Free The Prize by Jill Bialosky Page A

you. I feel like I can tell you anything.”
    â€œYou’re not happy? Is that it?” She folded her arms on the marble table and looked at him carefully.
    â€œAre you?” He pressed his back against the booth.
    â€œIt depends what kind of happiness we’re talking about. For some, pain and pleasure are intertwined. I had that kind of relationship once. The kind where the intensity feels as if you’re going to burn out. You crave it and then you can’t take it.”
    â€œYou’re not really answering my question.”
    â€œWhat’s the question? I’ve forgotten.”
    â€œYour husband. Does he make you happy?”
    She lifted her hand from her lap and reached for her wineglass. “I’m not sure we know each other well enough to tell those secrets,” she said.
    â€œI feel as if I know you.”
    â€œDo you?” Her face relaxed. “We should read Keats together. When we get back to New York. Then we can discuss the odes. That’s something I could never do with my husband.”
    He looked into her eyes and nodded his head and smiled. “I never told Holly about Tess. I don’t know why.”
    â€œYou really do need to see a shrink,” she said.
    A man in a business suit approached the woman with the thin eyebrows at her table. He sat down, ordered a cocktail and another for her, and after their drink they both rose and climbed the winding, golden brocade staircase to the upper lobby of the hotel. Edward’s eyes met Julia’s. He paid the bill and they left.
    The cool air summoned both of them out of their interiors, and as they walked, their bodies occasionally brushing against each other, he felt remarkably unburdened. They strolled slowly, staring up at the buildings, stopping at a fountain, looking into shop windows, as if to prolong the evening.
    At the hotel desk they procured their individual keys and rode the elevator without speaking. Edward walked Julia to her room and they lingered in the dim doorway a minute and discussed the coming morning, the airport, returning home. He wasn’t quite ready to leave. He placed his hand against the doorframe next to her. He moved close and then stopped and looked into her eyes deeply and she returned the look. “I guess it’s time,” Julia said, to fill the awkwardness. She reached up and kissed him on the cheek. He felt for her hand and took it in his and he was glad she didn’t mind that he held it. “Well, I guess it’s time,” she said again. She slipped the key in the lock, turned to say good night, and before she went into her room, she stopped and turned back. “I like whatyou said about friendship. You know, C.S. Lewis. About it adding value to survival.”
    â€œDoes that mean I’ll see you in New York?” Edward asked.
    She nodded.
    â€œSafe flight,” he said, before she closed the door.
    H E TURNED ON the light in his hotel room, walked past the mirror on the wall toward the bathroom, and stopped. He saw his own image and smiled at himself, first with pleasure, but then unease filled him and heat traveled up his neck. In all the years he’d been with Holly he’d never felt drawn to another woman. He kept thinking of Julia’s vulnerable eyes behind her glasses, and the way she scrunched up her eyebrows when something troubled her, her soft lips. He listened to the fan churning the air above him and the squeak of the metal frame of the bed when he turned on the mattress. He tried to put Julia out of his mind but bits and pieces of their conversation came to him. Even when he tried not to think of her, her scent and sound were with him. He awoke once in the middle of the night, unsure where he was, and panic filled him until he remembered.

7 NEW YORK
    H IS FATHER HAD arranged an interview with a trustee of Amherst, an old friend from graduate school, to whom, because he hadn’t done well on the SATs, Edward