Sergio had put you in the guest bathroom to freshen up before the driver came and you had come out because the guest bathroom did not have a mirror the size he had told you it did. He was still in the master, taking his time with the bow tie. The wine you had poured yourself in the kitchen was on the coffee table now, and you had stepped out onto the balcony because the view was better than the room. The city was a wall of light from the forty-seventh floor down.
You turned to go back inside for the wine and caught something in the reflection of the door glass. Not you. Or not the you Sergio had let onto the elevator. You slowed. You looked. The reflection was clearer now that you were closer to it. Silver hair past your shoulder. A woman's shoulder, bare. You did not have a bare shoulder. You looked down at your own arms and the arms did not match the tuxedo shirt you had put on an hour ago.
The shirt was gone. The trousers were gone. There was a robe on your shoulders, white, and something dark under it at your ribs and hips that was mostly lace. You reached up and the strand of hair between your fingers was fine. Cold under your knuckle. It did not stop when you tried to pull it back over your ear because there was too much of it. There was a chain at your throat you had not put there. Gold. Small pendant on it, warm from your own skin.
You smelled the perfume from the small dish on the counter where Sergio kept it for the housekeeper. That had been in the room when you had come in and it had not changed. Everything else had. The floor under your bare feet was the same marble it had been ten minutes ago but you did not remember taking off your shoes.
The bathroom door in the master opened. The knot of the tie was still in Sergio's hand and he had come out to ask you if you would fix it because you had always been better at it than he had. He looked at you at the window. He did not put the tie down. He did not step back into the bathroom either. You said the line before he could think of anything to say.
"Come here. Let me fix it," you said.
Sergio did not move for a full second. Then he came across the marble to where you stood by the glass. He did not look at the robe. He did not look at what was under it. He looked at your hands.
You held them out. He put the ends of the tie into them. His knuckles brushed yours and did not stop when they were done. He looked at your face while you worked. You could feel him deciding.
You tied the knot without looking at it. Your fingers had done it a hundred times but not on him and not on his tie and not on this side of it. When it was done you smoothed the loops. Then you flattened your palms against his lapels and left them there.
He said, "The driver."
"Call him," you said. "Tell him to go home."
He took his phone out of the inside pocket of the jacket with the hand that was not at your waist. He dialed by feel. He said three words and hung up. He set the phone down on the console table beside the wine you had poured.
He did not kiss you first. He put his forehead against yours and stayed there for a beat. His breath was slow. Yours was not.
"Is it you," he said. It was not a question.
"It is me."
Then he kissed you. His mouth was warm and there was scotch on it from the glass he had poured himself in the master while dressing. His hand went into your hair at the back of your head. The other hand was still at your waist over the sheer of the robe.
He walked you backward from the window across the marble to the low couch that faced it. You did not look at where you were going. He did not either. The city lights on the glass moved slowly across you as he went.
He sat you down on the arm of the couch. He knelt on the marble between your knees. He undid the tie at the front of your robe with one pull. The robe fell open on either side of your ribs. He looked at what he had uncovered for a second before he touched it.
He put his mouth against the flat of your sternum first. Then between your breasts. He undid the front of the black lace with two fingers and the whole thing came apart. He got the lace off your shoulders and it fell somewhere on the marble. The panties he did not bother with — he moved them aside with his thumb.
He stood. He undid his belt and the fly of the tuxedo trousers without taking his eyes off you. He kept the shirt on. He came down against you and hooked one of your knees over his hip and pushed in with one stroke that did not stop.
You gasped once against the collar of his shirt. He held there when he was against you. Then he moved. Slow. The couch was firm under you and the city was a wall of light through the glass over his shoulder.
He got faster after a minute. He put his hand at the side of your neck where the pendant sat and his thumb along the line of your jaw. He kept looking at your face. You closed your eyes and the light of the city came through the lids in a pale wash.
He shifted. He picked you up off the arm of the couch and set you on the marble floor on your back on the sheer of the robe you had come in with. He came down over you. He hooked both of your knees over his shoulders and pushed back in, and the angle changed, and you made a sound that echoed off the glass and the ceiling and back down to you.
You came with your fingernails against the back of his neck and the marble cold along the whole length of your back. He kept moving through it. His pace broke a minute later. He pulled out and finished on the front of the lace panties where they were still pushed to the side. The sound of it was very small in the room.
He held there for a long moment breathing against your throat. Then he lay down on the marble beside you and put his arm across his eyes.
The city outside the window had not noticed. A helicopter crossed the frame from the left to the right, blinking, and its light landed for a second on the wine glass on the coffee table, and then moved on.