Free A Certain Age by Beatriz Williams Page B

searches the pavement for an empty taxi, to no avail.
    â€œI forgot to ask,” I say, as we stand silently on the curb, awaiting the fruits of the next wave of traffic. “Did she say yes?”
    â€œSophie? Yes, she did. Right away.”
    â€œWell, well. So my brother’s engaged. Imagine that.”
    â€œYou don’t sound all that happy.”
    â€œDarling, she’s an unknown. I’ve never even met her. It’s all just—well, it’s a bit strange, that’s all. How did he meet her? Are they really so rich?”
    â€œWhy should that matter, if they’re in love?” He peers down at me. “You’re shivering.”
    â€œIt’s cold.”
    He takes me by the hand and pulls me back down Christopher Street.
    â€œWhere are we going?”
    â€œBack to my car. I’ll drive you home.”
    â€œDon’t be silly. It’ll be past midnight by the time you get back. When are you going to sleep?”
    â€œTheresa,” he says, and this time he’s grinning, and his grins are so rare that I want to bottle them in vinegar and keep them forever. “When have you ever cared about letting me get some sleep?”
    So we climb into the Boy’s awful jalopy and he persuades it to start—it’s an old Model T, cantankerous in the cold, and I have to sit there in the driver’s seat, operating the choke and the ignition, while my hands freeze in their leather gloves and the Boy’s arm rotates vigorously before the grille—and then we’re off, coughing and sputtering up Seventh Avenue, and the first thing we see is an empty taxi.
    â€œIt figures,” the Boy says, and he puts the car into high gear and slings his arm around my shoulders.
    You’d think that midnight Manhattan would prove easier to navigate than evening Manhattan, but in fact it’s just the same, minus the delivery vans. We lurch our way uptown while my hand rests on the Boy’s sturdy thigh, and I think how simple it would be to keep going straight up Manhattan, across the Harlem River to the Bronx, and then upstate. Keep going until we found a farm somewhere, nestled in the snow, and no one would everhear from us again. We would age slowly together, not giving a damn about anything except the crops and the horses and each other, ordering our clothes from the Sears Roebuck catalog and growing our own apples and potatoes. I would toss out all the mirrors, except the one the Boy needs for shaving. Maybe even that.
    The Boy pulls the car to the curb, and I look up and realize we’ve reached the corner of Fifth Avenue and Sixty-Fourth Street, two blocks from the apartment I share with Mr. Marshall.
    The Boy stares through the windshield at the restless shadows of Central Park. “You know what? Let’s keep going.”
    â€œKeep going?”
    â€œYou don’t need all this, do you? We could head out west and start a new life, and no one would know or care who we are.”
    The engine coughs again and dies, and the Boy says something under his breath.
    â€œLet me buy you a new car,” I say. “Please. A Christmas present.”
    â€œYou already gave me a Christmas present.”
    â€œA New Year present, then.”
    â€œI don’t want presents.” He gets out of the car to crank the engine again. I watch him carefully for the signal. Turn the switch for the spark. My pulse thumps against my ears. Keep going, keep going, keep going, I think, in rhythm with the turn of the pistons, and my imagination, for some reason, returns to Sophie Fortescue in her house on Thirty-Second Street, about to sacrifice her eternal future to the dear and witless Edmund Jay Ochsner.
    Better the poor thing had run away with the grocer’s boy instead.
    A sputter and a roar, and then the steady reassuring rattle of a Ford minding its duty. The Boy comes around to the passenger door and opens it. He places his foot on the running board and his