The waiter hovered nearby.
Vivien knew that some people believed that in the moments before death, a person’s life flashed through their mind. Although she did not believe she was dying as she sat in that French restaurant on that May afternoon during a rainstorm, her life did pass before her. The vague shadowy images of her parents; her Aunt Irene and the house on Fremont Street; all of those years at the Field School for Girls with their Latin and French and Literature; holding Lotte’s hand; the small room in the boardinghouse across the bay in Oakland where Vivien lived while she studied at Mills College; her first beau, Langston Moore, who kissed her with such passion her teeth ached afterwards; the classroom at the Field School that was hers now with its neat rows of desks and the girls in their gray skirts and white blouses and the smell of chalk dust and books being opened; her first glimpse of the blue hat in the window of the milliner’s shop.
The man, this stranger sitting across from her, was speaking to the waiter. Ordering supper, she realized.
Vivien stood abruptly, banging her knee against the table and spilling some water onto the starched white tablecloth.
“I can’t eat supper with you,” she said. “I have to be at Lotte’s bridal shower at the Fenn Club.” She was going to be late, she realized, and without even telling the man her name, Vivien rushed outside into the rain. Her streetcar was there, ready to close its doors. She shouted to the conductor, and lifting her skirt, ran across the street, hopping onto the streetcar, wet and out of breath. From the window, she saw the man standing in the doorway of the restaurant, still holding one of the white linen napkins, like a soldier offering surrender to his enemy. For the first time since he’d spoken to her in front of the Emporium, she saw the thick gold band on his left ring finger.
“It’s infatuation, that’s all,” Lotte told Vivien.
It had been three days since Vivien had met the man on Market Street, and she had not had a good night’s sleep or been able to keep him out of her mind. Even as she sat with Lotte recording the wedding gifts for her, murmuring over the heavy silver and delicate crystal lined up on the dining room table, all she could think about was that man.
Sometimes she blurted, “The audacity of him! Assuming I’d want to eat dinner with him.”
To which Lotte, tracing the bluebells on her china, replied, “And him a married man too.”
Or Vivien would say dreamily, “He is handsome, though.”
“And married.”
Vivien sighed. She hadn’t told Lotte that part of what kept her up at night was imagining his wife, hoping she was ill or insane or something that would allow him to pursue Vivien. But then she would worry over how he would ever find her again. She was just a nameless stranger in a blue hat.
“Love is something else,” Lotte was saying now.
Vivien, bored with her job of carefully writing down each item and the name and address of who had sent it, was contemplating how she might find him. If she went to Market Street and stood in front of the Emporium every afternoon, would he pass by again?
“It’s a more practical feeling, Vivvie,” Lotte said as she unwrapped yet another china plate. She admired it as if she had not already received six others. “Love is reliable. Infatuation is temporary.”
Vivien realized she’d been holding a sterling silver fish knife for far too long, and lost track of who had sent it.
“Have you recorded that yet?” Lotte asked her.
The thank-you notes, engraved with dark brown letters on thick cream paper, waited on the sideboard to be written.
“Yes,” Vivien lied, and laid it on the table. “It doesn’t matter,” she continued. “I’ll never see him again.”
“Which is a good thing,” Lotte said. “Since he’s—”
“I know.”
“You’ll see at the wedding. Robert has some very handsome friends. And a cousin who’s a dentist in Boise.”
“Idaho? No thank you, Lotte. You might be willing to move to the country, but I prefer to stay right here, thank you.”
“Boise is a city, Viv.”
Vivien made a sound in her throat which she hoped Lotte took as agreement.
Lotte walked dreamily around the table, her fingers fluttering over her wedding presents as if she were already placing them in her new home.
“If I went back to the very spot where I first saw him,” Vivien said, pretending to admire a sterling silver ice bucket, “do you think he might pass by?”
“One of Robert’s friends also owns a vineyard. We could be neighbors,” Lotte said, her eyes shining. “Our children could be best friends too. And we could grow old together.”