“What a group!” Brad said admiringly. “This must be terrific.” For a moment he forgot the tragic circumstances that had brought them together. There was nothing tragic about them.
“It is terrific actually,” Annie said, smiling happily. “I was a little nervous about it at first, but it's been working out great.”
“What's terrific?” Candy asked as she joined them.
“Living together,” Annie explained. “Do you have your clothes on?”
“Yes,” Candy laughed, “I'm wearing a robe and my Christmas hat. I thought we should go and get our tree tonight.” Despite what had happened to her, she was in the Christmas spirit. She felt enormously blessed to have survived.
Brad couldn't stop himself from staring at Candy. He had never seen a woman so beautiful in all his life. And she was completely relaxed and in no way stuck-up. She was just like any other girl her age, only a hundred times more beautiful. Except that in her own way, he thought Annie was just as beautiful. She was smaller and had softer looks, but he loved her auburn hair and the pixie cut she wore.
“I got my tree last night,” he said, as Candy invited him downstairs for a cup of tea. He hesitated, but it was hard to resist spending a few more minutes with them. He followed Candy downstairs to the kitchen, with Annie right behind him, and all three of them were bowled over by the smell.
“Oh my God,” Candy said, as Annie translated for Brad.
“Mrs. Shibata eats these awful Japanese pickles. They smell like something died.” He laughed openly at the craziness that went on in their house. Mrs. Shibata bowed low as they entered the kitchen and put the pickle jar away. She had just put some seaweed in the dogs' bowls, and Candy grabbed it immediately and explained to Brad that the seaweed the housekeeper gave them made the dogs sick.
“I thought you said you didn't like dogs,” he said, turning to Annie.
“I don't. They're not mine. They belong to everyone else.”
“Zoe's mine,” Candy said as she picked up the Yorkie, as Beulah looked highly insulted, turned away, and sat down. He bent down to play with her, and Juanita tried to attack him again, but in the end, she gave up and licked his hand.
“You should get one too,” he said to Annie. He had suggested a seeing-eye dog to her earlier, and she was unenthused. She had finally admitted to him that having a seeing-eye dog with her identified her immediately as a blind person wherever she went. She could put the white stick away in a public place or a restaurant once she sat down. It was a vanity she wasn't ready to give up.
Brad left a little while later, enchanted with his visit. He had enjoyed meeting Candy, loved talking to Annie, and couldn't wait to meet the others. He called her the next day and invited her to dinner three days later, before she left for Connecticut for Christmas with her father. Annie hesitated for a second, and then accepted. It was a little scary dating someone you couldn't see. But she liked him, and they shared a wealth of common opinions and ideas.
Sabrina got home just after Brad called Annie and invited her to dinner, and Annie marched up to where she was sitting, unwinding from her day. Annie dropped five twenty-dollar bills in her lap without comment, and Sabrina looked up at her in surprise.
“What, did you win the lottery today? What's this for?”
“Never mind,” Annie growled at her, pretending to be annoyed, when in fact she was very pleased and excited about the dinner date with Brad. She was only twenty-six after all, and it was fun to have a date with someone who sounded as nice as he did. She had just paid off Sabrina's bet. And as she realized what it was, Sabrina scooped it up victoriously and laughed.
“I told you so!” she shouted as Annie slammed her bedroom door.
Chapter 23
“This is quite a welcoming committee,” he said, as Annie introduced him to Tammy and Sabrina for the first time. And two minutes later, Chris arrived.
“Now you know everyone,” Annie said happily. They left five minutes later, for a small Italian restaurant nearby. It was so close, they walked and didn't need a cab. Candy had loaned her her short gray mink jacket, so Annie was warm, and felt very fancy for her first real date in months. It was a far cry from her arty days in Florence with Charlie. This felt very grown up. And at dinner, he told her he was thirty-nine.
“You don't look it,” she said, and they both laughed. “Or maybe I should say you don't sound it.”
“You don't look your age either.” She could hear the smile in his voice. “At first, I thought you were younger.” He sounded embarrassed then. “I checked your records.”
“Aha!” she chortled. “Insider information. That's not fair. You know a lot more about me than I know about you.”
“What do you want to know?”
“Everything. Where you went to school, what you studied, where you grew up, who you hated in third grade, who you married, why you divorced.” He looked surprised then.
“You have insider information too. How did you know that?”
“Someone told me at school,” she admitted. But she was curious about him. Since she couldn't see him, she wanted to hear all the details. And she would have wanted to know them anyway. It was just that now she couldn't see the expressions on his face, of sadness, guilt, or regret. Those things were important. So she had to rely on what she heard, and how he said it.
“I was married for three years, to my college sweetheart. She's a wonderful girl. She's married to someone else now and has three kids. We're good friends. We wanted very different things out of life. She wanted a career in television, like your sister. I wanted a family and kids. I had lost my parents young, and wanted a family of my own. She didn't. It seems funny now that she has kids. But she's had all three of them in the last four years. We were divorced a long time ago. We were divorced by the time I was twenty-five, fourteen years ago. At the time, we were pretty angry at each other. She felt pressured. I felt cheated. We grew up in Chicago, but she wanted to live in L.A., I wanted to live in New York. I wanted to start the school. She hated the idea. It was a very stressful three years and terrible for both of us.”
“So how come you never got married again?”
“Scared, burned, busy. Starting the school was a huge amount of work. I lived with someone for four years. She was a great woman, but she was French and wanted to go back to France. She missed her family too much. I had already started the school and didn't want to move away. I guess I've been married to the school for sixteen years. It's been my baby and my wife. Time flies when you're having fun, and I am.” She could understand that to some extent. Both her older sisters felt that way about their work, and she had about her art. It hadn't precluded romance in her life, but it had in Tammy's case and even in Sabrina's, to some extent. They were both workaholics, and maybe he was too. You paid a high price for that, and sometimes wound up alone.
“What about you, Annie? No man in your life now?” She laughed dryly. She hadn't had a date since Charlie in Florence and thought she never would again.
“I had a boyfriend in Florence before the accident. He dumped me for someone else, before he found out I was blind.” She always took comfort in that. “I thought it was serious, but I guess it wasn't. Or not as serious as I thought. And before that, I only had one real boyfriend, after college. I was always too passionate about my work as an artist to put a lot of energy into other stuff. It's been a huge change not having my art. Now I have no idea what I'm going to do when I grow up.” She looked desolate for a minute and then shrugged and looked in his
