Updated Mar 23, 2026 • ~7 min read
Chapter 6: Courthouse
ADRIAN
The wedding took eleven minutes.
He had arranged it at the Manhattan Marriage Bureau on a Tuesday morning — a weekday, early, the specific time of day when the bureau was least crowded. He had filed the paperwork in advance. He had brought two witnesses: his assistant Marcus, who was twenty-six and had the expression of someone trying very hard to behave normally, and Elena’s friend Priya, who had reviewed the contract and apparently decided to attend the legal proceeding as well, which Adrian found both unnecessary and, privately, correct.
Elena arrived at 9:52.
She was eight minutes early, which he noted because he was also early and had been standing in the anteroom calculating whether she would be.
She was wearing a dress he had not seen before — not white, not a wedding dress in any conventional sense, but a deep blue that was clearly chosen with intention. She had her hair up. She was carrying nothing except her ID and the folder Priya had handed her at the door.
She looked at him.
He said: “You’re early.”
She said: “So are you.”
He said: “I’m always early.”
She said: “Me too.”
He said: “That’s something.”
She said: “It’s something.”
They went in.
The city official was brisk and professional and read the required language at the required pace. The witnesses signed. Adrian and Elena said the words — the legal ones, the minimum required by the state of New York — and the city official produced the certificate and stamped it.
Eleven minutes.
Outside on the steps, Marcus shook Adrian’s hand and said: “Congratulations, Mr. Blackwood,” with the specific quality of someone who had many questions and had decided not to ask any of them. Priya hugged Elena and said something in her ear. Elena nodded.
Then it was just the two of them on the courthouse steps in December.
He said: “The car is at the corner.”
She said: “I know. I walked past it.”
He said: “Your things arrived this morning. I had them put in the east room.”
She said: “I asked for the room facing the park.”
He said: “The east room faces the park.”
She said: “Then that’s correct.”
They walked to the car.
The driver held the door and they got in, and the car moved into the morning traffic, and Elena looked out the window at Midtown and said nothing. He looked at his phone — eleven messages, which was a light morning — and answered the two that required immediate answers and noted the others.
He was aware of her presence in the way he was not usually aware of people’s presence. She had a quality of being completely in whatever space she was in, which was the opposite of his own quality, which was that he was always simultaneously in the space and in the space where the next decision was being made.
He said: “The apartment has a staff day on Wednesdays. The cleaning team comes at nine. Your room will be cleaned only with your permission.”
She said: “Thank you.”
He said: “There are no staff who live in. My assistant comes to the building if I need her but not to the apartment.*
She said: “Good.”
He said: “The kitchen is — I should tell you that I don’t cook.*
She looked at him.
He said: “I eat out or I have things delivered. There’s no particular system in the kitchen.*
She said: “I cook.”
He said: “I know. My mother mentioned it.” He paused. “You don’t have to cook for me.”
She said: “I didn’t say I would.” She turned back to the window. “I said I cook. I’ll cook for myself. If I’m cooking for two it’s because I chose to.”
He said: “That’s clear.”
She said: “Good.”
They arrived at the building.
The doorman said: “Good morning, Mr. Blackwood,” and then, seeing Elena: “And Mrs. Blackwood,” in the specific neutral tone of a man who had been given instructions.
Elena looked at the doorman.
She said: “Elena is fine, Henry. It’s Elena.”
Henry said: “Of course, Elena. Welcome home.”
She picked up her bag and walked to the elevator.
He followed.
In the elevator she looked straight ahead and he looked at the floor numbers and they rode in silence to the fourteenth floor. He opened the apartment door and she walked in and stood in the entrance and looked at it.
He had thought about what she would think.
Not obsessively — he had better uses for his attention — but he had thought about it once, on Sunday evening, when he was passing through the entrance on his way to his office. The apartment was large. It was the specific largeness of a space that had been designed for entertaining and was used for solitude, which produced a quality that he had been told, by his previous architect, was *dramatic,* and which he had privately thought was simply empty.
She looked at the entry, the high ceilings, the view of the park from the main windows.
She said: “It’s very clean.”
He said: “I keep it clean.”
She said: “I can tell.” She walked to the windows. She looked out at the park. “You can see the reservoir.”
He said: “Yes.”
She said: “I run sometimes. In the morning.”
He said: “The park entrance is—”
She said: “I know where the park entrance is. I grew up in this city.” She looked at the reservoir, the winter grey of it, the bare trees along the path. “I know every entrance.*
He said: “Right.”
He showed her the kitchen, the living room, the study she could use, and then the east room.
She stood in the doorway of the east room for a moment.
It was the largest guest room — he had the apartment renovated three years ago and the east room had been given the renovation budget that the guest rooms usually received, which was the minimum for adequacy. Looking at it through her eyes, or trying to, he thought: it’s clean. It has the park view. It’s adequately furnished.
She walked in.
She went to the window.
She said: “I’ll need a reading lamp.”
He said: “I’ll have one here today.”
She looked at the bookshelf — built-in, mostly empty, a few of his books that he’d put in the guest rooms for appearances.
She said: “Are these yours.”
He said: “Yes.”
She looked at the titles.
She said: “You have three business books and a history of the Roman Empire.”
He said: “I like history.”
She said: “Which period.”
He said: “All of it. Mostly the late republic.”
She looked at him.
He said: “The part where everything worked until it didn’t.”
She said: “That’s a very specific interest.”
He said: “I find it instructive.”
She almost smiled — the slight version, the one that came and went quickly, which he had also begun to notice.
She turned to the room.
She said: “I’m going to add things.”
He said: “It’s your room.”
She said: “Photographs. A plant probably. My books.”
He said: “That’s fine.”
She said: “Adrian.”
He said: “Yes.”
She said: “Thank you for the park view.” She said it simply, without production. “I know it’s the better room.”
He said: “It’s your room.”
She looked at him for a moment.
Then she went to the window and looked at the reservoir and began to look like a person who was home, which was something he had not seen anyone do in this apartment in a long time.
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