A Girl Named Digit by Annabel Monaghan Page A

in silence across town, toward the West Side Highway. All the windows were down, and the cool spring air blew the sound of the horns and screeching brakes to make a symphony for my ears. We passed through Times Square, and I stuck my head out of the window to catch every light, every shimmer. It was like being in a big box made of Lite-Brites, but moving and magical. We passed four Broadway theaters with lines of well-dressed and not-so-well-dressed people clamoring to get in. I looked over to John, sure I would catch him watching my wonder with amusement. I was ready to defend my naiveté, but instead saw his profile with jaw clenched and brows furrowed in concentration. Did this guy have a problem giving his regards to Broadway?
    I snuck a peek into the diaper bag. Inside I expected bombing tools, and what those were going to look like I had no idea. Instead I found a stack of maybe forty-five pages of computer paper, with columns of numbers.
    “Anything?” John asked, still staring straight ahead.
    I shook my head. “No, but it’s a little more my speed than the romance babble.”
    We got onto the West Side Highway and headed uptown, the Hudson River and the lights of New Jersey in the distance. I couldn’t take it anymore. I was having the time of my life, and he was such a dud. “Okay, are you going to relax now? We did it. It sounds like you’re springing for a hotel and we’re heading back to L.A. tomorrow. Right?”
    “Shhh.” Jeez. I couldn’t figure out why he was so tense. Maybe he had big plans for our night at the hotel together? I mean, we had just spent seven solid days together, no breaks. We’d developed such an easy banter and an equally easy silence. We’d slept ten inches from each other every night and had worked two inches from each other every day. Why would he be nervous? Had I been playing too hard to get?
    “I’m going to need you to change your shoes.”
    “Why? I like these. I mean, for sitting. I feel kind of . . .”
    “Right now.” He grabbed my gym bag, pulled out my cowboy boots, and pulled my heels off. This was a little sudden. The guy’s had seven days to kiss me, and now he goes for my feet? In a cab? I pulled on my socks and boots obediently.
    “Okay, you’re kind of freaking me out.”
    He leaned in so close that I could feel his breath on my neck. In a flash I realized that my instincts had been right about these boots. I had worn them every day for four years, enduring my mother’s pleas that I try a pair of wedges. I’d had them resoled six times, because on some level I’d known that these boots had special powers. I vowed right then and there to never take them off, to never let my foot grow another half size. He was about to kiss me, and I owed it all to my boots.
    He spoke in a whisper in my ear: “I’m holding up three fingers, and when I count back to one, we are going to jump out of the cab onto the grass to our right. Do you understand?”
    I heard:
I adore you, you’re beautiful, and now I am going to kiss you like you’ve never been kissed before.
So when he threw open the taxi door and pulled me out onto the shoulder of the West Side Highway, and I felt myself crash into what passes for grass in New York City, let’s just say I was a bit surprised.
    John grabbed my hand and started running. Our taxi driver swerved to a stop, abandoned his car in the middle of the highway, and ran in our direction, screaming into his cell phone. This was all starting to make sense to me. Kiss? No. Death? Maybe.
    We were ahead of him by about a block as we ran east across Riverside Drive. We were both fairly fast, except that we were carrying our gym bags and the now-all-important diaper bag. We ran down a long block of apartment buildings on Eighty-fourth Street, barely catching the attention of the doormen standing guard. I longed to run into one of those buildings to safety but knew that John wouldn’t want to endanger the residents. We were running to get