My name is Dev. I work in an investment bank back that way, I say, tilting my head in the direction of South Station. I am the first man with a mustache, Miranda decides, she finds handsome.
We walk together toward Park Street station, past the kiosks that sell cheap belts and handbags. A fierce January wind spoils the part in her hair. As she fishes for a token in her coat pocket, her eyes fall to my shopping bag. “And those are for her?”
“Who?”
“Your Aunt Mira.”
“They’re for my wife.” I utter the words slowly, holding Miranda’s gaze. “She’s going to India for a few weeks.” I rolls his eyes. “She’s addicted to this stuff.”
Some how, without the wife here, it does seem so wrong. At first Miranda and I spend every night together, almost. I explains that I can’t spend the whole night at her place because my wife calls everyday at six in the morning, from India, where it was four in the afternoon. And so I leave her apartment at two, three, often as late as four in the morning, driving back to my house in the suburbs. During the day I calls her every hour, it seems, from work, or from my cell phone. Once I learn Miranda’s schedule I leaves her a message as soon as she walks through the door. “I’m thinking about you,” I'd say on the tape. “I can’t wait to see you.”
