Oh, Alan, why are you so weird? I shake my head. “You could always give me the Cliff Notes really fast.”

He smiles. His chin rests on my shoulder and he continues washing me, and his voice, so sexy, makes it arousing to do this, even listening to a brief synopsis of Chekhov.

By the time we’re toweling off, I’m kind of wishing he’d just take me back to bed. Sexy Alan was a turn-on, even reciting Chekhov, but it’s probably not a good idea. I’m sorer than I thought and I could feel it when he touched me there, even lightly while washing me.

I make a face at him, since he used my toothbrush without asking, and I pat my face dry with a towel.

He is already fully dressed when I join him in the bedroom.

I’m pulling on my panties and bra. “You know, you can only be useful in my study of literature if you tell me how the play ends.”

Alan is sitting on the bed waiting for me, as I rummage through Rene’s clothing. I look at him, and for some reason the complete lack of emotion on his face turns me cold.

“Ivanoff runs off stage and shoots himself in the head.”

Oh Alan, what’s going on with you? Why did you bring up Ivanoff today?

* * *

After Alan makes me breakfast, I set off to try and accommodate his clothing specifications. No matter how I try, I can’t make any of Rene’s clothes work. She is a lot taller than I am and has a leaner, less curvy build. We can share tops, an occasional skirt, but that’s about it. Jeans, never an option. And shoes, not even worth trying, since Rene definitely doesn’t have any that are closed toe.

I go down the hallway to Jack’s bedroom and into my parents’ closet. Lena’s things are still hanging here, in perfect order, where they have been since that day she left New York for California permanently. A lump swells in my throat as I stare at her neatly arranged wardrobe. Twelve years and Jack hasn’t cleaned out her things. I never gave a thought to it, but it is all still here.

Alan comes into sharp focus in my mind, as I rummage through the cedar-lined drawers. I am lost in him. I have become lost in him so quickly, so quickly that he could end us in a humiliatingly public way and then I would spend the night in angry fucking wanting to please him.

I shake my head to push away my thoughts. Jeans. Closed toe shoes. I have only a few options with my mother’s clothing. Lena was not the casual type, and what she has left behind in the casual department was New York chic in 1977. The only positive is that we are nearly the same size, though Mom was taller.

I settle on a cute pair of dark, denim overalls that I can make work by rolling the cuffs. The long sleeve shirt is a baggy beach-type thermal of Jack’s. The shoes are bucks-up buckskin ankle high hiking boots that never saw a trail or dirt. They are spotless twelve years later and I wonder why Lena even has them.

A camping trip? A hike? Something planned to please Jack, but never done. Yes, that was my mother. She definitely knew how to please him without ever doing anything she didn’t want to do. Mom was highly competent at being female and in loving Jack.

I stare at myself in the mirror. Today, I look like an incompetent girl. All I need is braids. How lame is this outfit?

Crossing into my bedroom, I hold my arms wide. “Well, what do you think? Have I managed the wardrobe specifications? And what’s up with that, anyway? Who cares what I wear?”

Alan smiles. He kisses me. “You will.”

“I will, will I?” I notice he is carrying Jack’s old leather bomber jacket atop his own leather jacket that I didn’t even notice him wearing yesterday when he arrived.

“Tie back your hair,” he orders, waits, and then tosses a bandana at me. “And put this on. It will help.”

“Help what?”

“Hurry up, Chrissie. We need to roll.”

* * *

In the parking garage, I freeze and just stare at him. It took Alan three hours to go six blocks and he did it on motorcycle? These clothes now make sense.

“I am not getting on that thing,” I protest, pulling my hand free from his.

Alan ignores me. He zips up Jack’s bomber jacket, tugs my collar high and pulls up the bandana until my nostrils and mouth are tucked in.

“I am not riding on that. Where are we going?”

He swings his leg over, turns the ignition and primes the engine with gas. He points. “Get up behind me. Put your feet there. Whatever you do, don’t let go of my body.”

I hate motorcycles. I’m more afraid of them than airplanes, and jeez, he’s got me sitting on the back of one.

Alan laughs. “Don’t worry. Neither of us is twenty-seven.”

I raise my eyebrows. An obscure literary reference they don’t teach in California, most probably, but I don’t get the joke.

“The great ones die at twenty-seven,” he explains glibly. “Hendrix. Joplin. If we are both around after we’re twenty-seven, we’ll both know what we are.”

I could have done without it being cryptic. Don’t mock death, Alan, it’s not funny. I snuggle into him closer. I press my cheek against his back and hold him tight.

“Good girl.”

“But why the motorcycle, Alan? Where’s Colin. Can’t you do something normal like drive a car?”

At the top of the garage exit, he stops, setting his feet on the ground while the metal door rolls up. He turns to look at me. “We went public, Chrissie, in a very ugly public way. I would have preferred not to do that. Ignore everything on the street. We’ll be out of the city in a couple hours.”

Everything on the street? Oh shit, and then I see it. How is it possible that there are so many of them? There are tabloid photographers blocking the exit. They are blocking the road. They are running from the front of the building, all while shouting and rapidly taking pictures.

He pushes through them, he doesn’t answer, and he speeds off really fast. It would scare the hell out of me if I wasn’t relieved to be out of there.

* * *

The traffic is thick and slow, as New York traffic is, but Alan drives like a maniac and I wonder if he really thinks he can’t die because he isn’t twenty-seven.

My rational self, trying to keep me from freaking out about all this, points out that he is only doing it because the tabloids have tried to follow. But cutting through cars at high speeds on the Washington Bridge Bronx Expressway it has given us an advantage that Colin and the car would not have.

I hold on and let him whisk me away. Still, I’d sort of like to know where we are going.

We lose the last of them by the Garden State Parkway, and he immediately eases off the speed when we enter the New York State Thruway. We are going north and away from the city.

With each mile, the tension ease out of Alan, and the feeling of soaring up roads, in the open air, is strangely liberating and soothing. I feel calmer inside and less frantic holding him. We feel good again, so connected, and so very right.

I feel a slight letdown as he turns off the highway and onto an off-ramp, gradually slowing. I lift my cheek and study the little village by the lake in front of us. I guess this is where we are going, but really Alan, couldn’t you have asked if I wanted to leave Manhattan.

He can be so highhanded at times. I add it to the rapidly growing list of adjectives about him: highhanded, brilliant, gentle, kind, sensitive, sophisticated, angry, elegant, obnoxious, and harsh. What else have I forgotten? I know that’s not the entire list.

We stop at an intersection. We haven’t spoken for hours. “Where are we?” I ask.

“Lake George. I think you’ll like it. Rural New York is very different than the city. Too many people go to New York and never leave the city. Totally different world. A good place to stay until things quiet down again.”

My gaze locks on a hokey little place with white cabins. “Well, they certainly have lodging here. I vote for the Seven Dwarfs Motel and Cabins.”