Gramercy Nights (The Argo Press Trilogy Book 1) Read Online Free

and the waiter standing next to the bar, surveying the room.
    “We’re not exactly alone,” I say, finally.
    He shrugs. “If I’d invited you back to my apartment, would you have said yes?”
    “Do you live close by?” I ask, ignoring his question.
    “I do.”
    “Oh.” Of course he does. Why else would he stop by the Gramercy every morning? “I don’t know. Maybe,” I answer honestly.
    “Do you make a habit of going home with strange men?”
    “Not particularly, no.”
    “But you would have come home with me?”
    He holds my gaze and I wish I knew what he was thinking. Finally, I take a sip of my wine. “Probably.”
    Because the truth is, I would have. Against my better judgment, I would have followed him home, consequences be damned.
    Finally, after what seems like an eternity, he nods thoughtfully. “If you’d come home with me, I don’t think we’d have gotten much talking done.” My eyes widen with surprise and he laughs. “Is that really so hard to believe?”
    He leans back, folding his hands in front of him on the table. “Tell me about yourself.”
    “There’s not much to tell.”
    “I doubt that very much.” He smiles. “You’re a translator?”
    I nod. “Yeah, I’m working on a book of prose poems.”
    “From Catalan?”
    I take a sip of my wine, relieved with the change of direction the conversation has taken. Poetry and translation I can talk about, no problem. Whether or not Sebastian is attracted to me? A little more challenging. “Yeah,” I say, shrugging. “It’s not exactly lucrative, but I love it.”
    Sebastian gives me a smile. “It’s the jobs you do for love, not money, that are the most satisfying.”
    “Indeed. Though in the ideal world one is able to do something they love and still make money.”
    “Do you have a publisher?”
    “No. I published a few of the poems in a lit mag last spring but I haven’t finished the book yet. Hopefully, I’ll be done soon and can start sending it out. There aren’t exactly a ton of publishers dying to get their hands on prose poems, though.”
    “You never know, Catalan literature has gotten some press recently.”
    “Yeah, but those are the classics. I’m translating a contemporary poet who’s only written one book. He’s not even famous in Catalonia.”
    “Is your family Catalan?”
    I shake my head. “I’m about as American as you can get.”
    “Really?” He leans forward and I can see the spark of interest in his eyes. “What made you decide to learn Catalan? It’s not exactly a common language to study.”
    My mother, I think, but instead, I say, “What do you call a person who speaks three languages?”
    A crease forms between his eyebrows. “Trilingual?”
    “And what do you call a person who speaks two languages?”
    “Bilingual.”
    “Then what do you call a person who only speaks one language?”
    He shakes his head. “I don’t know. What?”
    “American,” I answer, finishing the joke with a sip of wine. I should stop drinking or at the very least slow down, but sitting across from Sebastian makes me nervous. Nervous enough to tell terrible, not at all funny, study abroad jokes.
    “That’s not exactly an answer.”
    “I guess I didn’t want to be a cliché,” I say. I hesitate before falling back on the stock answer I give everyone. “I studied abroad in Barcelona in college.”
    “People usually go there to learn Spanish.”
    “People usually don’t realize that it’s a bilingual city. Anyway, I learned both. I felt horribly rude every time I forced people to switch into Spanish for me when they were clearly more comfortable speaking in Catalan.” He watches me intently and I feel suddenly nervous. “What about you? Where are you from?”
    Sebastian laughs. “I’m a mut. A little of this, a little of that.”
    “Did you grow up in Spain?”
    He shakes his head. “No, New York and London.”
    “Well, that explains the accent.”
    “What accent?”
    I make a face.