A Wedding in December_ A Novel - Anita Shreve [126]
“Why are we stopped?” Louise asked.
“Traffic,” Innes said, barely able to summon sufficient breath to answer her. “We have to wait for the traffic to clear.”
“Is it really so busy?”
“Yes, I’m afraid it is.”
He would have known Hazel anywhere. For years, he’d imagined her as she’d been at twenty-two. She was thirty-nine now. Was she married? Did she have children? All the questions that had crowded his thoughts for nearly two decades pushed themselves forward in a rush, and yet he couldn’t ask a single one. Indeed, within seconds, he would have to leave her. Louise was nothing if not canny.
Innes reached out and clasped Hazel’s forearm, getting the cloth of her coat. She didn’t flinch. He remembered her lustrous eyes.
“Innes?” Louise was asking with a slight whine. “This box is getting heavy.”
Innes wanted to mouth a word to Hazel. But what word? What word?
He released Hazel’s arm.
Wait, he said silently.
With great reluctance, Innes turned and pushed Louise forward in the chair.
He walked, but he didn’t know where. His thoughts were chaotic, urgent. The glister of the city blinded him.
“Innes,” Louise said sharply.
“Yes?”
“Where are we going?”
“I have some errands to run,” he said. “I’ll take you back to your room and let you rest.”
“What sort of errands?” Louise asked.
“Tobacco,” Innes said. “A book I need.”
“Yes. All right,” Louise answered, happy to be returning to her temporary nest. She would order tea and pastries, Innes knew. When he returned to the hotel room, there would be flakes dotting the bodice of her dress.
Hazel was standing precisely where Innes had left her: poised, handbag over her wrist, the brim of her hat hiding her eyes.
“How long would you have waited?” he asked when he had reached her. His breath was short from running.
“Perhaps another hour.”
“I could hardly mask my impatience.”
“She looks very different.”
“How so?”
“Angry, I think. I was sad to see that.”
Innes nodded. Yes, Louise was angry. She always had been. It did a man little good to sacrifice himself for a woman if he couldn’t love her enough.
A man jostled Innes’s elbow. “We are here on a trip,” he said.
“You live in Toronto still,” she said.
“At the same address. Yes.”
“I stopped writing.”
“She wouldn’t allow me to read the letters to her,” Innes said.
Innes moved Hazel out of the path of a cyclist. He let his hand linger on her arm. “Is it always this crowded?” he asked.
“This time of year, it is.”
She looked up at him from underneath the brim of her hat. He saw that she was self-sufficient. Time or experience had done that.
“I have a room,” Hazel said.
Innes was astonished at the bold invitation. And then he was not. They couldn’t stand on the street corner.
“You live here?” he asked. “In the city?”
“It’s rather far uptown.”
“Should we take a taxi?”
“If you like.”
“I have very little time.”
In the taxi, Innes took Hazel’s gloved hand in his own. It was not enough. He removed his glove and then Hazel’s. She didn’t protest. He clasped her hand and held it tightly.
They drove up the avenue, past the mansions and the park. Innes could see the city only in the periphery of Hazel’s face.
They parked in front of a modest brownstone building. Emerging from the taxi, Hazel climbed a set of steps and waited for him in front of a door set with panes of rippled blue glass.
“This is yours?” he asked, looking up at the four-story building.
She smiled. “I have an apartment,” she said.
They took a small elevator to the fourth floor. In the elevator, Innes reached out to hold her arm, unwilling to let her go, even for a moment. They stepped out into a dark corridor. Hazel led him to her door and unlocked it.
He held her coat while