'Right.'
'Or there's Italy.'
'Which is warm, I hear,' Chee said, and then he saw she was serious.
'You hear from your Successful Attorney?'
'He flew all the way to Chicago, to Albuquerque, to Gallup. I met him at Gallup.'
Not knowing what to say, Chee said: 'Not exactly meeting him halfway.' It sounded flippant. Chee didn't feel flippant. He cleared his throat. 'Has he changed? Time does that with people. So I'm told.'
'Yes,' Janet Pete said. But she shook her head. 'But no. Not really. My mother told me a long time ago: `Don't ever expect a man to change. What you see is what you live with.''
'I guess so,' Chee said. She looked tired, and full of sadness. He reached out and took her hand in his. It was cold. 'Trouble is, I guess you love him anyway.'
'I don't know,' Janet Pete said. 'I justa?S' But the sympathy was too much for her. Her voice choked. She looked down, fumbling in her purse.
Chee handed her his napkin. She held it to her face.
'Rough life,' Chee said. 'Love is supposed to make us happy, and sometimes it makes us miserable.'
Through the napkin he heard Janet sniff.
He patted her hand. 'This sounds like a cliche, or whatever it is, but I know how you feel. I really do.'
'I know,' Janet said.
'But you know, I've decided. I'm giving up. You can't go on forever.' As he heard himself saying that, he was amazed. When did he decide that? He hadn't realized it. He felt a surge of relief. And of loss. Why can't men cry? he wondered. Why is that not allowed?
'He wants me to go to Italy with him. He's going to Rome. Taking over their legal affairs for Europe. And Africa. And the Middle East.'
'He speak Italian?' As he said it, it seemed an incredibly stupid question. Totally beside the point here.
'French,' she said. 'And some Italian. And he's perfecting it. A tutor.'
'How about you?' he said. Why couldn't he think of something less inane. He would be asking her next about her passport. And packing. And airfares. That wasn't what she wanted to talk about. She wanted to talk about love.
'No,' she said.
'What did he say? Does he understand now that you want to be a lawyer? That you want to practice it?'
The napkin was in her lap now. Her eyes dry. But they showed she'd been crying. And her face was strained.
'He said I could practice in Italy. Not with his company. It has a nepotism rule. But he could line something up for me after I got the required Italian license.'
'He could line something up. For you.'
She sighed. 'Yeah. That's the way he put it. And I guess he could. At a certain level in law, the big firms feed on one another. There would be Italian firms doing feed-out work. The word would go into the good-old-boy network. Tit for tat. I guess once I learned Italian I would be offered a job.'
Chee nodded. 'I'd think so,' he said.
Lunch came. Mutton stew and fry bread for Chee. Janet was having a bowl of soup.
They sat looking at the food.
'You should eat something,' said Chee, who had totally lost his appetite. He took a spoonful of the stew, a bite of fry bread. 'Eat,' he ordered.
Janet Pete took a spoonful of soup.
'Made a decision yet?'
She shook her head. 'I don't know.'
'You know yourself better than anyone,' he said. 'What's going to make you happy?'
She shook her head again. 'I think I'm happy when I'm with him. Like dinner last night. But I don't know.'
Chee was thinking about the dinner and how it had ended, and what happened then. Had she gone to his room with him? Had she spent the night there? Probably. The thought hurt. It hurt a lot. That surprised him.
'I shouldn't let things like this drag on,' she said. 'I should decide.'
'We let ours drag on. Mary and I. And I guess she decided.'
He had released her hand when lunch arrived. Now she reached over and put hers on his. 'I have your napkin,' she said. 'Slightly damp but still' -- she looked at it, a rumpled square of pale blue paper -- 'usable in case of emergency.'
He realized instantly that this was her bid to change the subject. He took the napkin, dropped it in his lap.
'Have you realized how lucky you are to have been brought to the only cafe in Shiprock with napkins?'
'Noted and appreciated,' she said. Her smile seemed almost natural. 'And how are things going with you?'
