The Ramblers by Aidan Donnelley Rowley Read Free Book Online

flinch, as if she’d been punched in the stomach. But then Smith reached for her laptop so they could Google him. At first Clio felt a flare of resistance to this idea; part of her wanted to stop her friend, to put off the information-gathering and just let this play out. But she said nothing and sat by Smith’s side as she clicked her way through Henry’s past.
    All they had to do was type in Henry Kildare Ireland hotel and they learned quite a lot. Of his birth in 1963 in Stranmillis, a suburb of Belfast; his graduation with honors from Oxford, where he studied business. The names of his hotels in Northern Ireland and here in theStates. The awards he’d collected for his professional and philanthropic greatness. A profile of him in Vanity Fair revealed that he moved to the United States in 1994. Two sentences in this article popped: I’m not looking to get married. I’m married to my work.
    Sound bites. A cliché. At the time, all of it an immense relief. Reading this about him, Clio felt hopeful and encouraged. On the topic of marriage, she was not indifferent. The fear in her was real, jagged. Possibly a bona fide phobia, she learned. It had a clinical name even: gamophobia . While friends like Smith giddily anticipated this step in their lives, the idea of it petrified Clio. She was willing to feel love, to commit to a point, but the concept of forever, of a legal binding to another person, haunted her. Henry, with his five decades of bachelorhood and demanding professional life, seemed a safe bet, a man who wouldn’t push her toward something she wasn’t ready for.
    And then there were pictures. Images of Henry, always appearing slightly disheveled in his quirky, tweedy finery, old-fashioned suits and hats, those old Dubarry boat shoes, always the same subtly crooked smile, a litany of swan-necked socialites draped on his side. Also: a younger Henry with his banker father, Declan Kildare, and with his late mother too, Dublin-born Aoife Kildare, an administrator for the Grand Opera House. Clio could see that Henry had her almond-shaped eyes. At the flurry of images, Smith grew excited. Look at you, finding a blue-eyed George Clooney.
    The details had a funny, almost dizzying effect on Clio. The more she learned, the less real he seemed. The image in her mind of this bedraggled, intelligent man on the park bench began to recede as she took in image after image of the same yet different man. The hours spent searching made her feel like what happened in the park was fiction, a footnote that would be lost.
    But then she read Here Is New York, the little book that he’d clutched in his hands and raved about. When she finished the book, a piece of paper floated to the carpet of Smith’s guest room and she scrambled to retrieve it. You might just be my thing.
    Clio checks the time, sees that it’s coming up on nine. “Oh no. I’m going to be late for my tour.”
    Clio scrambles to get dressed. In the bathroom, she splashes water on her face and wipes away some of last night’s makeup, which still lingers. She pulls her hair back in a ponytail. Back in Smith’s guest room, the room she’s come to think of as hers, she looks around at all of her books and boxes of papers, her small collection of binoculars.
    Will she leave this room and go live in a hotel with Henry? Staying here was always meant to be temporary anyway. The plan had been to find her own place, but this was never in the cards; all those years working on her PhD at Columbia, doing research at the museum, and this was the only way she could afford to live in Manhattan.
    Clio felt guilty that she wasn’t contributing enough, but Smith insisted she not worry, that she wasn’t paying either—her parents were—and besides, she wanted Clio around. It would be a continuation of college. But Clio did worry and worry some more, then and particularly now that she’s still here after all