Flings Read Free Page B

He wore a blue windbreaker, held a brown clipboard, stood smack in the middle of the sidewalk. Ellen had more space than she knew what to do with out at her place and was glad for the company. She helped him buy a secondhand Trek bike to ride to work. It turned out that Danny and Ellen were the ones who were right for each other all along. Weird world. Weirder still for everything Ellen knew about Danny and Rachel, which was, well, everything.
    They only had one secret from Ellen: the whole heroin saga, the third plotline of that already-storied April day—Danny and Rachel both gone dark with stupidity, and Ellen in her blazing grief. “You know what I think?” Rachel said to Danny one time. “There’s nothing honorable about hurting someone you care about for no good reason. I think that the only way to make it up to her is to keep keeping the secret.” They never brought it up again, even to each other. What else was there to say?
    Ellen specialized in contract law at BU. Danny designed websites. They had a son and named him Dylan and were doing well for themselves but had no love for Boston, so when an opportunity arose in Hong Kong she said she wanted to take it. They lived in a tower in the Central Mid-Levels and Ellen commuted to an office in Taikoo. They had been in Asia nearly three years and loved it, but were always eager for their old friends to come visit. Rachel, freshly divorced at thirty-one from a man named Rowan, was encouraged and cajoled and prodded and finally said yes. She would come for thirteen days—all her vacation time, but the flight was fifteen hours so it hardly seemed worth it to come for less.
    (Percy had died several years earlier, thrown from a horse while on a weekend getaway with Kat’s successor. Kat herself still lived in Portland. She had a new set of friends, owned her apartment, sent e-cards on all their birthdays, but had basically written herself out of their lives.)
    â€œI had the weirdest dream,” Ellen says on the morning of the day Rachel lands. “I dreamed I never got tired of experimental film. I was on the faculty at Hampshire. I had this big brass key that opened a room full of old projectors. Also, I’d never quit smoking.”
    â€œI’m glad you quit smoking,” Danny says. Then, “Have you ever even been to Hampshire?”
    â€œI’ve never even been to Amherst,” she says, laughing. They make love and then she has to get ready for work. She’d have liked to go with Danny to meet Rachel, but this whole week is going to be rough, in no small part because she’s taking several personal days next week: they’re going to show Rachel the city, do all that touristy stuff they’re always hearing about but never seem to get around to checking out.
    If you asked her, Ellen would say it is a testament to her own superlative taste in people that Danny and Rachel had the strength to exhaust their sickness for each other, then recover to achieve the chaste, sibling-like love they were always meant to enjoy. If this is a partisan reading, let it slide. Few enough stories end well, and even this one is haunted by the specter of Rachel’s future, betrayed by but also bereft without that SOB Rowan. But that problem’s on ice back in America, so for now let us say things are going well enough.
    They drop Rachel’s things at the apartment, then head right back out again: to Taikoo to meet Ellen for lunch. The trick is to stay busy so you stay awake. If you can make it through the first day, you’ll sleep hard that night, beat your jet lag. Dylan’s at kiddie gymnastics class with the live-in housekeeper, here called an amah, or helper. Ellen has to cut lunch short for a call. Danny and Rachel take the metro under the harbor to Kowloon, where they wander in and out of neighborhoods and markets until it gets dark. Ellen checks in via text every hour or so, but the upshot is she’s not