After Hours is a romance column: sensual, non-explicit fiction for grown-up readers. All characters are invented adults; any resemblance to real persons is coincidental.
Vera and Thomas, part three.
On Tuesday it was Vera who sent the invitation, and she composed it with the care she gave to a condition report. “You showed me your bridge,” she wrote. “I’d like to show you the whole city. Corona Plaza stop on the 7, five-thirty. Wear comfortable shoes. This is a structural inspection.” She read it over twice, removed an exclamation point that had crept in without her permission, and pressed send before she could remove anything else.
The 7 train rose out of its tunnel in Long Island City and ran east along its old elevated track above Queens, past rooftop water towers and laundromats and a hundred languages’ worth of shop signs, the late October sun flashing between the girders. Vera, who was thirty-nine and had lived in Manhattan for most of her adult life, liked it for exactly that reason: it reminded her that the city did not end where her habits did.
Thomas was waiting at the foot of the station stairs, holding two paper cups of coffee and wearing, she noted with approval, sensible shoes. “I’ve been told this is an inspection,” he said. “I brought supplies.”
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