At six-thirty she hung out the official CLOSED sign on the door, and Edie started opening champagne. That was when things for Pru started to get fuzzy. She remembered that everyone was there: John, with his friends Ralph and Rona, who made the trip down from New York especially for the opening. Rudy Fisch came, and Pru overheard her mother clucking sympathetically as he ran through his list of symptoms. McKay, who made Pru sit down, and Bill, who was prying the plastic casing off the cash register to have a look at the computer inside. Fiona, who showed everybody the ultrasound pictures of her embryonic girl. And Jimmy Roy, who’d made a bunch of compilation CDs for the shop, and who whistled appreciatively when Pru showed him the Bose sound system. Even Phan from the video store, along with his girlfriend, whose name really was Chuckie, and whom Pru hired on the spot when she offered to replace the girl who didn’t show up; and Lola, her elderly regular from Edie’s, who immediately pointed out that she’d tried on all these shoes, already. Edie kept opening bottle after bottle of champagne, and someone spilled a glass on a lilac satin skirt, and after that it was all pretty much a happy haze of kisses, laughter, Burt Bacharach, and the Sex Pistols.
THREE WEEKS LATER, SHE WAS HURRYING ACROSS THE Mall toward the Hirshhorn Museum, where she was supposed to meet Rona at lunchtime. She winced a little as she jumped up on the curb and landed on her sprained ankle. It still hurt occasionally, but at least the stitches in the bottom of her foot were gone and she could walk without the crutches.
Rona wore the same windbreaker she’d been wearing the first time Pru had met her, the one that matched Ralph’s. Although Pru had seen her only three or four times, she always felt like they were old, old friends. Rona was the kind of woman who took her friendships very seriously. She sent Pru an e-mail at least once a week, chatting about this and that. She made Pru feel carefully vetted and chosen, and as though the fact that Pru liked her, too, was some favor to her.
They exchanged fond hugs and kisses and made their way into the main galleries. The Hirshhorn is a circular building, and as you make your way through it, it gives you the sense of being perpetually around the bend from something great. They circled the galleries, around and around, up and up. Rona chatted about the art, and as she knew something about it her comments weren’t uninteresting, but Pru was having a hard time following her. After half an hour, she was practically crawling out of her skin with curiosity. Why had Rona summoned her? She’d only ever seen her in John’s company, and felt it would be rude to ask if she had some purpose in calling Pru, out of the blue, for lunch. But she couldn’t help thinking that Rona did have an agenda. She wondered if it had to do with John. She hadn’t seen much of him in the past few weeks, she’d been so busy with the shop. There was still no end of things to be done: the toilet refused to run properly, the electrical outlet behind the counter kept shocking her whenever she plugged something in, and she couldn’t for the life of her decipher the assembly instructions for the new Bjärnum/ Järpen shelving units she’d bought at Ikea. She was struggling to stay on top of the marketing and advertising, inventory control, property maintenance. She’d had to come up with a return policy. And, of course, run the shop.
In a way, it was a relief not to see so much of John. The struggle to maintain friendly feelings had taken its toll on her. Sometimes she felt lonelier in his presence than when she was actually alone. She had to watch herself when he was around. Ever since Patsy had confronted her about her feelings for him, she worked harder to tamp them down. Sometimes she could barely speak for fear of revealing her feelings. She felt her personality was slipping away as she tried to remain Miss Neutral Pal. She never could bring herself to ask about Lila, after that first time. And he never volunteered anything, either. Once or twice she’d caught him looking at her, about to say . . . something. He would clear his throat and take a deep, announcing breath. But then what he said was always something silly like, Did you remember to check on your building permits?
Finally, Rona decided she’d had enough art, and they headed to the Air and Space Museum for lunch, because that was where everybody went for lunch.
There weren’t many people outdoors, as they made their way across the Mall. It felt lonely and desolate in the glare of the early-spring sun. Pru preferred the winter’s clean, white snow to this, acres of dead grass mashed into dirt. More in-betweens: late afternoon, early spring, adolescence, falling in love. She hated the in-betweens. Always, she just wanted to get where she was going—to be there already. She was almost paralyzed by in-betweenness. She didn’t know how she was supposed to behave.
They sat near the big windows of the cafeteria and ate their salads. Rona’s father had just died. He had been very old, in his nineties. Rona had been with him, holding his hand, when he went. “For
