“Okay,” he replied.

She didn’t move though. She was waiting for someone to say the right thing. Preferably him.

They were inches apart, but their attitudes projected leagues of distance, like black and white riders in a subway car.

“Are you hungry?” she asked, trying to make conversation.

“Not really.” He slurped the water.

“Do you want me to call to find out what happened to the pizza man?” She turned halfway toward him.

“I’m not hungry,” he said, without looking at her.

This flustered her. This lack of attention. “Well, you were so concerned about him and his family a few minutes ago, I thought you’d want to know.”

“Yes, that was a wonderful pie, wasn’t it? Pie in the face.”

“Do you still want that cab number? I can’t find it.” She was lying. She was only saying this to give him a path to come to her.

“I’ll just take the subway.”

She was angry now because he didn’t take the opportunity she’d offered. “So you’re leaving then?”

“I think it’s the best thing.”

“Go ahead. Do what you want.”

“At least I know what that is.”

“And what is it?” she asked quickly.

“I should correct myself. I know what I used to want.”

She stomped away to the bathroom and slammed the door. Fire finished his water, washed the glass, and left, as the sound of the shower filled his head like a round of applause.

chapter six

On Monday morning, blades of light slipped through the blinds and slashed her face. Torpid from melancholy, she barely stirred. Fire was gone.

She’d made three calls to his hotel, leaving messages the first two times and discovering with the third that he’d checked out, which saddened her because there was so much that she wanted to tell him. She would not have answered the doorbell if she’d known it was Lewis; she’d wanted Fire to spend the night with her; she was feeling something for him that she had never felt before. But she also needed time to make up her mind because Lewis, after all, had been in her life for a while. They had a history and that had to count for something.

But there was something else that she was feeling, that she would not have said: that it scared her that he could be satisfied with just the basics in life. She aspired to more than that, and had achieved many of her aspirations, and she didn’t want to slip, didn’t want to be with anyone who she thought might bring her down.

That Lewis was ambitious was not insignificant, she told herself as she dressed for work. What was so wrong, she asked herself, for wanting to be in a relationship with someone who was driven in the same way that she was?

And further, was it pragmatic for her, as a black woman over thirty, a member of the demographic group that was least likely to be married—irrespective of looks, talent, or education—to enter a relationship primarily for love?