By Noon

"This is a joke," you say.

"It's a contract." Max Delaune holds it out. "Jokes are shorter."

You don't take it. Pigeons explode off the steps below you. Somewhere on Centre Street a siren winds up and fades.

"You don't know me."

"I know you read things." He tilts his head toward the courthouse doors. "Your husband didn't. I'd like to be married to the one who does."

"Ex-husband."

"For forty minutes. I'm aware." The smile again, softer. "There's a coffee cart at the corner of Worth. The man makes terrible coffee and has a folding chair. Read it there. If you hate it, Ava, throw it in the bin and I'll never bother you again."

It's the most insane thing anyone has ever said to you. It's also the first time in five years a man has asked you to read something before you signed it.

You take the contract.

The coffee is in fact terrible. The folding chair wobbles. Max stands six feet away with his hands in his pockets, looking at the traffic, giving you room like he's done it for a living.

The contract is thirty pages and written in English, which is the first surprise.

Term: one year from the date of marriage.

Residence: the wife will be offered private rooms at the husband's residence. Separate bedrooms. The wife's door locks from the inside.

Representation: the husband's attorneys will represent the wife in any matter arising from her prior marriage, at the husband's expense.

Security: the wife will be provided protection at the husband's expense for the term.

You look up. "Protection from what?"

"From the Halden lawyers." He doesn't turn his head. "They'll be at your door by Friday."

"Why? I asked for a piano."

"Not on the steps." Now he looks at you. "You'll want to see it with your own eyes, not hear it from the man your husband hates. I'd rather you read it than take my word."

"And what do you get?"

"A wife." He says it lightly, but his jaw tightens. "I'm closing a merger in the spring. My board reads the gossip pages. Models, yachts, a very unfortunate photo in Monaco that was not what it looked like. They'd like me stable. Married is stable."

"So I'm a press release."

"You're a woman who just walked out of a courthouse with nowhere to go." The gray eyes don't flinch. "I'm offering you somewhere. If it helps that it's useful to me, let it help."

You read the rest. Page by page. Allowance. Medical. A clause that says you may end the arrangement at any time with written notice and he may not. You read that one twice.

Section 7 says The wife's obligations are set out in Schedule B. There is no Schedule B. The last page is blank except for the signature lines.

"Schedule B is missing."

"My lawyers are finishing it. You'll have it before the week's out." He meets your eyes. "If you don't like it, clause 4 lets you walk away the same day."

Public appearances, you assume. Galas. Smiling at his board. You've spent five years smiling at boards. You could do it in your sleep.

"New York has a twenty-four-hour wait after the license," you say. "I know that. I've been planning a wedding before."

He takes a single folded page from his inside pocket and hands it to you. A judicial waiver of the waiting period, signed and sealed, with today's date.

"How did you get this?"

"I asked a judge nicely."

"Today?"

He doesn't answer that. He just watches you with an expression you can't read, as if something enormous is balanced on whatever you say next.

You think of the breakfast table. The card he moved for his phone. Four minutes on the clock.

You think: I am thirty years old and I have never once done anything reckless.

"I need a witness," you say.

Priyanka Bhatt sprints three blocks from the subway in her bar apron, black hair flying, gold hoops, a face that turns heads even at a dead run.

"I got your text," she pants. "It said 'come to Worth Street, I'm getting married.' I assumed you'd been kidnapped by a cult."

"Kind of."

Then she sees Max. She stops. She looks him up and down, slowly, the way she inspects a bottle of wine she suspects is counterfeit.

"Oh no," Priyanka says. "He's gorgeous. That's worse."

"Ms. Bhatt." Max offers his hand. "I've heard The Last Word makes the best Sazerac below Fourteenth Street."

"Who told you that?"

"I have excellent sources."

She shakes his hand and pulls you aside. "Ava. You signed divorce papers an hour ago."

"I read every page of this one, Priyanka."

Her eyes go soft and furious at the same time. "Yeah," she says. "I bet you did." Then, to Max, loud enough for the line at the clerk's window: "If you hurt her, I will put something in your drink they can't find in an autopsy."

"Noted," says Max, and you swear he looks pleased.

The City Clerk's office at 141 Worth Street is bright and municipal and full of happiness that isn't yours: a couple in matching sneakers, a bride in a vintage veil, a grandmother crying into a corsage.

The officiant reads the words. Do you, Ava, take this man... You say I do and your voice doesn't shake, which surprises you more than anything.

Max says it like he's been practicing for years.

At 11:52 the officiant says, "You may kiss."

Max looks at you. A pause, a small, careful question in it.

Then he lifts your hand and kisses your knuckles, just above the new ring. His mouth is warm. It's barely anything.

It goes through you like current.

"The rest," he says quietly, "is yours to decide."

In the back of his black car, while Priyanka argues with someone on her phone about an ice delivery and the driver, a huge silent man with a shaved head, pulls into traffic, you open the chess app.

I did it. I'm out. And I did something insane right after.

The reply comes faster than it ever has.

I'm glad. I'm so glad. I have to go away for a while, I think. Be brave. You don't need me to tell you that anymore.

You stare at it. It feels like a door closing in a hallway you didn't know you loved.

"Everything okay?" Max asks from the other side of the seat.

"A friend," you say. "Saying goodbye."

He looks out the window for a long moment. "Good friends know when to," he says.

The car stops on Worth Street to let Priyanka out, and the doors open, and the sidewalk is full of cameras.

Flashes. Shouting. Mr. Delaune! Max! Who's the bride? Is that Bryce Halden's wife?

He steps out first and puts his body between you and the lenses without touching you. He's smiling for them, easy and lethal, while his hand hovers at your back, never landing.

You realize, too late, that the photographers didn't find you by accident.

By one o'clock, sitting at a red light on Park Avenue, your phone won't stop buzzing. The photo is everywhere: you on the clerk's steps, his hand at your back, your face turned up toward his like he's the sun.

Then the screen changes.

Bryce.

In a year of you calling him and him not picking up, he has never once been the one who called.