five and six, except that one day last week when she went out to a bar after work with friends and didn’t get home until later—so he figured there was a decent chance that she would be going to the gym tomorrow morning. If he saw her tomorrow and hadn’t called her yet she might get the wrong idea, think he wasn’t interested in her, and it would put him in an uncomfortable position.

He went to ABC Carpet & Home and did some shopping for the apartment, but then he couldn’t take it anymore. He took out his cell and dialed Katie’s number, which he had memorized.

“Hello?” God, her voice was amazing.

“Hey, it’s me, Peter.”

There was a pause. It only lasted a second or two, but it was plenty of time for Peter to get paranoid. He wondered if she wasn’t really expecting him to call and was upset that he had, or if she thought it was weird that he was calling so quickly, or if she was with that guy she’d been dating.

But Peter’s fears were alleviated when she said, “Oh, wow, Peter. Sorry, I just walked in the door and I didn’t check my caller ID. What’s up?”

“Not much. I was just wondering if you had any plans for tomorrow afternoon.”

Damn, he sounded too pushy. He should’ve had a short conversation with her first. Why didn’t he think all this through?

“No, I don’t,” she said. “Not really.”

“Great,” he said, relieved. “So how about we meet for coffee at around two?”

“Yeah, okay. That sounds great.”

“Cool. I’ll stop by your place after I get off work.”

“I better tell you where I live.”

“Yeah, that would be a good idea.”

She gave him her address and he pretended that he was writing it down somewhere. He was angry at himself for making that slipup, implying that he already knew where she lived. He hoped she hadn’t picked up on it.

“You know, I have a better idea,” she said. “Since you’re gonna be working, how about I just come by the gym and meet you there?”

Peter wasn’t crazy about this plan, but didn’t want to be difficult. “Okay,” he said. “Whatever works best for you.”

They exchanged some small talk about how they were going to spend the rest of their afternoons—she said she was going to do some laundry, which he expected because she’d done laundry on two other Saturdays at around this time, and he said he had to “do some errands around the neighborhood”—and then they said good-bye and clicked off.

Overall, he was happy with how the conversation had gone. He didn’t think she was suspicious of anything and he was glad that she seemed excited about him calling and about their date tomorrow. Still, he wished he didn’t have to be on eggshells with her, watching every word he said. He wanted to let loose, be natural. He knew that once she got to know the real Peter Wells she’d never even think about another guy again.