The Shameless Hour by Sarina Bowen Page A

course. After the buzzer, Pepe gave me another wet kiss on the forehead and got up. “You want me to walk you home?”
    “I think I’ll stay a little longer,” I heard myself say. I don’t know why, but I really didn’t want to walk out the door under Pepe’s arm while Rafe looked on. I shouldn’t care what he thought. But I did care. And that bugged the shit out of me.
    “Good night, cherie ,” he said.
    “Night, honey.”
    On the footstool, Whittaker perked up. “Another drink?” he asked.
    I sat back down on the chair and wondered what I was doing. “Maybe.”
    “How do you feel about a gin and tonic?” he asked.
    “That would be great,” I lied.
    “Be right back,” he said.
    Like a fool, I stayed there, waiting to drink a gin and tonic with Whittaker. Knowing that it was a terrible idea.
    It was, too. Although it would take me weeks to learn just how terrible.

Eight
October
    Rafe
    O ctober was rainy and cold , and my team was on a four game losing streak. Not fun.
    When I wasn’t chasing down the soccer ball, I took to jogging around campus listening to bachata tunes on my iPod. Alison hadn’t liked the Dominican music I listened to, so it was kind of funny that I now used her gift to play it constantly.
    Ear buds firmly in place, I headed for an Urban Studies lecture. The class had remained an uncomfortable place in my life. Alison still shot me remorseful looks whenever I happened to glance at her. In contrast, Bella studiously ignored me. The longest conversation we’d had in the past two weeks occurred when I held our entryway door open for her, and she’d said “thank you.”
    The lecture hall was nearly full when I slipped in, nabbing a seat against the back wall. “Let’s get started,” Professor Giulios called. “We have a lot to cover today. I’m handing out the final projects. This is for all the marbles, kids.”
    At that, everyone got quiet.
    “At the end of my course, I always hold a contest. The details change from year to year, but the rules remain the same.” He began to tick them off on one hand. “In teams, you will compete to redesign and redevelop half of a New York City block. The winning team will come up with the best concepts both economically and spatially. Without building a giant eyesore, you will maximize the square footage of your construction for the benefit of both the tenants and the neighborhood. But paying for your development is also part of the assignment. And twenty-five percent of the square footage must be set aside for affordable housing.”
    I scribbled notes furiously as he spoke. This was going to be fun. I’d seen dozens of redevelopment projects rise over New York in my lifetime, right? I ought to be able to come up with something interesting.
    “Last year I put my students to work on a block on the Lower East Side. This year? West 165th Street.”
    I dropped my pencil. That was really close to my neighborhood.
    The professor projected a photo on the screen at the head of the room, and a familiar facade came into view. It was a sketchy low-slung commercial building, with a parking lot beside it. I was pretty sure people often slept on the sidewalk there, because that side of the street didn’t have much foot traffic. At night, it was pretty dark and more than a little dodgy.
    “Here we are,” Professor Giulio said. “This structure has been condemned, and you’ve got that parking lot beside it to play with, too.” He gave rough dimensions for the developable area, and I scribbled them down.
    Someone raised his hand in front. “Do we need to include parking in our design?”
    The professor shook his head. “This parking lot is too impractical to worry about. Any other questions? Don’t you want to hear about the prize?” He grinned. “Every year I have someone in the city government judge the teams with me. This time it’s going to be Mr. Jimmy Chan, the commissioner of city restaurant development. He’s also the guy who licenses