LITMIR.BIZ

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you that sweater?”

      “Hardly,” Stephanie said. “This sweater is Italian cashmere.” She pointed to a custom bookcase lining the opposite wall, one Leo had admired earlier for its graceful economy. “He built that.”

      “Okay. I give,” he said. “It’s a nice bookcase.”

      “It’s a fantastic bookcase.”

      “So why isn’t he here if he’s so great?”

      “Probably because his wife hasn’t kicked him out of his apartment yet.”

      “Right,” Leo said. He deserved that one. He couldn’t stop looking at the bookcase, which was, he had to admit, pretty fantastic.

      “And he wanted other things.” Stephanie was quiet for a minute, thinking about what good company Will was and how she hadn’t been able, ultimately, to make him happy. She still ran into him sometimes with his new wife. She didn’t think they had kids, yet. She looked up and thought: Leo!

      And then, Careful.

      The storm outside was intensifying. The streets were quiet, devoid of pedestrians and traffic. The whole city seemed to be huddling against the weather. The fire cracked and hissed and warmed the room. Leo started to relax for the first time in weeks, for the first time since the accident, really. He missed Stephanie, the ease between them, her solid and comforting presence. Sitting across from him, in the light of the fire, she blazed with health and well-being and good humor.

      “I can’t believe you sold your business,” he said.

      “I can’t believe what a hypocrite you are.”

      “I’m not a hypocrite, I speak from experience. I never should have sold out.”

      “You’re just saying that now. I remember those days. You were thrilled by that fat check. Also, I’m not selling out. I was acquired. My life is just going to get a lot easier. I can’t wait.”

      “I’m telling you,” Leo said. “That was the start of the end for me.”

      Stephanie shrugged and took a clementine from a bowl on the table, started peeling it. “You could have stayed. Nathan wanted you to stay.” Nathan Chowdhury had been Leo’s business partner at SpeakEasyMedia. He’d worked behind the scenes, running the money side of things, and had stayed after the acquisition; now he was CFO for the entire conglomerate. As far as Stephanie was concerned, the beginning of the end for Leo wasn’t selling SpeakEasy, it was acquiring Victoria and all that came after—namely, nothing.

      She still remembered the day he’d told her he was planning to sell, the day she’d visited him at work during a period when they were trying—and nearly managing—to be “just friends.” Victoria had walked into his office. “Hey,” she’d said to Leo, lifting her eyebrows a bit, her smile even and smug. Stephanie heard it all in that one word: hey. The intimate monotone of Victoria’s low register. A kind of hey that said they’d woken up in the same bed that morning, probably could still smell each other on their hands. The hey wasn’t inquisitive or demure or apologetic; it was territorial. Stephanie had heard that hey before, coming from her very own foolishly cocksure mouth. After Leo sold SpeakEasy and married Victoria, he’d practically fallen off the face of the earth. The last thing in the world she needed from him was life—or business—advice.

      “You should have called me,” Leo said.

      “Why would I have called you, Leo? When was the last time we spoke?” Stephanie wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of telling him that she had called. She’d left a message on his cell and someone identifying herself as Leo’s personal assistant had called back. “Assisting what exactly,” Stephanie had asked the girl, who sounded sixteen. “Does Leo have a job?”

      “Leo has a number of projects in the works,” the girl had said. She sounded ridiculously tentative and nervous. Stephanie suspected she was using the assistant ruse to discover the identities of all the women on Leo’s incoming call list. Well, good luck to her, she thought. “Can I tell Leo what this is in reference to?” the girl had asked. Stephanie had hung up and never called back.

      “I’ve called you,” Leo said.

      “Before today? Two years ago.”

      “That’s not true.”

      “Two years.”

      “Christ,” Leo said. “Sorry.” He laughed a little. “If it makes you feel any better, I stopped being interesting about two years ago.”

      “I didn’t feel particularly bad about it to begin with, but thanks.”

      He frowned and looked at her, still unbelieving and a little pained. “Two years? Really?”

      “Really,” she said.

      “So come over here and tell me what else you’ve been up to,” he said, patting the place next to him on the sofa.

      HOURS LATER, after they’d eaten the lamb and replenished the firewood and she filled him in on the recent publishing news and gossip, after he’d finished clearing the table and loading the dishwasher (poorly) and rinsing some pots (even worse), he opened another bottle of wine and she dished out bowls of ice cream and they moved back into the living room.

      “Are you supposed to be drinking that?” she asked him, pointing to the glass of cabernet.

      “Technically, I guess not,” he said. “But booze is not my issue. You know that.”

      “I don’t know anything, Leo. You could be shooting heroin for all I know. In fact, I think I did hear something about heroin at some point.”

      “Completely false,” he said. “Was there excess? Yes. Do I realize I should probably steer clear of speed? Yes. This”—he raised the glass—“is not my problem.”

      “So are you going to tell me what happened? Do you want to talk about it?”

      “Not really,” Leo said. He wasn’t sure what Stephanie had heard that she might not be telling him. George assured him everything was sealed tighter than a drum. He’d paid a fortune to keep Victoria quiet, but he didn’t trust anyone. Stephanie let the silence gather some momentum. Out the front window the snow accumulated, a pile six inches deep balanced precariously on the rail of a neighboring stoop. A lone car crept down the snowy street, fishtailing a little as it went. She could hear the kids in the house behind her out in their yard screeching and laughing. Their dad was yelling: “Don’t eat the snow! It’s dirty.”

      “We don’t have to talk about it, Leo, but I’m a good secret keeper.”

      He felt the images from that night starting to surface: the sound of the car’s brakes, the bite of salt air, the incongruous voice of Marvin Gaye coming from the SUV that hit them, urging him to get it on. He wondered if he should talk about it. He hadn’t even tried at fake rehab. He wondered what Stephanie would say if he just unloaded the whole story, right then and there. At one time, they’d told each other everything or—he mentally corrected himself—she told him everything and he told her what he thought she needed to hear. That hadn’t gone very well.

      “Leo?”

      Leo didn’t even know how to start talking about it. He stared at the carved face on the marble mantel and realized why it was familiar, the swoop of hair, the slender patrician nose, the appraising gaze. “She looks like Bea,” he said.

      “Who does?”

      “Lillian. Your stone companion. She looks like Bea.”

      “Bea.” Stephanie groaned and covered her eyes.

      “She’s not bad looking. Bea.”

      “No, it’s not that. She’s called me a few times and I’ve been avoiding her. Something about new work.”

      “God. Not the novel.”

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