Page 40 - In Five Years

Chapter Five

I get the job; of course I do. They call me a week later and offer it, a fraction
below my current salary. I argue them up, and by January 8 I’m giving my two
weeks’ notice. David and I move to Gramercy. It happens a year later, almost

down to the day. We find a great unfurnished sublet in the building we’ve always
admired. “We’ll stay until something opens to buy,” David tells me. A year later
something opens to buy, and we buy it.

David begins working at a hedge fund started by his ex-boss at Tishman. I get
promoted to senior associate.
Four and a half years pass. Winters and falls and summers. Everything goes

according to plan. Everything. Except that David and I don’t get married. We
never set a date. We say we’re busy, which we are. We say we don’t need to until
we want kids. We say we want to travel. We say we’ll do it when the time is

right—and it never is. His dad has heart trouble one year, we move the next.
There are always reasons, and good ones, too, but none of them are why. The

truth is that every time we get close, I think about that night, that hour, that
dream, that man. And the memory of it stops me before I’ve started.
After that night, I went to therapy. I couldn’t stop thinking about that hour.
The memory was real, like I had, in fact, lived it. I felt like I was going crazy and

because of that, I didn’t want to talk to anyone, not even Bella. What would I
say? I woke up in the future? Where I had sex with a stranger? The worst thing

is, Bella would probably believe me.
I know that therapists are supposed to help you figure out whatever insanity is
lingering in your brain, and then help you get rid of it. So the following week I
went to someone on the Upper West Side. Highly recommended. In New York,

all the best shrinks are on the Upper West Side.