“Of course,” he said, pushing open the door.
She sat at the counter and he poured her coffee, the same as always. “I’ve missed you,” he said, putting the cup in front of her.
“I’ve missed you, too.”
“Pru, I’m so sorry . . .”
She stopped him with a hand and a wince. “Apology accepted. But, really, it’s over. I’m fine now. And I want us to be friends.”
“Why can’t I say I’m sorry?”
“I don’t know why not, but I just can’t stand to hear that. It has something to do with what remains of my pride.”
“No,” he said, shaking his head. He brought his bartender’s stool over to sit across from her. He put his hands awkwardly on the counter in front of him, then in his lap. “You did nothing wrong. Nothing. It was me. I forgot myself. I forgot what I was doing—”
“I think it’s right, what you’re doing now. With your marriage. Not easy, but right.”
“You do?”
“Absolutely.”
“Thanks,” he said, uncertainly. They were clumsy with each other. This wasn’t exactly how she’d rehearsed it. Maybe it would take some time, after all.
“So,” she said briskly. “I had this idea we could go back to being friends.”
He looked at her for a long time. Then he said, “Can we just do that?”
“Why not? It’s what we were doing, you know . . . before. Gay men do it all the time,” she added.
He looked at her, amused. “They do?”
“Oh, yeah. They just sleep with any old body, no hard feelings.”
“That might be a little bit of a generalization, don’t you think? Anyway, I didn’t think of what happened between us as exactly ‘sleeping with any old body.’ Did you?”
She shook her head, lost for words.
Some customers came in and he went over to take their orders. She tried to breathe deeply. Just that one tiny shake of her head had cost her something, to admit that. She drank her coffee, glad that it was all over. She’d really gotten hurt, she knew that. But she’d ridden it out, had her cry, and it was over. All over, now.
“Friends, huh?” he said, coming over to refill her coffee.
“Friends.”
“So, how do we do that?”
“Just like we used to. We tell each other things. We talk about what’s happening in our lives.”
“Like what?”
“Well, what’s happening in your life? With . . . Lila?” She had to push his wife’s name out of her mouth, like a seed or a pit. She tried pretending she was just one of his buddies, asking. Buddies! Pals! Friends.
He winced a little. “It’s so weird talking about this with you. You sure you want to?”
She gave him a gesture that said: Bring it on!
“Okay. Well, we’re in counseling. Obviously. We’re living apart, for the time being. And we’re supposed to have dates. Like, real dates. You know, with each other. And, of course, stay monogamous.”
She wanted to give him another gesture that would say, Take it away again! But she forced herself to nod understandingly, and respond, “I can see that. Make it special again. Something you have to plan for, instead of something you do by rote.”
“I’m supposed to call her up and ask her out. Can you imagine? After sleeping with her every night for seven years . . .” Suddenly, his voice broke off and he swatted the counter with his towel. He said, rather irritably, “I’m not talking about this with you, anymore.”
He turned away and she let out a long exhale, as though he’d been holding her by the throat.
When he turned back toward her, he said, “Let’s talk about you.”
“I’m working at Edie’s. I’m an official retail hack.”
He put on his apron and began tying it, in the back. “But you love it,” he said, smiling, “so who cares?”
SHE DID LOVE WORKING AT EDIE’S. IT WAS TRUE. SHE loved being around the clothes. She loved her twenty-five-percent discount. She loved listening to Edie talk about fashion. On the subject of fabric alone, Edie could talk for hours. Pru loved how she referred to everything in the singular. The pant. The shoe.
Edie referred to the construction of a piece of clothing as if it were a model airplane or a skyscraper. She showed Pru how you could judge the quality of a garment by the way it was finished. She taught her about drape and slubbing and warp. How some fabrics provided a crisp hand, some a smooth hand. Absorbency, temperature sensitivity, wrinkle recovery. Pru learned to feel a fabric’s pile, judge its luster, listen to its rustle. She learned there were two types of rayon, viscose and cuprammonium, and the differences between those fabrics made from animal-hair fibers— camel, alpaca, llama, vicuña—and those made of cellulose or wood pulp. Twist, luster, open weave, tight weave, filling. The types of satin: slipper satin, crepe-back satin, faille satin, bridal satin, moleskin, and royal satin.
And the rules! How Pru loved rules! It wasn’t so much that she liked following rules, but knowing what they were gave her a sense of order, and peace. She felt safer knowing that if she broke one, there would be repercussions.
Happily, fashion was full of rules. There were rules governing fabric and color combinations. Rules for fit and body type. Leg openings no smaller than the hip. Deep V’s for short necks. Square toes on tall women, only. Then there were the mysterious, fluid rules of taste and style. Rules that broke the rules. It was a world she could figure out. Learn the rules, and you’re good. Or you’ll look good, anyway, and maybe that was half the battle.
She tried to give her customers
