Claire was still in New York then, working long hours at the magazine and waiting for Chicago to confirm her start date. That accidental overlap gave them six weeks in the same city before distance began. They used the time greedily. They ate cheap noodles in Chinatown, walked through Central Park in freezing rain, spent an afternoon in the Metropolitan Museum arguing about portraits, and once sat on the floor of Jack’s apartment eating takeout because he had sold his dining table before realizing movers would not arrive for another month.
Their second date ended with Claire learning that Jack could not dance.
Not badly in an endearing way. Truly not at all. A tiny bar near West Fourth Street had a jukebox and a narrow floor where couples moved to old soul records. Claire pulled him up when “My Girl” started. Jack attempted two steps, kicked the leg of a chair, apologized to the chair, and then blamed architecture for requiring his attention to fixed objects. Claire laughed so hard she had to sit back down.
“You are a public hazard,” she told him. “I draw movement. I don’t perform it.” “You’ll have to learn before my sister has an anniversary party.”
“Your sister has been married eight days.” “I plan ahead.” He kissed her at the bar table before she could say anything else.
Those weeks mattered because they gave the relationship texture outside emergency. Claire saw Jack impatient in grocery-store lines, distracted when work followed him home, and unexpectedly tender with an elderly neighbor whose kitchen sink kept leaking. Jack saw Claire irritable when hungry, messy in a way her glamorous appearance concealed, and fierce about deadlines even for work she planned to leave. They discovered that physical attraction was the easiest part and that conversation became more interesting once neither was trying to impress the other.
Then February arrived and Jack moved to Boston. His new apartment was on the third floor of a narrow brick building in Jamaica Plain with radiators that hissed like offended cats. The rent was low by Boston standards and high by Jack’s standards. His new office occupied the second floor of a converted warehouse and employed twelve architects, two designers, one office manager, and a principal named Margaret Sloan who wore men’s shirts, smoked outside in all weather, and believed architecture should survive scrutiny from janitors before donors.
Jack liked her immediately.