The three of them were already sitting down when Jem came in, a vague smile on her face, like a contentment spilling over from some other part of her life. She was wearing a summery dress but with a white T-shirt under it, showing up the light tan of her skin, the dress offering brief hints of the figure beneath as she moved, her breasts, hips, all subtle promise.
JJ started to stand up but thought better of it, not wanting to embarrass her, rising from his seat only to shake hands when Susan introduced them. Her hand was soft but with a firmer grip than her brother’s, determined, her eyes pale green, searching again as if trying to read code.
She was sitting opposite him but didn’t speak for a while, listening instead as JJ and the others made small talk. A couple of times their eyes met but averted quickly, the girl looking mildly flustered each time. There was something amusing about it, and something strangely reassuring too, that there was already some indistinct chemistry between the two of them, a girl almost half his age, a teenager whose father he’d killed when she’d still been a child.
The food came, beef in a rich sauce, mushrooms, beer perhaps. Ed tasted his and said, “Wonderful. JJ should eat with us more often.” Susan laughed at the backhanded insult to her cooking, and Jem joined in then, speaking for the first time since sitting down. “No, Mom, this is like, so good.” The same affected hesitancy as her brother and what seemed like most other American kids.
“Honestly, JJ,” Susan said, “my cooking isn’t wonderful but it really isn’t as bad as all that.”
“I’m sure it isn’t. This is very good though.”
Ed cut in, picking up on what Susan had just said. “I like that chicken thing you make. But really, Susan, there’s no shame in not being a great cook.” He turned to JJ then. “She was raised on the Upper East Side and the Hamptons; till she was eighteen she thought food came ready-cooked.”
Susan and Jem laughed, Jem suddenly saying a little too hastily afterward, “So like, why do they call you JJ? I mean, when your name’s William Hoffman.”
He wondered if she’d checked his name in the register, maybe after first seeing him the previous night. “Childhood nickname,” he said. “Doesn’t mean anything.”
“And why are you called Hoffman?” He felt a slight charge, the fact that she was curious about him, bemused at the same time that it mattered to him.
“It’s my father’s name.”
“But it’s not English, right?”
“Nor is he. He’s Swiss. I live in Switzerland too.”
“Oh.” She seemed to think about it for a second or two and then added, “Cool.” She said no more then for the rest of the meal, just listening again, more relaxed now though whenever their eyes met, even smiling a couple of times in response.
They’d finished eating when her boyfriend appeared behind her in the doorway. Susan introduced him to JJ and the kid said, “Yeah, we met, kind of. Hey.”
“Hello, Freddie.”
“So, um ... ,” Jem said to her mother questioningly, like she wasn’t sure of the polite thing to do.
“Well, Freddie could join us,” said Susan, “but as we’re not in formal society I think we can probably spare the two of you.” The girl smiled, excusing herself, offering a general good-bye to the room as much as to the people in it, Freddie saying bye to each of them, an innate politeness forcing its way out past the surface cool.
Susan waited till they’d gone and said quietly then, “I do worry about them. They’re in love, there’s no doubt about that, but I have a bad feeling Freddie Sales will break her heart.”
She actually seemed fairly relaxed about the prospect, but Ed looked stern and said, “Then he’ll be making a big mistake, won’t he, JJ?”
“She’s a beautiful girl,” he agreed. Susan looked flattered, but Ed looked nonplussed, saying, “I don’t mean that! I mean he’ll be messing with the wrong people.”
“Speak for yourself,” said Susan quickly, “JJ and I are the right kind of people.” Ed acknowledged the wordplay. JJ felt flattered this time, by her tone and by the feeling around the table of complete acceptance, as if they’d known him for years rather than days.
And the fact that they’d been connected for almost two years hardly seemed to matter as they sat there, or what connected them. On the surface it was a freak encounter that the four of them had been brought together at that table, the way storms left strange fish sharing the same rock pools. But at some deeper level it felt right to be there, a place where he seemed to belong.
It was the feeling he got with Jem, too, based on no more than a few glances, on the indefinable attraction he felt toward her, that there was something prewritten between them, some unspoken territories that they already shared. It was ridiculous, a grown man losing sight of things because of the attraction of a pretty girl, but that was how he felt, Berg, Naumenko, and everything else almost fading against the thought of her.
13