The rain had stopped.
Silently, we got out of the car and went inside. Only two of the tables in the front room were occupied, one by a man and a small boy, and the other by three older women. The boy was playing with the straw in his drink. The women were eating slices of cake and drinking coffee. They seemed happy with one another’s company.
Sally and I marched solemnly past the counter near the rear, where a tattooed girl in her twenties said, “I’ll be right with you.”
The second room was empty. Sally hesitated as if this wasn’t what she had had in mind, and then she decided to sit on a wooden chair as far from the window as she could get. I sat too. I sat, and I waited.
“I have to tell you something, Lewis.”
She leaned over and put a hand on mine.
“Your husband isn’t dead,” I guessed.
“He’s still dead,” she said.
“You have cancer.”
“No. I think you should stop guessing.”
The girl with the tattoos appeared and asked if we had made up our minds. I ordered a plain black coffee and a slice of the same kind of cake the women in the other room were having.
“Nothing for me,” Sally said. “No, wait. Tea. Hot. Mint if you have it.”
“We have it,” the girl said. “Two forks for the cake? It’s big.”
“Sure,” Sally said.
When she was gone, Sally looked down and said, “Lewis, I’m moving.”
“I’ll help.”
“No, I’m moving to Montpelier.”
“France?”
“Vermont.”
This time, the silence almost insisted that no one break it.
“For good?” I asked.
“For good.”
“People move here from Montpelier. They don’t move from Florida to Vermont. Why?”
“My family, cousins, brother, people I’ve known all my life, people I went to school with. Besides, I have a good job offer at a hospital as social services director. Double my present salary.”
“And?”
“And,” she said, “I’ve been doing what I do for more than twenty years. I’m burned out, Lewis. I can’t stand getting up in the morning and facing children who keep getting sent back to drug-addicted parents, kids who are hurt, abused, ignored, and dumped on the system, on me, with no resources other than whatever we can get by with off the books and paperwork. I don’t want to think about the pile of cases on my desk that keeps growing. I want to be with my kids more, come home without feeling the footsteps of those kids behind me, silently calling for attention.”
“I understand.”
All the things she said were true, but I felt that something was missing, another reason that haunted her, a reason she didn’t want to share.
“Do you? Do you understand without just feeling sorry for yourself because you’re going to have to deal with another loss?”
“I don’t know,” I said.
Music started. It came down from a speaker mounted high on the wall. Lilly Allen was singing one of those songs that sways gently but carries lyrics as sharp as the edge of a sheet of newspaper.
“Lewis, how many times in the more than two years we’ve known each other have we made love or even had sex?”
“None,” I said.
“I’ve respected your memory of Catherine with you, but we both have to move on. How many times have we kissed, really kissed?”
“Seventeen.”
“I make it twenty, but you’re almost certainly right. You never forget anything.”
“My curse,” I said.
“It’s the way you want it,” she said.
“When are you leaving?”
“As soon as the school year ends, so the kids won’t be too disrupted.”
“Seven weeks,” I said.
“Seven weeks,” she repeated.
The girl with the tattoos came back and placed the drinks in front of us and the cake between.
“Two forks. Enjoy.”
I would not cry, but not because of pride. It just wasn’t in me, but I would feel it. I would feel it, alone, sitting on the toilet, lying on my bed, listening to someone speak or Rush Limbaugh rant. I would feel it.
“I’m sorry,” Sally said.
I handed her a fork and answered without saying that I was sorry, too.
“It’s banana-chocolate,” I said.
7
'Seven weeks,” Ann Hurwitz said, dunking one of the two biscotti I had brought her into the cappuccino I had also brought to her office. A bribe.
“Seven weeks,” I said.
“How do you feel about it?”
“Helpless. Relieved. I’m thinking of buying a cheap car and leaving.”
“Again.”
“Again,” I said. “This time maybe I’ll go west till I hit the Pacific Coast somewhere.”
“And you’ll look out toward Japan but see nothing but water.”
“Maybe it will be clean.”
“Pollution is everywhere.”
“Sally’s leaving me. Someone is trying to kill me or at least frighten me. I have a new client I don’t like and another client who lied to me and may be a child molester.”
“Lied about what?”
“I don’t know, but I know he lied. Lies are heavy, dark, deep behind too much sincerity. And there are people depending on me, Ames, Flo, Adele. And Victor.”
“Your house guest from Chicago.”
“Yes. And I don’t like my new rooms. Too big. I like things, and places, small.”
“Cubicles,” she said, leaning forward to ensnare the moist end of a biscotti with her teeth. “What else are small places?”
“Boxes, caskets, car trunks, jail cells, monks’ cells, closets.”
“You can hide in all of them,” she said. “You can even die in them. All both protect and threaten.”
“I guess. You’re supposed to tell me that people can’t run from their problems, that nothing is solved by running away.”
“No,” said Ann. “You got these biscotti at News and Books?”
“Yes. I always do.”
“They taste different. Very good. Sometimes things are solved by running away.”
“I should run away?”
“If you feel that you must,” Ann said, wiping her chocolate-tipped fingers with a napkin and then discarding it in her almost empty wastebasket. “I would miss you. You would miss Ames, Flo, Adele, and the baby.”
