THE RELUCTANT MRS. ROWE

Sloane

I did not want to be at the auction.

Let me be clear about that. I was there because my client had called me at seven in the morning and said Sloane I need you at the Harrington Foundation gala tonight and I had said I have plans and he had said I will double your rate and I had said what time does it start because I was a corporate attorney not a saint and doubling my rate was doubling my rate.

So there I was.

In a dress I had bought for a work event eighteen months ago and never worn because every work event since had not quite justified it. In heels that were going to be a problem by ten PM. Holding a glass of champagne I was not drinking because I was technically working and also because the champagne was not very good and life was too short for bad champagne at an event that had already cost me my Friday evening.

The Harrington Foundation gala was the kind of event that happened in rooms like this one. High ceilings. Good lighting that had been specifically designed to make everyone look slightly better than they actually did. The particular energy of three hundred people all performing some version of themselves for each other simultaneously.

I was not performing.

I was working.

There was a difference and I always knew which one I was doing.

My client found me at eight and spent twenty minutes explaining what he needed me to observe about a potential business partner who was also at the event and I listened and filed everything and told him I would have a read for him by Monday and he looked relieved and went back to performing for the room.

I went back to not drinking my champagne.

The auction started at nine.

Charity auction. The kind where everything had been donated by people who wanted the tax write off and bid on by people who wanted to be seen bidding. I was not bidding. I was standing near the back watching my client across the room and making mental notes about the business partner he was currently talking to.

Then I saw the lot.

A week in a private house on the Maine coast.

I do not know why it caught me. I had never been to Maine. I had never particularly thought about Maine. But there was something about the photograph on the auction display. A kitchen with a window facing the ocean. The specific quality of a space that did not try to impress but just existed with complete confidence in what it was.

I wanted it.

Which was not something I said often or easily about anything.

I picked up a bidding paddle from the table beside me.

The bidding started at three thousand.

I went in at thirty five hundred.

Someone across the room went to four.

I went to forty five.

They went to five thousand.

I went to fifty five hundred.

This continued for longer than it should have.

I was aware on some level that I was now bidding on a Maine vacation rental with the focused aggression I usually reserved for depositions and that this was perhaps not entirely rational. I was aware of it. I was not stopping.

Six thousand.

Sixty five hundred.

Seven.

Seventy five hundred.

I turned to see who I was bidding against.

He was standing on the other side of the room.

Tall. Dark suit. No tie. The kind of man who occupied a room without announcing himself. He was looking at the display photograph with an expression I could not read from this distance and he raised his paddle with the unhurried certainty of someone who had decided he was going to win this before the bidding started.

Eight thousand.

I raised my paddle.

Eighty five hundred.

He looked across the room.

Found me immediately.

Like he had known exactly where I was the whole time.

Our eyes met across three hundred people performing for each other and bad champagne and a charity auction for a Maine vacation neither of us apparently needed.

He raised his paddle.

Nine thousand.

I held his gaze.

Raised mine.

Ninety five hundred.

Something moved at the corner of his mouth.

Not quite a smile.

Something more complicated than a smile.

He raised his paddle.

Ten thousand.

The auctioneer looked at me.

The room had noticed. The specific electric attention of people who had been performing for each other and had found something more interesting to watch.

I looked at the man across the room.

At the dark suit and the no tie and the expression that gave away absolutely nothing except for that one thing at the corner of his mouth that was more complicated than a smile.

I put my paddle down.

He had won.

He did not look triumphant.

He looked at me for a moment longer than necessary.

Then he looked back at the auctioneer.

I turned away.

My heart was doing something I was going to categorize as competitive adrenaline and absolutely nothing else.

Dara called at ten fifteen.

I had stepped out to the terrace because the room had gotten louder and I needed thirty seconds of quiet.

"How is the gala," she said.

"Fine," I said.

"You sound like someone who just lost an auction," she said.

I stared at my phone.

"How do you know about the auction," I said.

"I do not," she said. "You just told me."

I looked at the city from the terrace.

"Someone outbid me for a Maine vacation rental," I said.

"A Maine vacation rental," she said carefully.

"It had a kitchen facing the ocean," I said.

A pause.

"Sloane," she said. "Are you okay."

"I am fine," I said. "It was an auction. It does not matter."

"Then why do you sound like it matters," she said.

I looked at the city.

At the lights and the movement and the indifferent machinery of New York doing what it always did.

"The man who won it," I said. "He looked at me like."

I stopped.

"Like what," Dara said.

I did not finish the sentence.

Because I did not have the right words for what he had looked at me like and I was not sure I wanted the right words for it.

"Nothing," I said. "It does not matter."

"Okay," she said. In the tone that meant she knew it was not nothing and was giving me the space to figure that out myself.

We talked for a few more minutes.

I went back inside.

And did not look for him across the room.

Not once.

Not even a little.

His name was on the auction winner board by the door when I left at eleven.

Beckett Rowe.

I stood in front of that board for approximately three seconds.

Then I walked out.

Got in a cab.

Looked at my phone.

Typed his name into the search bar.

Read the first three results.

Put my phone face down on the seat.

And looked out the window at the city going past and thought about a kitchen facing the ocean and a man who had looked at me across a room like he had already decided something and the specific feeling of a competitive adrenaline that was categorically not anything else whatsoever.

Not anything else at all.