No Way Back. Andrew Gross

my phone.

      “Would it be all right if I order up another of whatever you’re drinking?” He raised his palms defensively. “Purely for the imaginary friend, of course …”

      “Of course,” I said, playing along. “But no. One more of these and I’ll be up at that piano myself! And trust me, I wasn’t playing with anyone in the eighties … Anyway”—I shrugged, deadpan—“she only drinks imagi-nary vodka.”

      Curtis grinned. “I’m acquainted with the bartender. Let me see what I can do.”

      My iPhone vibrated. Pam, I was sure, announcing she was pulling up to the hotel now and for me to get a dirty martini going for her. But instead it read:

      WEND, I’M SO SORRY. JUST CAN’T MAKE IT TONITE. WHAT CAN I SAY … ? I KNOW U NEED TO TALK. TOMORROW WORK?

      Tomorrow? Tomorrow didn’t work. I was here. Now. And she was right, I did need to talk. And the last place I wanted to be right now was home. Will call, I wrote back, a little annoyed. I put down the phone. My eyes inevitably fell on Curtis’s. I’d already missed the 7:39.

      “Sure, why don’t we do just that?” I nodded about that drink.

      I’m not sure exactly what made me stay.

      Maybe I was still feeling vulnerable from my fight with Dave. Or even a little annoyed at Pam, who had a habit of bagging out when I needed her most. I suppose you could toss in just a bit of undeniable interest in the present company.

      Whatever it was, I did.

      Knowing Dave was out for the night on business and that it was all just harmless anyway helped as well. And that there was a train every half hour. I could leave anytime I wanted.

      We chatted some more, and Curtis said he was a freelance journalist here in town on a story. And I chuckled and told him that I was kind of in the same game too. That I’d actually worked for the Nassau County police in my twenties before going to law school for a year—having signed up after 9/11, after my brother, a NYPD cop himself, was killed—though I was forced to resign after a twelve-year-old boy was killed in a wrongful-death judgment. And that I’d written this novel about my experience, which was actually why I’d been in the city today at a self-publishing conference. That I’d been having a tough time getting it looked at by anyone, and that it likely wasn’t very good anyway.

      “Care to read it?” I asked. I tapped the tote bag from my publishing conference. “Been lugging it around all day.”

      “I would,” Curtis said, “but I’m afraid it’s not exactly my field.”

      “Just joking,” I said. “So what is your field?”

      He shrugged. “I’m a bit more into current events.”

      I was about to follow up on that when the pianist finished her set. The crowded room gave her a warm round of applause. She got up and came over to the end of the bar, ordered a Perrier, and to my surprise, when it arrived, lifted it toward Curtis. “All warmed up, sugar.”

      Curtis stood up. I looked at him wide-eyed. He shot me a slightly apologetic grin. “I did mention that I played …”

      “You said a bit, for fun,” I replied.

      “Well, you’ll be the judge. Look, I know you have a train to catch, and I don’t know if you’ll be around when I’m done”—he put out his hand—“but it was fun to chat with you, if you have to leave.”

      “I probably should,” I said, glancing at the time. “It was nice to talk to you as well.”

      “And best of luck,” he said, pointing as he backed away, “with that imaginary friend of yours.”

      “Right! I’ll be sure to tell her!” I laughed.

      He sat down at the piano, and I swiveled around, figuring I’d stick around a couple of minutes to hear how he played. But from the opening chords that rose magically from his fingers, just warming up, it was clear it was me he was playing when he coyly said he only played “a little.”

      I was dumbstruck, completely wowed. The guy was a ten! He wasn’t just a dream to look at, and charming too—he played like he was totally at one with the instrument. He had the ease and polish of someone who clearly had been doing this from an early age. His fingers danced across the keyboard and the sounds rose as if on a cloud, then drifted back to earth as something beautiful. It had been a long time since goose bumps went down my arms over a guy.

      Donna St. James leaned over. “You ever hear him before, honey?”

      I shook my head. “No.”

      “His father arranged a bunch of us back in the day. Sit back. You’re in for a treat.”

      I did.

      The first thing he played was this sumptuous, bluesy rendition of Elton John’s “Goodbye Yellow Brick Road,” and the handful of customers who were paying their checks, preparing to leave, started listening. Even the bartender was listening. I couldn’t take my eyes off him. Whatever my definition of sexy had been an hour ago, forget it—he was definitely rewriting it for me now.

      I didn’t leave.

      I just sat there, slowly nursing my margarita, growing more and more intoxicated, but not by the drink. By the time he segued into a sultry version of the Beatles’ “Hey Jude,” it was as if his soul had risen from that keyboard and knotted itself with mine.

      Our eyes came together a couple of times, my smile communicating, Okay, so I’m impressed … The twinkle in his eye simply saying he was happy I was still there.

      By the time he finished up with Billy Joel’s “New York State of Mind,” goose bumps were dancing up and down my arms with the rise and fall of his fingers along the keys. With a couple of margaritas in me—and fifteen years from the last time anyone looked at me quite that way—the little, cautioning voice that only a few minutes back was going, Wendy, this is crazy, you don’t do this kind of thing, had gone completely silent.

      And when our eyes seemed to touch after his final note and didn’t separate, not for a while, I knew, sure as I knew my own name, that I was about to do something I could never have imagined when I walked into the place an hour before. Something I’d never, ever done before.

       CHAPTER TWO

      Ten minutes later we were up in his room, my coat and bag strewn on the floor, one meaningless comment about the view before my breath seemed to jump out of my skin the second he touched me and backed me against the wall.

      I was waiting for that voice inside to go, Hold it, just a second, Wendy. You know this isn’t right.

      But what I seemed to want even more was for his hands to be all over me. Under my top. Beneath my skirt. Electrical shocks dancing all over my body. Places I hadn’t let another man touch me in years.

      In a second his mouth was on mine, and I kissed him back just as eagerly. I felt the feel of his tongue dance against mine, just as I had watched his fingers dance along the keys. Then he traced a meandering path with his lips along my neck, my breaths leaping. His hand slid inside my skirt and down my rear, and I felt a shiver travel down my thighs and my heartbeat go out of control. My mind was like a dark vault, shutting out any thoughts of whether this was right or wrong.

      I lifted my arms and let him pull me out of my sweater. I undid my thick, dark hair, letting it drape all over him, every cell inside me bursting with desire. He lifted me up against the blue, Japanese-wallpapered wall, my arms around his neck, and we knocked into the bamboo desk, sending the hotel directory onto the floor, not even stopping to go “Oops” or acknowledge it. Every time his lips brushed along my skin, my body seemed to explode, as if a live electrical cord was jumping around in