The stained glass window looks ominous in this light. Rachel cannot remember ever being here at night before. She shivers.
“Just twenty minutes,” he says, sounding cheerful. But Rachel recalls how Mary sometimes complains about his what she calls anal retentiveness. Creases in trousers, no crumbs anywhere, that sort of thing. Rachel isn’t certain, but she thinks punctuality is a concern of his too.
Dan has somehow taken the bottle of wine from her without Rachel noticing. Her arms are still folded into a cradle, but they are empty. She lets them fall stiffly to her side as they enter the formal living room. There he is: her date. She hadn’t expected him to have a goatee. Rachel does not like facial hair. And she’d imagined him to be taller, like Dan. Weren’t they cousins?
“We’re having Mount Gay and tonics,” Dan says, handing her one.
Rachel takes it, but frowns. They don’t seem to go together—rum with tonic. She’d rather have gin and tonic. It occurs to her that she might not like Dan. There is music playing, Emmylou Harris, she thinks. Or one of those women that Peter used to call depressed female singers.
“Where’s Mary?” Rachel asks. The drink actually doesn’t taste too bad. She tries to relax.
“Working some culinary wonder, as usual,” Dan says.
Rachel looks at the cousin. “So you’re an architect, Mary tells me?”
“I studied architecture,” he says. He is glum. Probably over the girlfriend. Rachel is certain he was dumped; he has that look about him.
“It’s fascinating really,” Dan says. “Harry is restoring some buildings in Paris. They were going to be torn down and he’s rescued them, haven’t you?”
“You live in Paris?” Rachel asks, almost angry. What a waste of time. A date with a man who lives an entire ocean away.
“Part of the time,” Harry says. “I keep a flat there.”
Rachel finds it pretentious when Americans call apartments flats. She finishes her drink and plays with the ice cubes, letting them knock against each other and clink against the sides of the glass. The glass has a bridge etched on it.
“We refill without too much commotion here.” It’s Harry who speaks, laughing and standing right in front of her. “A simple, ‘May I have another’ usually does the trick.”
Rachel blushes. “Well then,” she says, handing him her empty glass. Up close, he’s actually kind of sexy. This surprises her. Not tall, no, but built well. And she likes his shirt. She hadn’t noticed it when she’d come in, but it’s a vintage 1950s Hawaiian shirt, in really awful colors, orange and green and mustard yellow.
Mary comes in then, all fluttery and silly, with a plate of cheese and crackers.
“How’s it going in here?” she asks, looking in Rachel’s direction.
Harry hands Rachel a fresh drink.
“I see you’ve got a drink,” Mary says, happily.
They all sit back down and Mary tells the same details about Harry’s work in Paris.
“Where are these buildings you’re saving?” Rachel asks. The rum has made her bold.
“The fifteenth arrondisement,” Harry says.
“Near that big cemetery? The one with Chopin and Gertrude Stein and everyone?” Rachel asks him.
“Yes,” he answers, obviously excited. “You know Paris?”
“Well, I spent time there, years ago. Almost ten years ago, I guess. I was there in winter. And it rained all the time. That made it even more perfect, roaming around that cemetery in the cold rain.”
“Yes,” Harry says. “It would.”
“We rented a drafty apartment near Notre Dame.” Rachel tries to keep her voice from catching. But a rush of warm memories slide over her. The peeling paint on the walls, the sourish smell of falafels from a stand below, the lumpy mattress on their bed. She can almost hear Peter’s poor attempts at romancing her in French. Shut the door, shut the door, he whispered each night as he moved inside her, and Rachel would struggle for a way to do that, to somehow close their bedroom door—though it only opened into a high ceilinged sitting room filled with faded velvet high backed chairs and a worn sofa whose stuffing fell out and floated around the apartment like the fluff from old dandelions. It was weeks before she realized what Peter was whispering to her: Je t’adore.
Harry has rested his hand lightly on her bare arm.
“You have fond memories of living in Paris,” he says.
Rachel can manage only a nod.
“Maybe someday you’ll go back?” he asks.
“Yes,” she tells him, surprising herself with the enthusiasm in her voice, as if by going back she could reclaim something.
THEN LATER, AT DINNER—Mary has made sate, shrimp and chicken, with jasmine rice—Rachel and Harry have their heads bent together like old friends. She is telling him about Europe, how she and Peter spent two years there. She doesn’t mention Peter by name, or that she later married him. Instead, she calls him my friend; she says we.
“We managed to get into Eastern Europe. That was something,” she says.