The Ex Read Free Page B

of the Hand Building on Third Avenue and stepped out onto the crowded sidewalk. Horns blared as the traffic signal at Third and East Fifty-fourth flashed green, and nothing larger than a deliveryman on inline skates was able to budge because of the gridlocked intersection. David began to walk, glad not to be in one of the yellow taxis baking immobile in the sunlight, caught in a web of progress gone mutant and mad.
    He was an average-sized man, fit but not yet muscular despite his regular workouts at Silver’s Gym on East Fifty-sixth. With his lean features, unruly sandy hair, and round-lensed glasses with their fragile brown frames, he looked much more the intellectual than the athlete.
    Thirty-seven his last birthday, and still the supervisor of the fee reading department at Sterling Morganson Literary Agency, he was beginning to wake up nights worrying about not progressing in life. Not to where he wanted to be, anyway. His job paid reasonably well; it was simply that David had been working at it longer than he’d planned. He’d expected that by this time he’d be an authors’ representative at the agency and positioned for an eventual executive position on the board. Morganson had promised advancement but so far hadn’t delivered. That was one of the reasons David worked out so hard and diligently at Silver’s; an extra five pounds on the bench press, an extra push-up or sit-up, gave the illusion of advancement in life, even if all he really had to look forward to with certainty was another day of overseeing the critiquing of would-be authors’ manuscripts, which were usually sent back with kind and encouraging letters explaining why they were unsalable, but maybe next time, if the author learned from his or her mistakes and built on the invaluable experience of having written a novel. Yes, maybe next time.
    His musing had soured his mood, and it was too beautiful a day for that. He decided to eat lunch at a sit-down deli three blocks away.
    It was a nice walk. No one tried to sell him a Rolex watch or stuck a beggar’s cup in his face, burdening him with the guilt of the healthy and employed. A man with a huge dog wearing a kerchief around its neck was holding a sign asking for donations to buy booze for the dog. David thought that one was worth a dollar. It had to be a soul-smearing experience, begging in New York, even if you were working a scam.
    He’d finished building his salad and was standing in line to pay the deli’s cashier, when a woman spoke to him as if he were an old friend and she was surprised, though certainly not shocked, to run into him here.
    “Well, David! Hello!”
    The amazing thing was he didn’t know right away who’d spoken. Not quite recognizing the voice, though it was disturbingly familiar, he turned around, smiling, ready to bluff recognition if necessary.
    It wasn’t necessary.
    “Deirdre…” He said her name softly, his breath snatched away by whatever he was feeling. What was she doing here? Deirdre, his ex-wife, who lived in Saint Louis, a thousand miles away. You shouldn’t be here, was all he could think. He almost actually uttered the words.
    But there she was, standing behind him in line, wearing a gray, businesslike blazer and black skirt, slightly older now, but still, he had to admit, attractive. Almost as tall as his five-foot-ten, her head a mass of red hair he knew was unnatural, her smile bright and wide in a face that had grown somehow stronger. Her green eyes were sparkling with pleasure and something else beneath brows that seemed lighter than when she and David had lived, slept, and made love together. Her wide, full-lipped mouth was exactly the same as he remembered, a feral mouth that seemed always ready to bite, her upper lip sliding sensuously like the sheath of daggers over perfect, large white teeth when she smiled. He found himself staring at her lips and quickly returned his gaze to her eyes. A stranger’s eyes, a lover’s eyes.
    “It’s