Harry arrives late, breathless. She is struck again by how small he is, and how she has spent so much time with large men. Perhaps, she decides, as he forgoes the poached chicken and instead undresses her right there in the kitchen, perhaps she has wasted her time on large men. Here she is, making love on her kitchen table—she sits, he stands, and they are eye to eye. Her résumé flutters to the floor. Like snow, she thinks. Like fallout. Like the stuffing from that old sofa in Paris. Is it an omen? She tries to focus on what she is doing, her legs wrapped around Harry’s waist, her breath coming out in tight little gasps, but she is too far ahead of herself, past this moment and seeing somewhere down the road. Living near that cemetery in Paris, Sofia in a Madeline outfit—blue coat, yellow hat, and Harry taking her like this, on tables and in doorways. What a future, she sees as Harry collapses against her, done.
Rachel puts her hands on the back of his neck. She can feel the bristly hair growing there. The tops of his ears are red.
“We’ve made quite a mess,” he says, looking down at her papers.
He bends to pick them up, and she is suddenly embarrassed at what she had been thinking just a moment before. This man is a stranger. His body, in daylight, reminds her of a rooster, compact and sure of itself. He struts, she realizes as he gathers all of her papers and hands them to her. He has freckles she did not know about, an appendectomy scar.
“My résumé,” she says, for something to say. The air between them has gotten to that fragile place.
He brightens. “That’s why I called,” he says.
She wishes he would put on his pants, but he doesn’t. Rooster, she thinks again, and pulls her tee shirt over her head.
“All of our talk the other night, about Europe, and how you’d like to go back. The office I work with there needs someone. It’s a one year thing, a funny job really. Kind of a goodwill person, to woo possible donors for the restoration project. You would take them to the various sites, take them to dinner, the Louvre and the Eiffel Tower.”
“My French isn’t great,” she says, stopping him. It’s too much, what he’s telling her.
“That’s the thing. They want an American. Most of these donors are British or American.”
“Really?” she says. She has stepped too far forward and too far back. Rachel tries to return to somewhere in the middle. Aren’t all people strangers when they first meet? she thinks. She tries to remember Peter as a stranger. Once he was someone she did not yet know.
Harry has moved closer to her. “Are you interested?” he asks.
“Definitely,” Rachel says.
SHE DUTIFULLY REPORTS the phone call and the lunch at her house—he did stay and eat the poached chicken and finish the bottle of wine with her—to Mary at the playground on Thursday. Of course, Rachel leaves out what happened on the kitchen tab le, and the job possibility.
“He seems really enthusiastic,” Rachel says as a finale to their date.
But Mary is frowning.
Rachel sighs. She thought Mary wanted something to happen between her and Harry. Once again she is reminded of how little she knows about Mary—who she really is, what she expects.
“Did he ask you out again?” Mary says. Now she is watching the girls come down the bright orange curly slide.
“Not in so many words,” Rachel says. She tries a different approach. “I like him. He’s not my usual type and I think that’s good.”
“Mmmmm,” Mary says. She has started to nibble on dried fruit. For extra vitamins during her pregnancy, she explained earlier.
“My ex-husband is very big. Tall and burly,” Rachel continues, though she wants to stop. Mary is annoying her. “I kind of like Harry’s size. And he’s very funny.”
“If he hasn’t actually said he’ll call again, maybe he won’t,” Mary says.
“Thanks a lot,” Rachel blurts. Mary was probably a virgin when she got married, she thinks. She doesn’t know anything. Still, she has managed to make Rachel feel unsettled.
In the distance, Sofia pauses at the top of the slide to wave. “Watch me, Mommy,” she calls. “Are you watching?”
Rachel thinks of this often as the days pass and Harry doesn’t call. Maybe Mary had known something, after all. Maybe she even knew about the kitchen table. Or the job. She would be upset that Rachel hadn’t told her everything. So would she then keep some information from Rachel? Throughout the weekend—it rains every day—as she thinks of ways to occupy Sofia, she almost calls Mary several times. She almost calls Harry. But in the end she just helps Sofia make a large floor puzzle of Madeline and Pepito, watches Mary Poppins and The Wizard of Oz too many times, and eats a lot of junk food. By the time Monday comes, Rachel is relieved to see Sofia off to day care, relieved even to go to work at the toy store.
RACHEL HAS COME up with a list of excuses. He knows that Sofia is away this coming weekend; he will ask her out for Friday night. He is waiting the obligatory week between dates. He is in Paris. He is dead.