Elaine gave a nod, then stepped from the curb and scanned the roadway for another taxi. There was none in sight. She envisioned herself standing here, freezing to death, while everyone else hurried away to celebrations and family gatherings and chestnuts roasting on an open fire. Who would miss her? she wondered forlornly. Who would even notice she wasn’t around anymore, that she had turned into a curbside ice sculpture for the pigeons to land on?

Irritated, she tried to get Zora on the phone. Zora was the hardest-working modeling agent in town, but her voice mail picked up. What was wrong with everyone? You’d think a national holiday had been declared.

A black sedan pulled alongside the curb and the tinted window slid down. “Need a lift?” asked Tony Fiore.

Her heart did it again—sped up with excitement even though she cautioned herself to get a grip. “Thanks,” she said, hurrying to open the passenger-side door. The car smelled of baby-powder-scented air freshener. The console was covered in electronic gear she couldn’t fathom. It felt strangely intimate to ride with him, giving her a glimpse into his life. There was an official ID card and a bank of permits affixed to the console, a pad of sticky notes with a scrawled reminder: Pick up Nona’s ham, buy duct tape, WD-40.

He pulled into the logjam of traffic. The windshield wipers slapped at the thick, soft flakes. The snow turned the bustling city into a sparkling world of color and light. Tony glanced over at her. She felt that glance as though they’d parted only yesterday. No man had ever looked at her the way he did, with so much interest and caring and frank desire.

“So. Where to?” he asked.

“You guessed right when you headed north.”

“The Upper East Side.”

“You’ve got it.”

“Didn’t fall far from the tree, eh, Elaine?”

The remark was friendly but pointed, marking off the boundaries between them. They’d never really had a chance, thanks to their different backgrounds. People liked to say such things didn’t matter in this day and age, but, the fact was, it absolutely did. Especially to Elaine, whose parents’ approval meant everything. And to Tony, whose sense of duty to his family dominated all his choices.

She felt unaccountably defensive, as though it was all her fault she’d grown up in the rarefied world of the Gold Coast. The proper address was everything to the St. Jameses. Her parents had a park-view apartment, and a summer house on the Sound in the Hamptons. They’d sent her to Marymount and Bennington, and she now lived in a perfect, elegantly restored pre-war luxury building in the east nineties. She led, from all perspectives, a charmed existence. On paper, everything looked peachy. In truth, she rarely had time to sit back and think about the things that were missing from her life.

“How about you?” she asked, mildly annoyed.