You adjust your tie the way you adjust everything else in your world, quickly, cleanly, like the smallest wrinkle could turn into a headline. The SUV crawls down Fifth Avenue, the city glowing cold and expensive through tinted glass, and your watch catches the light when you glance at the time. Traffic moves in impatient pulses, horns arguing with one another as if New York itself is competing for the last word. Beside you, Renata Villarreal checks her lipstick in the mirror with the calm of someone who expects doors to open before she reaches them. She looks like a magazine cover that learned how to breathe, perfect hair, perfect posture, perfect ease. You tell yourself you’re lucky to be with someone like this, someone who fits your life the way a tailored suit fits your shoulders. You tell yourself that this is what peace looks like when you’re forty and too rich to pretend you don’t have scars.
“I still don’t get how you got us a table tonight,” Renata says, sliding designer sunglasses up onto her head like punctuation. “My friend’s been trying for months. They’re always booked.” You keep your eyes on the lane, smile without showing teeth, and toss out a joke about how miracles happen when you sign energy contracts big enough to move states. She laughs, light and effortless, the kind of laugh that never asks anything of you. That’s what you like about her, you think, that she doesn’t press on your ribs where old pain lives. She’s beautiful, successful, independent, and most importantly, uncomplicated. After what happened last year, you promised yourself uncomplicated would be your religion.
