Truly (New York 1)

She made a disgusted face. “I’ve already been to the Met, the Frick, MoMA, the sex museum, the Tenement—”

“This one’s different,” he promised.

Twenty minutes later, she was agreeing with him. “There is a hole,” she said. “There is a hole in the wall.” She squatted down next to it. “It goes all the way through to outside.”

“Yep.”

“Why is there a hole in the wall?”

“It’s an installation. PS1 is all about experimental art.”

“This is art? It’s a hole.”

“I know, but …”

“What’s it called?”

He found the placard. “It’s called The Hole at PS1.”

“That’s unhelpful.”

“I know. But the way the light comes through is kind of cool.”

“Like a laser beam.” She held her finger up in front of it, breaking the beam, and then spun around and smiled at him. “Show me something else.”

They strolled through the whole museum, taking in staircase murals, lighted globes with the word EXIT painted on them, an eerie stairwell covered in forest plants and black and white tree branches, and a video that was somehow projected into a mouse-size hole in the floor.

“What did she say?” May hunkered down by the hole and peered at the image of a nude woman swimming in what appeared to be lava.

“ ‘I am a worm and you are a flower.’ ”

“This is the weirdest place I have ever been.”

“Good weird or bad weird?”

“The very best weird. My mother would die.”

After they finished at the museum, he took her to the beer garden in Astoria. It was almost four, and he was hungry and thirsty, tired of walking. They split a pitcher of beer and ate sauerkraut and bratwurst. She didn’t blink when he ordered headcheese.

He thought she might actually be the perfect woman.

Had it been like this with Sandy? He tried to remember dates they’d been on. Whole days they’d spent together this way, sharing food, entertaining each other with jokes and wry observations. But all his mental images of Sandy were kitchen images—the restaurant where they’d met, then Sardo. He didn’t have a single memory of Sandy like this. She had never been this easy.

May sat next to him with her back to the picnic table, leaning on her elbows and gazing at the late afternoon crowd of revelers. She’d crossed her boots at the ankle, and her top toe bounced gently to the music being piped through the restaurant’s speakers. The sun hit the crown of her head, turning her hair gold-red and making her glow.

He felt the same glow inside his body. A fullness in his chest. A gratitude—that he was alive, that he was with May. He took a bite of his brat, savoring the pop of his teeth through the casing, the rich, fatty taste of seasoned meat. The world tasted good. Smelled good.

She’d done this to him, somehow.

He hoped that when she left, he could keep this feeling. Maybe he’d figure out what to do with it.

Maybe he’d even figure out what to do with himself.

She must have felt his scrutiny, because she looked sideways and smiled at him over her shoulder.

“This was a good day,” she said.

“Yeah?”