watching TV and feeling the excitement of the trip drain away. She’d been looking forward to spending time with her father, thrilled to accompany him on one of the many trips that normally took him away from her. But she was embarrassed to tell him about her reluctance to leave the hotel room, so at the end of each day she didn’t have much to offer in terms of conversation. Randall would take her to a bar down the street, where she drank soda while he explained the vagaries of the consumer electronics industry. Then they’d get broad slices of pizza draped over flimsy paper plates and eat them, folded in half, on the way back to their room, where Sophie would fall asleep in the flickering light of the evening news. How she hated that hotel room, with its musty smell, textured wallpaper, and thick windows that wouldn’t open. It was a feeling that stayed with her for the rest of her life: a deep dislike for hotels and their halfhearted attempts at hominess, as if a cheap floral bedspread and bolted-down brass lamp could supply what a traveler was missing.
All of New York, in fact, had seemed stingy and unsatisfying on that visit, especially compared with Seattle, where she was free to ride her bike for miles, having memorized the orderly lay of the suburban land. She had her favorite hangouts there: the cat-draped bookstore, the coffee-scented diner, the mall. She’d figured out which parking lots harbored the kinds of aimless, cigarette-puffing kids who would eagerly home in on a small girl on a ten-speed. She also knew which underpasses to avoid.
On subsequent visits to New York, though, she’d developed a grudging respect for the city’s hard edges, the anonymous remove of the high-rise apartment buildings, the brittle slap of fast-moving feet. There was a lonesome toughness about New York that felt very familiar to her.
Crossing Fifty-Sixth Street, Sophie was about to turn onto one of the tree-lined blocks to the east, when she stopped in front of a low shoe box of a building: the Manhattan Art & Antiques Center. The large plate glass windows were stacked high with armoires, marble busts, and regency chandeliers. Through the double doors she could see richly carpeted corridors lined with individual shops; a group of Japanese tourists mingled in the lobby, dwarfed by a pair of grandfather clocks.
Sophie pushed through the doors into the hushed coolness. The Japanese murmured quietly; the clocks ticked; Sophie’s heels sank into the carpet. The low ceilings and recessed lights provided a humble backdrop for the piles of jade carvings, Russian icons, eighteenth-century paintings, and heavily gilded furnishings behind the floor-to-ceiling storefront windows. She wandered the halls, taking in the plunder of centuries, grateful for a retreat from the bland midtown heat. She climbed a wide, curving staircase to a second floor of galleries, which were smaller and more specialized: antique books, estate jewelry, coins. At the end of one corridor she paused in front of a cluttered shop whose door was propped open. A sign in the window read “McGeorge & Fils, Antique Silver.”
Sophie peered inside, her eyes struggling to take in the scintillating jumble. Mirror-lined mahogany-and-glass cases shone with candlesticks, coffee sets, and elaborately decorated urns. Antique occasional tables, their inlaid wood surfaces polished to a high gloss, held large silver candelabras and coveys of life-size partridges and quail. Mirrored trays displayed mother-of-pearl-handled butter knives, tortoiseshell combs, and silver-and-ivory napkin rings. The air clanged with reflected light.
Toward the back of the shop she spotted a slender man seated at a delicate wooden secretary, his forearms resting on the desk, the tips of his fingers pressed together. His reddish hair, brushed back from his forehead, came to his shoulders, framing a boyish alabaster face. He was the most beautiful thing in the shop, Sophie thought. She gave him a
All of New York, in fact, had seemed stingy and unsatisfying on that visit, especially compared with Seattle, where she was free to ride her bike for miles, having memorized the orderly lay of the suburban land. She had her favorite hangouts there: the cat-draped bookstore, the coffee-scented diner, the mall. She’d figured out which parking lots harbored the kinds of aimless, cigarette-puffing kids who would eagerly home in on a small girl on a ten-speed. She also knew which underpasses to avoid.
On subsequent visits to New York, though, she’d developed a grudging respect for the city’s hard edges, the anonymous remove of the high-rise apartment buildings, the brittle slap of fast-moving feet. There was a lonesome toughness about New York that felt very familiar to her.
Crossing Fifty-Sixth Street, Sophie was about to turn onto one of the tree-lined blocks to the east, when she stopped in front of a low shoe box of a building: the Manhattan Art & Antiques Center. The large plate glass windows were stacked high with armoires, marble busts, and regency chandeliers. Through the double doors she could see richly carpeted corridors lined with individual shops; a group of Japanese tourists mingled in the lobby, dwarfed by a pair of grandfather clocks.
Sophie pushed through the doors into the hushed coolness. The Japanese murmured quietly; the clocks ticked; Sophie’s heels sank into the carpet. The low ceilings and recessed lights provided a humble backdrop for the piles of jade carvings, Russian icons, eighteenth-century paintings, and heavily gilded furnishings behind the floor-to-ceiling storefront windows. She wandered the halls, taking in the plunder of centuries, grateful for a retreat from the bland midtown heat. She climbed a wide, curving staircase to a second floor of galleries, which were smaller and more specialized: antique books, estate jewelry, coins. At the end of one corridor she paused in front of a cluttered shop whose door was propped open. A sign in the window read “McGeorge & Fils, Antique Silver.”
Sophie peered inside, her eyes struggling to take in the scintillating jumble. Mirror-lined mahogany-and-glass cases shone with candlesticks, coffee sets, and elaborately decorated urns. Antique occasional tables, their inlaid wood surfaces polished to a high gloss, held large silver candelabras and coveys of life-size partridges and quail. Mirrored trays displayed mother-of-pearl-handled butter knives, tortoiseshell combs, and silver-and-ivory napkin rings. The air clanged with reflected light.
Toward the back of the shop she spotted a slender man seated at a delicate wooden secretary, his forearms resting on the desk, the tips of his fingers pressed together. His reddish hair, brushed back from his forehead, came to his shoulders, framing a boyish alabaster face. He was the most beautiful thing in the shop, Sophie thought. She gave him a
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