Emma's Table by Philip Galanes

freezing out there,” she said, lifting her shoulders up around her ears, as if an arctic gust had just blown through, making her red coat even shorter at her thighs.
    Bobby wondered if the girl thought he lived there. He only came around a couple of times a week, but she wouldn’t know that.
    He wondered if she had any notion of a “secret apartment.”
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    As a young man, practically a newlywed still, Bobby had rented a small apartment—not so different from this one, he thought—in an ordinary building on the Upper West Side: Sixty-sixth Street, he remembered, just off Broadway. He kept it a secret from Emma, of course. He needed to have a place apart, safe from all her meddling, where he wasn’t under glass.
    Bobby could see that young man still, with a slimmer waist and a jowl-free jaw, not so different from the man who stood in that hallway then: kindly and good-natured, a little weak. He was no match for Emma at all. So he rented a small apartment, which he set up like a newlywed of one—his bride gone missing. He remembered pondering the arrangement of the living room so carefully. Maybe he should try the couch over there?
    Emma wouldn’t dream of consulting him on such questions.
    It hardly matters now, he thought, which was true enough, of course, but he still felt a pang, wondering what life might have been like with a woman who actually listened to his opinion every once in a while.
    Eventually, the apartment on Sixty-sixth Street gave way to another, somewhere nearby—the next in a long line of secret apartments. He’d rarely been without one for as long as he’d been married to Emma. He lived in one of them even, after the two of them separated, all those years before. They were always in this neighborhood, and always fairly nondescript, but Bobby took tremendous care in arranging them. They were a comfort to him.
    More like home, he thought, than any of the places he’d lived with Emma.
    He’d taken this last one just a week or two after moving back in with her. He’d forgotten the level of scrutiny she put him under, after all those years of living out from under her watchful eye.
    He’d come over that afternoon for just an hour or two, to stretch out on the sofa and read the Sunday paper. He was leaving in fine fettle—nicely restored, as from a long winter’s nap—with a crisp glass of wine under his belt and a roast turkey sandwich from the deli on the corner.
    â€œI haven’t seen you around lately,” the girl said.
    He’d told Emma he was going to the office.
    â€œI’ve been traveling,” he replied. Bobby wondered whether he’d ever known the girl’s name. He suspected not.
    â€œFor pleasure?” she asked, smiling at him.
    He watched her place the toe of her boot a little farther out in front of her. She began to wriggle it as if she were crushing out a cigarette.
    â€œNo,” he said, shaking his head, “all for work.”
    Bobby hadn’t been out of town since Christmas.
    â€œWell, I’ve missed seeing you,” she told him, a little kittenish.
    He recognized, finally, that the girl was flirting with him. He smiled to himself, having assumed—in all his guilt—that she was trying to pin down some inconsistency in his story, or trick an admission out of him, the way that Emma might have. He felt relieved, but not interested at all. He couldn’t imagine why such a young girl would be flirting with him in the first place.
    She was barely Cassy’s age, practically half his own.
    The girl kept smiling at him, her eyes locked onto his.
    Then again, he thought—a little emboldened by her interest—why shouldn’t she flirt? He was a good-looking man, nearly six feet two and solidly built, with the smooth, clear skin of a much younger man, and a full head of salt-and-pepper hair. I’m not so bad, he thought—and he had some money too, which might