Grace Grows Read Free

same, or maybe I was older. When’s your birthday?”
    Turned out he was older. By two months.
    We came to Broadway and before the walk signal came on he took my hand and pulled me into the crosswalk. Halfway across we had to dash to the corner to miss being tagged by a homicidal taxi driver. It didn’t bode well for Tyler Wilkie surviving five more days, let alone five years.
    My building was just a couple of blocks up. “I’ll be fine from here. Thank you.”
    “Okay,” he said, blowing into his cupped hands and pulling his collar up around his ears.
    “Where do you live?” I asked.
    “Forty-seventh, between Ninth and Tenth.”
    “You can get the train right there.” I pointed to the subway entrance across the street.
    “Oh yeah, thanks. Well, ’bye, Grace.” He leaned down. To my embarrassment I reflexively leaned away, and the kiss he must have been aiming at my cheek landed on the tip of my nose. We both laughed.
    “ ’Bye. Thank you.” I headed across Seventy-ninth.
    Halfway up the block I peeked back over my shoulder. He had bypassed the subway and was walking briskly down Broadway, head down, hands tucked under his arms.
    Steven was on the couch, watching The Matrix. He probably had a rough day. He rewatched The Matrix the way I rewatched Chocolat . And how about that Carrie Ann Moss!
    “How long have you been home?” I asked, shedding my coat.
    “A couple hours.”
    Steven is a big, bearlike guy, six-four. Solid. Gentle, with kind blue eyes. I sometimes jokingly called him Even Steven.
    I kissed him lightly on the cheek and went to bed. I didn’t want to disturb him in the middle of the “I know kung fu!” scene; it was probably recalibrating his entire outlook on life.
    On Friday morning I stepped out the door directly onto something bulky lying on the doormat. My umbrella, it turned out, with a single pink gerbera daisy rubber-banded to it and a folded piece of notebook paper tucked underneath. The spelling was appalling, but the words were nice.
Grace!
Here is your umbrela. You rock for letting me use it! It is great to be treated like a human being by someone in this city. I got another job besides dogwalking. Come on over to the cafe Sofiya sometime and I’ll slip you a cappechino!
Love,
Tyler Graham Wilkie
Cell #5702439134
    I folded the letter back up, dug Lolita out of Big Green, and tucked it between the pages.
    lunch with Julia and my subsequent urge for cloistration
     
    Once a month on a Friday my mother comes to town to buy me lunch and direct my life. She hasn’t lived in the city for twenty years, so she also uses our lunch meetings as an excuse to check out new restaurants. Yesterday I received e-mail instructions to meet her at a Malaysian place in midtown, close to my work.
    I am a punctual person; I always arrive on time, if not a little early. But I will never arrive earlier than Julia Barnum.
    When I joined her at the table there was already a milky Thai iced tea sweating at my place setting. She stood and enveloped me in the smell of freesia and expensive hair product. She works out daily and her embrace is wiry; she has beaten me at arm wrestling twice. We sat and unfolded our napkins.
    “Has something bad happened?” She anxiously pushed coppery bangs out of her face.
    “No!” I said. “Why do you always ask me that?”
    “You always look a little tragic when I see you. I’m starting to think I should take it personally.”
    Best not to overdeny. I smiled and sipped my tea. “Everything’s fine.”
    She perused the menu. “You need to cut your hair, don’t you think?”
    “Yes,” I agreed.
    “What looks good?” she asked.
    “The ginger chicken?”
    “Don’t you want to try something spicy? Maybe the beef in chili sauce?”
    “Okay, sounds good.”
    “Or how about something with tofu?”
    “That will be fine.”
    She slapped down her menu. “Stop agreeing with me!”
    My mom is a county prosecutor in Trenton, New Jersey. She is crafty and convincing