Novels by Sylvia

I walked to the elevator. Not because I had forgiven him. Not because the envelope against my thigh hadn't just changed every calculation I'd been running since I woke up on a stranger's couch. I walked to the elevator because the lobby had Marcus in it and the revolving door had the street in it and Alvin's man had a cab number somewhere in it, and the only direction that was mine this morning was up. Fabiola stepped back when I stepped in. The doors closed. Forty-eight floors of silence so total I could hear the cable in the wall. My eyes on the numbers. His on the floor. The envelope flat against my thigh where he couldn't see the handwriting. The doors opened. I walked out. He followed. He hadn't slept. That was the first thing the penthouse light told me. Red at the rims. The skin underneath gone grey-purple. His shirt was the same shirt from last night, collar open, unchanged. The face of a man who had spent the night on a bathroom floor or a couch or wherever men go wh

The ceiling was not white. After thirty-eight days of waking under white ceilings, this one was cream, with a water stain in the far corner shaped like a hand. The light through the curtains was flat grey. The color of a city that hadn't decided yet what kind of day it would be. The second thing was the cold. Harry's jacket was gone from my shoulders. Someone had moved me from the green leather couch. Someone had put me in a bed with a grey duvet and a pillow that smelled of cedar and something faintly mineral. The pearl earrings were on the nightstand beside me. Side by side. In a small careful row. Someone had taken them out while I slept so the hooks wouldn't dig into my neck. The third thing was that I was not alone in the bed. I didn't move. I lay on my back and stared at the water-stain hand on the ceiling and let the information arrive one piece at a time, the way you lower yourself into cold water slowly. The grey duvet. The cedar smell. The pearl earrings like two small

Hello, Jenny. Like we had bumped into each other at the office. Like this was not a bar at midnight on a Saturday with my wrist bruising and three whiskeys in my blood and his family's name running through my life like a river I hadn't agreed to drown in. I looked at him. He looked at the bar. "How long have you been sitting here." "About as long as you have." "That's not possible." "Corner booth by the window. I was there when you came in. You didn't look at anything when you walked through that door except the stool at the end of the bar." The slow music moved through the speakers. The bartender wiped the counter at the far end. Three other people in the bar and none of them were paying attention to two quiet people sitting two feet apart. "You followed me." "No." Still looking at the bar. "I was already here. I come here on Saturday nights. Two years now. I knew what building you lived in. When you walked through that door I thought about leaving." A pause. "Then I saw you

He smelled like a bar when he came in. Not the good kind of drunk. The kind that had been building since noon and turned mean somewhere around six. The elevator opened at ten forty-seven and he walked into the penthouse like a man who had spent five hours talking himself into something. I was at the kitchen island. Sunday dinner notes spread in front of me. Four days of preparation. Four days of watching Alvin's face in my memory and listening to burner phones and trying to find the shape of a truth nobody would hand me whole. He stopped in the doorway. Looked at me. Looked at the notes. Looked at me again. "Preparing for your performance?" "Go to bed, Fabiola." "Which one are you dressing for? My father or my brother?" He moved into the kitchen. "Because the green dress was my father's idea. But you approved Harry's contract in the margin. In your own handwriting. Approved at requested increase. J.A." I set my pen down. "You went through my desk." "My name is on that desk."

The text came from Alvin's personal line on a Wednesday afternoon. I was mid-sentence with the Ashworth legal team when I saw it. I lost three seconds. Family dinner. Sunday, seven o'clock. Harry is in town. Dress appropriately. — A. Three sentences. The weight of a brick. Thirty-seven days in this family. I had heard Harry's name said three different ways. Alvin said it the way a man says the name of a wound that hasn't closed. Fabiola had said it once, on a night loose with bourbon, then shut the door on it so fast I felt the draft from across the kitchen. The burner phones said it like a warning. Do not mention Harry in this apartment. And now a Sunday dinner. A chair at the table that would not be empty. I finished the call. Set the phone down. Looked at the orchid Alvin had placed on my desk the first week. The petals had gone the color of old paper. I had been watering it every three days. It was dying anyway. Some things die slowly no matter what you do for them. I t

The message came at midnight. Veronica did not fly from Paris. She drove from across town. Ask yourself who sent her, and why tonight. I read it four times. Then I put the phone face-down on my chest and stared at the ceiling until the dark felt thick. Alvin. It had to be Alvin. He had sent her knowing Fabiola was gone. Knowing I would open the door. Knowing what would happen when Fabiola came home and found out. Somewhere across the city, he had gone to sleep satisfied, and I had been lying here since midnight doing the math. The question was why. At 4:17 the answer landed on my chest like something dropped from a height. He needed to know whose side I would fight on. He had sent Veronica to see what I would do. Break. Cover for Fabiola. Call Alvin with a warning. Protect the arrangement. Instead I had shown her the contract and screamed at my husband in a hallway. I had fought for myself. Alvin had his answer. Wednesday morning the penthouse was wrong. Fabiola didn't l