That was very sweet. He seemed like a nice man. And so handsome. Those beautiful eyes. What color were they? Amber?
Luke caught me staring at him and smiled. I pretended to cough, putting the white linen napkin to my mouth to cover my embarrassment.
Where was Monica?
Luke took a sip of wine and gazed out of the restaurant’s big glass window, overlooking Director Park. It’s more of a square than a park but serves the same purpose. The ground is a herringbone of gray and white pavers with trees planted around the border. There’s a fountain on one end for kids to splash in during the warm weather and a big checkerboard on the other end with knee-high plastic chess pieces left out for anyone who wants to play. If you look up, maybe twenty or thirty feet, you’ll see an enormous glass canopy hovering over a bunch of metal tables and chairs, where people can sit and picnic. When it gets dark, the glass glows with a continually changing and unpredictable pattern of lights—blue, green, purple, pink, orange. It’s eerie and beautiful, an urban aurora borealis.
“Look at that.” Luke pointed toward the fountain and a young couple bundled up in parkas, boots, scarves, and blue knit caps. They were dancing—or trying to. It didn’t seem to be going very well, but they were smiling, shuffling like a pair of clumsy circus bears.
“That’s what I love about cities,” Luke said, his beautiful eyes fixed on the dancers. “You do what you do, even when other people are around. Because you have to. You’ve got no choice but to get out there and rub elbows with humanity. You might not know everybody’s name, but you can see what they do. And plot is character, right? People reveal themselves through actions. It’s really kind of intimate, don’t you think?”
He looked at me as if he expected an answer.
“I never thought about it that way.”
He’d caught me off guard. Was this how people talked in France? Skipping the small talk and going directly into meaningful conversation? It was a little unnerving, but a part of me liked it. I’ve always sucked at small talk. And I could see he was right. The forced proximity of city life creates an unavoidable intimacy with others. You stand witness to the lives of your neighbors, whether you want to or not.
I thought about the homeless couple with the mongrel dog who lived on the block next to mine. They had moved into the neighborhood not long after I did, their belongings piled into a child’s red wagon. After choosing their spot, they laid out big sheets of cardboard between the two cement planters and spread their ragged sleeping bags on top, claiming the space as their own.
Though the smell of weed hung on them from half a block away some days, they were quiet and kept their stuff from spreading out onto the sidewalk, so there was never a problem getting past. More than once I’d seen the girl pick up trash that other people dropped, load it into the red wagon, and cart it to the garbage can on the corner, like a vigilant housewife tidying up in case company came calling. I saw them almost every day of my life, yet I never spoke to them. Partly because I felt like I might be intruding on their privacy, but mostly because I didn’t know what to say.
I thought, too, about the old man I saw in the grocery store the day before. He wore a dirty coat, had a long beard and bloodshot eyes. He stood in front of the coffee display with a red tin can in each hand and two more tucked under one arm. When he heard my cart coming down the aisle he spun around and grinned at me.
“Two for five bucks! I’m stocking up! Can’t beat that price, can you?”
I wheeled past him, avoiding eye contact. He seemed crazy, but would it have hurt to respond? Or at least smile? Luke, I suspected, would have stopped for a lengthy conversation. He obviously enjoyed talking to people, but I wasn’t prepared for conversation. I was just supposed to be the chaperone.
Where was Monica?
The server arrived with my wine. I took a grateful sip, then reached for my bag, fumbling around inside, and pulled out my phone. Monica had sent me a text.
Can’t make it. Dishwasher quit. Party of ten showed up without a reservation. Also, feel awful. Another headache. Terrible. Going to Urgent Care on my way home.
I clicked on a link she attached, an article from one of the more disreputable health and fitness websites, and saw a panicked headline with two exclamation points, about supposed links between cell phone use and brain tumors.
Tell Luke I’m sorry. Have fun. Don’t be mad. More crab cakes for you!
She wasn’t coming? She couldn’t be serious. She couldn’t really believe I was going to sit here with this stranger and calmly eat crab cakes, could she?
“Monica!” I hissed, scanning the text again. “I am going to kill you. Then you won’t have to worry about headaches anymore!”
Luke put down his glass.
“Something wrong with Monica?”
“Nothing is wrong with Monica,” I replied, which was one hundred percent true. “But . . . she can’t make it. The dishwasher quit, they’re short on waitstaff, and they’ve got a big party coming in—a wedding rehearsal dinner. She can’t get away.”
Okay, yes. I embellished Monica’s list of excuses. And left out the part about the imaginary brain tumor. There was no reason Luke needed to know about Monica’s hypochondria until he had a chance
