Free Snowstorms in a Hot Climate by Sarah Dunant Page B

should I tell Elly? Or him for that matter? Maybe I should wait until I met him face-to-face. I felt a certain confidence that I, in my role as St. George, should have been granted such an early advantage. It would be a pity if lack of sleep undermined it. I recited a few pages of Bede and felt better. New York was stirring as I fell asleep.
    I woke buried in hot sand. The sheet was over my head, a torture presumably self-inflicted to protect me from the light, which was streaming in through half-closed blinds. The morning might have been the afternoon. There was no way of telling since my watch had stopped at 6:43 A.M . I made a run for the bathroom, where I showered and dressed. I had no intention of risking formal introductions in a bathrobe. I needn’t have worried. The flat felt empty. In the living room the balcony doors were closed; both Lenny and Günter Grass had gone. Along the corridor their bedroom door was ajar. I tiptoed in. The bed was unmade, and the room was decorated with a pleasingly familiar hurricane of Elly’s clothes. But with no sign of tailored jacket or Gucci boots. I was heading for the kitchen, nursing the suspicion that maybe I had dreamt it all, when the phone rang somewherenear the bed. It took me a while to find it, and when I did I couldn’t remember the number. Elly’s laughter danced over the wires.
    “God, you’d make a lousy maid. Well, I needn’t ask how you slept.”
    “Where are you?”
    “At the store. Crisis management. The girl who works here woke to find a gas leak in her apartment. She’s watching the repairman while I’m waiting for a delivery. Didn’t you get my note? It was under the orange juice.”
    “I haven’t made it as far as the kitchen. What time is it?”
    “Put it this way, you’ve missed two meals already. It’s after three.” The sleep of the dead. Except for the interruption. “And guess what?”
    “What?”
    “Lenny’s home. Came in at dawn. What did I tell you? Perfect timing. As always.”
    “Where is he now?” I said at exactly the same instant as my eyes registered the door across the room leading to the en suite bathroom.
    “Don’t panic. You’re safe. He was up and out early. Business, no doubt. I didn’t catch the details. I arranged for us all to meet for dinner this evening. That is unless you want to change your mind and go to California today?”
    Not for the world. I wanted to see the expression on his face when we met. “It can wait.”
    “That’s what I hoped you’d say. Great. Why don’t you get dressed and meet me downtown?…”
    I n the underworld no one moved more than was absolutely necessary. The air, baked in the folds of the tunnels, was staleand unprofitable, and the train when it arrived, roaring and screeching its way out of the darkness, was like the set of a Roger Corman movie, tacky and menacing.
    I climbed in and sat down. New York. There is a different balance between madness and sanity in this city. Maybe that’s why so many gravitate here. More room for deviancy. But you have to have the stomach for it. I remember my first visit, when I had taken the subway late at night, riding a compartment that was totally empty. I had spent four stops staring at the thick black graffiti which saturated the ceiling, seats, and walls. I could almost see the madness seeping out of the spray paint, and crawling its way toward me. It was hard to know whose violence I was feeling, theirs or mine. In the end I got out of the train and took a taxi. Of course, I was younger then and my psyche a little less resilient. Graffiti is just graffiti now. Even in Manhattan.
    Aboveground it was raging sunshine. Following instructions, I crossed into Washington Square. The place was swarming with people, sitting, striding, watching, playing. Two black kids body-popped to the roar of a ghetto blaster, while a small crowd gathered for the show. On the grass people were stretched out in the sun, and a middle-aged man was