That evening Patch rushed to the corner of 59th Street and Fifth Avenue, where he had asked Lia to meet him for the Valentine’s Day he had planned. He cursed himself for running late when he saw her standing at the corner where all the horse-drawn carriages and their drivers congregated. She was ignoring the tourists and tacky souvenir stands and looked mildly annoyed, as if she had expected something more exotic from Patch on Valentine’s Day, like a concert downtown or passes to a speakeasy club on the Bowery.
After greeting Lia with a kiss, Patch walked up to one of the drivers, a scruffy guy in a thick flannel coat, whom he recognized from a ride he had taken a few days ago. On Thursday afternoon, he had talked to a few different drivers, finally meeting one who agreed to help him out.
“Come on,” Patch said to Lia, motioning her over. “Meet Chester.”
Lia looked up at the horse, a gold and cream palomino. “You’re joking,” she said. “Are we really?”
Patch nodded. “Yup. Get on up.”
Lia laughed. “I can’t believe this.”
“Oh, it gets better.”
He handed an envelope to the driver. In it was two hundred dollars in cash, much more than the cost of a ride through Central Park.
“Kid, if anyone says anything, you’re taking the blame for this, you got it?” the driver said.
“I understand,” Patch said.
“Wait, I don’t get it,” Lia said. “What’s going on?”
Patch climbed up into the driver’s seat and motioned for Lia to sit next to him. The driver got out of the carriage and gestured for Patch to get going before anyone noticed.
“Where are we headed?” Lia asked.
“We’re going to see a bit of the city,” Patch said.
Lia smiled. “Okay-but you know that if we get arrested for this, we’re ending up on the cover of the Post, right?”
“Maybe that’s a risk worth taking.”
Instead of heading into the park, as the horses usually did, Patch maneuvered the carriage down Fifth Avenue. For once, he was grateful for the riding lessons he had taken with Nick when he was younger, as driving a carriage wasn’t all that different from riding a horse. The driver had also given him a short primer a few days ago.
It was Valentine’s Day, the shops on Fifth Avenue were all lit up, and no one paid them any mind. If they did, it was only to tip their hat or whistle at his romantic gesture.
Not many New Yorkers realized that taking a carriage ride out of the park, particularly when you didn’t have a license, was completely illegal.
They reached 42nd Street, and Patch started to turn right so they could go back up Sixth Avenue.
“Hey, what are you doing?” Lia asked.
“What do you mean? You want to go downtown?” He was surprised at her audacity, but they had made it to 42^nd Street without anyone stopping them. Maybe they should go all the way downtown.
Lia grinned. “You’re always saying how you want to get out of your little world, aren’t you? Now’s your chance. In a horse-drawn carriage!”
Patch nodded. It was true. Everything with the Society had felt so suffocating. As he looked up at the lights of Fifth Avenue, this little adventure was a welcome dive into the dark, dazzling unknown.
“Are you serious?” he asked.
“Yup.”
The light turned green, and Patch continued directing Chester to keep walking. He broke into a trot, and Patch held the reins tightly.
“He’s trying to keep up with traffic!” Lia said, laughing. He was a good horse, and Patch wanted to make sure that he was okay. But he didn’t seem to mind at all-he seemed rather pleased at breaking out of the usual clomp-clomp-clomp routine of rides around Central Park.
“You are totally ruining my plan!” Patch said in mock annoyance. He was actually grateful. Fifteen minutes out of the park was one thing, but an hour or more-now that was romantic.
Twenty minutes later, they were down in the Village on a quiet side street. They parked Chester in an empty space and then grabbed some falafel sandwiches and fries at a shop Lia liked. As they ate them in the carriage, Chester craned his neck and sniffed the air curiously.
“It’s certainly a whole different world from the Dendur Ball, right?” Lia said.
“Yeah, that’s an understatement,” Patch said.
“Do they know anything more about who stole the necklace?”
Patch shook his head. “I don’t think so. I have a suspicion that, you know, the Society had something to do with it. Nick got a weird escort card last night at the ball. It had a series of numbers on it. And my grandmother thinks that Nick’s grandfather has something to do with it.”
“What do you think?”
“Hell if I know,” Patch said. “I just want life to go back to the way it was before all this happened. When I had my vlog.”
“Oh, I almost forgot-” Lia said. “My parents have a producer friend who I would really like you to show your DVD to.”
“I don’t know if I can do it-the Society has control over all the footage.”
“No, I mean, we could explain that this was just a sample. That the real show would focus on different people. Do you think you could give me something to send to him?”
“Sure, I guess. I mean, you know that I don’t technically own the option on the material for another six months, right?”
“I think he should see it now. He’s an old family friend. He’ll understand that you can’t officially start working on it before June.”
Patch figured it was unlikely that he could get in any more trouble than he already had been in. He would have to ask Eliot Walker to send him the contents of the safe-deposit box. If he and his four friends were close to getting out of the Society, maybe that was a risk worth taking.
“Let me treat you to something,” Lia said. She hopped out of the carriage before Patch could say anything.
She returned a few minutes later with two cups of gelato.
“Only you would get gelato in the middle of February, outside,” Patch said.
“You don’t like it? I got pistachio and butterscotch.”
“No, no, I love it.” He smiled.
Patch grabbed one of the heavy blankets that was on their laps and pulled it closer.
“This stuff is the best,” Lia said. “I like to go here whenever I can. Of course, for me, it’s uptown.”
They enjoyed their gelato quietly. The city was silent that night, as if most of Manhattan had been divided up into two’s, lovers sharing intimacies. Gone were the frat boys, the tourists, the rowdy barhoppers who usually roamed these streets.
Patch looked at his watch. Genie was always upset with him if he was out too late on a school night. “Okay, eat up, we need to get back uptown.”
Just as they were pulling out, they got a strange look from some traffic cops. Patch gamely gave them a salute and continued on up Sixth Avenue. Lia smirked as the two cops shook their heads.
When they reached the park, they rode back in, parking the carriage in an empty lot behind the zoo. Lia pulled the blanket around them and gave Patch a kiss on the lips. Her lips felt like they had frozen over; surely, the gelato hadn’t helped.
“You’re like ice,” he said. “We should go warm up.”
She smiled. “I don’t care. When else do you get to hang out in the park, under the stars, in a carriage, with no driver watching over you?”
He remembered that he had packed a thermos of hot chocolate in his backpack, and now he poured out a cup. “This should help.”
Lia nodded appreciatively, and after taking a sip, kissed him again.
The next morning, Patch woke up with a smile. Every element of his date with Lia had come together perfectly.
Now he threw on a bathrobe and padded outside to get the newspaper. He picked up the copy of the Times that he and Genie shared every morning and felt something heavy in it.
There was a padded envelope tucked inside the paper, addressed to Genie, with only her name, typewritten on a label: “Eugenia Rogers Madison-by hand.”
Though he was eager to learn what was in it, he suppressed his curiosity. Genie was in the kitchen making coffee, and she looked surprised when he handed it to her. She sat down at the kitchen table and opened the envelope.
Inside, there was a note that read:
For Eugenia,
Who deserves only the original.
P.B.
And then, to both of their amazement, out slid the original Scarab of Isis necklace.