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By Root 677 0

showed up after work ready to go. We’d had one squabble. It was over the word God, a matter of where the pitch lay in the mouth and if and how the lips were rounded. It was slight, but I corrected him and we argued. For days, neither of us would back down. I knew I was right. After all, the year before, while John had been exploring India and Thailand, I had been learning all manner of dialects—from Afrikaans to Cockney to Czech—and could transpose them into IPA, the International Phonetic Alphabet. I’d also spent hours studying a tape labeled “Donegal native speakers,” compiled and given to me by Tim Monich, the speech teacher at Juilliard. Finally, Nye Heron, the artistic director of the Irish Arts Center and a native Dubliner, was brought in to settle the matter. He would set John straight. But as it turned out, I was wrong. My version, Nye said, was correct—for a county or two over. But John had it down to the township. Humbled, I took pains from then on to say it exactly as he did, and I was grateful when he didn’t gloat. His ear, the gift of any actor, was superb, and at least in the matter of God, it had trumped mine.

In rehearsal clothes, we tumbled and wrestled on the small stage. There was ease, banter, and trust, and he’d lean against me when Robin gave notes. But over the past week, once we were alone and in street clothes, something was different between us. There was a seriousness, a glance too long, and, for me, the awareness always of where he was in the room. I couldn’t stop thinking about him, and I fought it.

“Hey,” he called out from the bike. “I’ll give you a ride home.”

That night home was Brooklyn, the walk-up I shared with another actress on the outskirts of Park Slope. Not over-the-bridge Brooklyn, but eight miles as the crow flies and forty minutes on the D train—if it was running express. And that summer, it never was.

A trek to one of the outer boroughs didn’t concern him. He flicked his wrist and the engine growled. “Hop on,” he said. I pressed my sandal onto the rubber-wrapped metal foot peg and slid on the back of the bike, pulling at the slithery fabric of my dress. “Hang tight,” he said as he revved the engine once more.

My hands—where to put them. Certain they’d give me away, I tried the silver hitch behind me on the saddle. No good; I’d fall. As they fluttered forward, I thought, He will know if I hold him. He will know by my touch. It was as though I had no memory of the hour before. Earlier, in the theater, we’d begun to rehearse the kiss at the end of the play, the one we’d always marked or skipped over, a long kiss during the narrator’s speech about death and drowning. Robin wanted it passionate, extending well beyond what the script called for, and as we knelt on the itchy stage grass facing each other, she told him to grab me and he did.

On the bike, I touched his back lightly, then placed my hands at the sides of his torso. We waved goodbye to Robin and Santina and the crew, and took off down Eleventh Avenue, past the warehouses and tire shops.

A few blocks later, he turned right toward the river. At the stoplight, his legs dropped, decisive, to either side of the bike. He reached back, grabbed my arms, and placed them firmly around his chest, pressing twice so they’d stay put. And then, as quick as air, we swerved into the fast lane of the West Side Highway. If we hadn’t—if the light had been a little longer or he’d hesitated, taking time perhaps to adjust the mirror or run his fingers through his hair—he would have heard a sharp intake of breath before I gave over and let myself sink into his back. Before I surrendered. Then I knew. It wasn’t my hands that were telltale; it was my heart, pounding against the thin white cotton shirt he wore that night. I tried to slow it down, to slow my breath. He’ll know, he’ll know how you feel. It didn’t occur to me that he already did.

I knew that if we spoke of it, everything would change. It was like a dream. And you know that if you tumble forward into it, there will be no way back.

It was late, but the traffic was heavy. He