Ex

You don't shake his hand right away, which is the first time in your life you haven't.

"Her husband," you repeat.

"Of eleven years." He lowers his hand, still smiling, not offended at all. Up close he smells like expensive cedar and has the kind of tan you get on purpose. "Hadrian Thorlby. You probably know the name."

You do. Everyone in Philadelphia who reads anything about buildings knows it. Thorlby Urban. The glass towers going up along the Delaware, the converted warehouse lofts in Northern Liberties with the rooftop pools. Glasby Partners pitched them once and lost. Glasby talked about it for a month.

"I'm in 4A," you say, because you can't think of anything else.

"4A." He says it like he's filing it. "Right across the hall. Convenient."

The front door opens behind you.

Marlena comes down two steps and stops on the third. She's changed into a gray T-shirt and the jeans are the same, and her hair is down, which you've never seen. It falls past her shoulders, dark and heavy, and the streetlight makes it look like something poured. She doesn't look at you. She looks at him with an expression so flat you could set a level on it.

"Ex," she says.

"Marlenka." He holds up the peonies. "You used to love these."

"I used to love a lot of things." She doesn't come down. "What do you want, Hadrian?"

"To see you. To see the place." He tips his head back to look up at the brownstone, the cracked cornice, the fire escape with its rust blooms. His eyes move over it slowly, the way you'd look at a car you're thinking of buying. "Charming. Strube really let it go, didn't he. Shame. Good bones."

"It's late."

"I'm very interested in this block," he says pleasantly, to you, as if you'd asked. "Lot of potential on Crane Street. Lot of potential." He sets the peonies on the stoop rail, neat and careful. "Good to meet you, 4A. Take care of her. She won't let you, but try."

He walks to a long black car parked at the hydrant. It purrs away down Crane Street toward the river and is gone.

Marlena looks at the peonies for a long moment.

Then she picks them up, walks down the steps past you, and drops them in the recycling bin, brown paper and all.

"Roof," she says. "I need a beer and I'm not drinking it alone in front of you like a sad woman."

The roof of 1129 Crane Street is flat tar patched with silver paint, a chimney stack, a dead TV antenna, and four lawn chairs nobody admits to owning. From the parapet you can see the Ben Franklin Bridge lit blue across the dark, and the river under it, black and slow.

She hands you a beer from a six-pack she carried up under her arm. She opens hers on the edge of the parapet with one smack of her palm, which is the most competent thing you've ever seen a person do to a bottle.

You sit. She doesn't, at first. She stands at the edge looking at the bridge.

"You don't have to tell me anything," you say.

"I know I don't." She takes a long drink. "Eleven years. I was twenty-seven. He was thirty-three and he looked at old buildings like they were treasure, and I thought that meant we wanted the same thing."

"What did he want?"

"To buy them." She finally sits in the chair next to yours. Her knee is two inches from yours. "Then knock them down."

You wait. She drinks.

"He kept my father's workshop," she says. "In the divorce. That's what you're actually wondering, so. My father ran a restoration shop on Belgrade Street for thirty years. Dobrowski and Daughter. I learned everything in it. Now it's Hadrian's. It's in his portfolio. It's an asset." She says the word like it tastes bad.

"How did he get it?"

She's quiet so long you think she won't answer. "That's a two-beer story," she says at last. "I've had one."

"I can wait."

That gets you a look. Sideways, measuring, something almost amused in it. "You're very calm for a man whose ceiling fell on him yesterday."

"You were there. I panicked plenty."

"You held a salad bowl."

"It was a good salad bowl."

And she laughs. Short, surprised, like it got out before she could catch it. She covers her mouth with the back of her wrist. It's the second time you've heard it. The first was on the stoop last October at three in the morning, and you'd forgotten until right now how it sounded. Low. A little rough.

Your phone buzzes in your pocket. Then again. Then a third time.

You take it out without thinking. The screen lights up between you, bright in the dark, and the name on it is Larissa.

heyyy. so random but my cousin's wedding is saturday at the Merion and i need a plus one, and honestly you look SO good in a suit. i've been thinking about us. call me? xx

You lock the screen fast. Not fast enough. Marlena's eyes are on it, then on you, and her face has gone back to level.

"Different things," she says.

"What?"

"You said yesterday she dumped you by text. Different things." She stands, collects the empty bottles, very efficient suddenly. "She wants a man in a suit for Saturday. That's a thing."

"I'm not going to..."

"Not my business." She's at the roof door already, the six-pack swinging from her fingers. "Goodnight, Ethan. Lock your door. Not because of me. Because of everyone else."

The door bangs shut behind her.

You sit on the roof alone for a while with the bridge and the river and your warm beer, feeling like you lost a game whose rules nobody told you.

Back in 4A the new ceiling smells like joint compound. You lie on your couch in the dark, staring up at the square of fresh drywall she put there, still unpainted, and you think about her hand smoothing your shirt flat in the hallway yesterday, careful, like she was putting something back.

You think about the way Hadrian looked at the building. Like it was already his.

You think about the fact that you don't know anything about her at all.

Your phone lights up on your chest.

It isn't Larissa.

Marlena (4B): Larissa. The one who dumped you by text on the worst day of your life. Don't answer her.

The dots appear. Stop. Appear again.

Marlena (4B): Answer me, Ethan. Are you going?