By a quarter to five, the crowd has thinned, and husband and wife decide to call it a night. As they cruise down Fifth Avenue in the back of a taxi, the streets are starting to fill with morning joggers, dog-walkers, garbagemen. She rests her head on her husband’s tectonic pectoral muscle and closes her eyes. “I think tonight was good. Do you, honey?” she asks. “Yeah, babe, it was,” he replies. When they get home, Barton immediately collapses in the bedroom, a dark, crimson-walled cove with an elevated bed surrounded by candelabras and workout equipment. But Susanne can’t fall asleep yet. She never can. She frees her feet from her boots, snacks on some shrimp sushi, and draws a warm bath, her preferred environment for “pondering and marveling at the night.” By the time she’s ready to go to bed, she realizes it’s seven, sunlight is pouring through the windows, and Bailey has to be up for school. Quietly, tiredly, she tiptoes into his room. “Hey, you,” she says, nudging him gently. “Good morning. Time to wake up.”

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• Archive: “Features”
• Articles by David Amsden
• Table of Contents: Feb 20, 2006 issue of New York | Subscribe!