Page 43 - In Five Years

Chapter Six

It’s a Saturday in June, and I’m going to meet Bella for brunch. We haven’t seen
each other in almost two months, which is the longest we’ve ever gone,
including her London sojourn of 2015, when she “moved” to Notting Hill for six

weeks to paint. I’ve been buried in work. The job is great, and impossible. Not
hard, impossible. There is a week’s worth of work in every day. I’m always
behind. I see David for five minutes, maybe, every day when one of us wakes up

sleepily to great the other. At least we’re on the same schedule. We’re both
working toward a life we want, and will have. Thank god we understand each
other.

Today it’s raining. It’s been a wet spring, this one of 2025, so this is not out of
the ordinary, but I ordered some new dresses and I was hoping to wear one. Bella
is always calling my style “conservative,” because ninety percent of the time I’m

in a suit, and I thought I’d surprise her with something unexpected today. No
luck. Instead, I tug on jeans, a white Madewell T-shirt, and my Burberry trench

and ankle rain boots. Temperature says sixty-five degrees. Enough to sweat with
a top layer but be freezing without one.
We’re meeting at Buvette, a tiny French café in the West Village we’ve been
going to for years. They have the best eggs and croque monsieur on the planet—

and their coffee is strong and rich. Right now, I need a quart.
Also, it’s one of Bella’s favorite spots. She knows all the waiters. When we

were in our twenties, she’d go there to sketch.
I end up taking a cab because I don’t want to be late, even though I know
Bella will be running fifteen minutes behind. Bella is chronically fifteen to
twenty minutes late everywhere she goes.

But when I arrive she’s already there, seated in the window at the two-top.