From somewhere inside Patsy’s jeans came soft male voices intoning “Om.” It turned out to be her cell phone, which she pulled from a pocket. “Hi, baby,” she said into the phone, like the happy, sexy, pregnant woman that she was. “Yeah, I just told her.” Her eyes flicked up to Pru’s. “I miss you guys,” she said. “When will you get here?” She stood up and went inside the apartment.
The leaves in the trees overhead made a dappled pattern of shadows on the table in front of her. A new baby! Already, she was making plans. They could move Annali into Pru’s room, to make room for the nursery. She pictured billowy curtains, a tinkly mobile of stuffed animals, maybe an original Pooh theme. She imagined the baby’s soft, newborn smell. Large, moist, alien eyes, blinking quietly in the morning sun. She saw it reaching up to grab her nose as she changed its diaper.
She drank her margarita. Did their mother already know? She would probably want to move in with them, too. Well, why not? Pru thought. She could get her to finally sell that house, and it would be so good for the girls to have her around. She finished Patsy’s margarita, too, as Whoop came leaping through the door, followed by Jenny. Whoop took off and landed in Pru’s lap, leaving the puppy to almost skitter off the edge of the deck.
She could feel her heart pound in her chest. She thought it had dropped out of her chest and onto the floor of John’s café, but no. Here it was, pounding away to beat the band, threatening to leap out of her mouth and dance around the deck, with wild abandon and glee.
SHE WAS LOOKING UP LISTS OF BABY NAMES ON THE INTERNET (she was liking Hero, for a girl, and Gabriel, if it was a boy) when the phone rang.
She picked it up and was surprised to hear John’s voice. “I’m downstairs, outside your apartment. Can I come up?”
She was wearing cheap jeans, a stretched-out T-shirt, and underpants that rode up above the waistband of the jeans. Her glasses, of course, and she’d just taken off all her makeup. If possible, Pru looked worse than she had the first night she met him, in her bathrobe and slippers. Again, she remembered the exuberant, oversexed hair of his wife. Well, what did it matter? “Sure,” she said, and buzzed him in. She knew she couldn’t go on avoiding him forever.
As she waited for him to walk up the three flights of stairs, Patsy came out of her room.
“Was that Jimmy Roy?” she said, sleepily.
“No, John Owen. He’s on his way up.”
Patsy looked at her, suddenly wide awake. “Oh my God,” she said. “Pru.”
Suddenly, Pru felt like there was a whole farmyard inside of her body. Chickens, roosters, pigs, cows, and sheep, all braying and jostling each other, trying to find room between her liver and kidneys. She realized that her hands were shaking. For Pete’s sake, she told herself sternly, get it together!
“You don’t have to say anything,” Patsy was saying. “Just breathe. That’s all you have to do. Be in the moment, and breathe. Think of your feet. They’re rooting down into the earth. If you don’t know what to say, just think of your feet.”
“What the fuck are you talking about?” Pru said.
Someone tapped lightly on the front door. Patsy said, “All right, then just go for a walk with him, or something.”
Pru opened the door, and there he was. His smile was the first thing she saw. It was that big, shy, excited smile, the one that made her want to smile back. He was wearing a jacket over his T-shirt and jeans. He was holding an armful of flowers, a small, blue book—poems?—and a bottle of wine.
She backed away from the door, as if she’d opened it to a king cobra poised to strike.
“I waited a week,” he said. “I hope that was long enough.”
“I can’t be your friend,” Pru said, all in a rush. “I’m sorry, but I just can’t.”
“No,” said John, apparently confused. “I know.”
“You do?”
Patsy had started laughing. “Pru!” she said. “Don’t be so dense! Look in his arms.”
He gestured with the flowers, as if to say: For you. She opened her mouth to say something. And instead, she burst into tears.
“Oops,” he said. “Uh-oh.”
Her body shook with sobs so badly she couldn’t see. Then she heard Patsy say, “Oh, for heaven’s sake. John. Come on in.”
Pru felt a chair against the back of her legs, and Patsy said, “Sit.”
She sat. She just could not stop crying. It was insane. She was like Annali having a meltdown. She was feeling all the misery of the past few months, and—oh God, what was that? Happy, she thought. Happy, happy.
“I don’t really want to be your friend, either,” John said. He crouched down in front of her. She looked up at him, a hand covering her mouth and nose, which insisted on still crying. “It was really cool of you to try, though.”
“Really?” she gasped, in this awful, shaky voice. “Not friends?”
“Not just friends,” he said. “Not just friends.”
“Oh,” she said. “Thank God.”
He smiled at her. Then he began to laugh. He tried to take her hands.
“Don’t look at me,” she said. “I’m a mess.”
“Come on,” he said at last. “Let’s go for a walk.”
AT THE FAR END OF MALCOLM X PARK, YOU CAN SEE ALL the city lights from the top of the stairs built into the side of a sloping hill. You can see all the way down to the Potomac, and beyond. It was the same view from her old apartment. John Owen reached over and took her hand.
They walked down the hill, stopping to sit on a stone bench that was set back inside a little hedge.
“I’ve missed you,” he said.
“I’ve missed you, too.”
“I hope I didn’t wait too long.
