There’s a deli on Rivington that has the best soup I’ve ever tasted. It’s cheap, too. Or it is for me, anyway; I think Mrs. Lowenstein, who runs the place, took pity after she saw the fingers on my gloves were just worn through and not those fancy gloves with the fingers deliberately left off. Sam says it’s just as well because New Yorkers need to use their fingers so much, and if the fingers weren’t worn through, I’d just be pulling my gloves on and off all day. Which, yeah, probably, but my hands sure get cold.

So I’m drinking a cup of tomato basil, my favorite, and sitting at a table in the corner, just watching the people. The table has tiling on it meant to look like the inside of a subway station, I think, all chipped blues and whites with mosaics of numbers and street names. That was the scariest thing to me when we first moved here, the subway I mean, but I got used to the noise, to the homeless guy at the Delancey stop who talks to wayward pigeons, to fearing that someone was going to come along and push me onto the tracks.

This tall, lanky guy walks into the deli. I’ve seen him around before. Sam and I have been living in the Lower East Side long enough that it’s starting to feel like its own small town. Maybe that’s why I have a hard time with the subway, too; I don’t like leaving the neighborhood. It’s safe and familiar. There’s a whole huge city out there, and it terrifies me.

The lanky guy’s name is Matt, which I know because he hit on Sam at a bar once when I was standing right there.

Matt orders half a sandwich and a can of soda from Mrs. Lowenstein. He turns and gazes at me while he waits. “I know you, right?” he says.

“Dunno.”

“You’re the pretty little thing who buzzes around Sam Beatty. What are you, his assistant?” He leers at me.

“I’m his partner.” I muster up what I think is an appropriate amount of indignation. Sam and I don’t really refer to each other this way—he usually introduces me to new people as his boyfriend—but I like the gravitas of partner, the permanence of it, and after eight years together, I think we’ve earned it.

“Right,” says Matt. He slides into the chair opposite me and traces the grout pattern in the tile on the table with his fingers. “Sam and I both auditioned for the same part last week.”

“Really?” I didn’t see how that could be possible. Matt is so skinny, all long limbs, and he has tousled dark hair. Sam is bulkier, more filled out, and there is never a blond hair out of place. “Which part?”

“Billy Bigelow in Carousel.”

“Oh.” I want to disarm this guy. “Sam got a callback. Did you get a callback?”

“No.”

Mrs. Lowenstein interrupts my smug victory when she calls for Matt to pick up his sandwich. He gets it to go. On his way out the door, he says, “I heard a rumor that one of the actors who got a callback fucked the producer. I’m not saying it was Sam, but...”

I know he’s just saying this to make me jealous, so I shrug. “Sam is completely faithful to me.”

Matt raises an eyebrow. “You sure about that?” Then he’s gone.