Under the covers, she carefully composed her body, shut her eyes, and began to try to relax. It had been a nice dinner at Gina’s family’s house. Nothing more. But the words she’d tried to erase kept coming back. Gina calling Jake “that fucking creep.” Mrs. Bergeron’s condescending tone, talking to Alice like she was some little girl. And then she remembered the feeling when she’d bitten down on Gina’s hand. Her body was so tight that it was beginning to tremble. While Jake was applying his face cream in the bathroom, Alice slid out from the covers and got off the bed. “Want anything from downstairs?” she asked Jake, and he shook his head.
In the kitchen she made herself a White Russian, heavy on the vodka, and told herself to drink it slowly, to not be like her mother. She drank half of it in short, small sips, and began to feel better. Of course they’d be critical. They didn’t know what she had with Jake. Or maybe they did know, and they were just jealous. That made a lot more sense. As she was making herself a second drink, she heard a very light tapping and thought for a moment that Jake was coming down the stairs. She stepped out into the living room. There was the tapping sound again, and she realized someone was knocking on the door. She went and peered through the eyehole. It was Gina.
Chapter 14
Now
Every time the front doorbell rang at the store the following day, Harry thought it might be Grace, returning to find out more about a possible job. He didn’t really believe she’d return—why would she when he’d told her he would call?—but he found himself disappointed, anyway. He’d been obsessing over their conversation the previous afternoon, telling himself that maybe she was just what she said she was—new in town, and looking for a job. But she wasn’t, was she? She had obviously come in for some purpose other than a job. Why else would she have been at the funeral, and walking past the house on his first night back in Maine?
But each time the bell rang, it was either a customer—usually coming to offer condolences instead of buying a book—or Alice, who stopped by at lunchtime to bring chicken sandwiches and then again midafternoon, because she was shopping and wanted to see if Harry or John needed anything. Dinner at home the previous night had been less intimate, and less awkward, than the night before, but only because Harry told her he wasn’t feeling well, passed on a drink, and ate in record time. He spent the evening in his room, finishing the Ed McBain and starting another, but mostly just thinking about his father and what might have happened on the path that afternoon. He also thought of Alice, sexualized images of her flashing unwanted through his mind. He kept picturing her from that first summer when she was married to his father. The green bikini top and the denim shorts, so short that he could see the bottom curve of her buttocks. He realized that four years of college hadn’t managed to shake that image from his mind.
At four thirty, when it became clear that Grace wasn’t going to drop by the store again, he got out his phone and punched in her number, adding it as a contact. He was about to call her, but decided to text instead.
This is Harry from the bookstore. Want to get a drink tonight?
He pressed Send, wondering anxiously if he was misleading her about the job possibility. Lew leapt onto Harry’s lap, startling him. Lew was not generally a lap cat, unless you’d ignored him for some time, and then he’d find a way to pounce into your lap when you weren’t looking. With one hand, Harry stroked Lew’s matted fur, writing another text to Grace with his other.
No job here, at least not yet. Just wanted to get a drink.
He shook his head rapidly at the two dumb texts. “You okay, my friend?” John asked. Lew flattened himself onto Harry’s lap, purring.
“Oh, sorry. I’m looking at my phone.” Harry held it up, and as he did, it vibrated in his hand. It was Grace, texting back.
Sure. When?
They agreed to meet at the Village Inn in one hour. Harry left work early, considered going home to change out of his black T-shirt into something a little more date-like, then decided his time would be better spent waiting for Grace at the bar.
The Village Inn was a large Colonial house refurbished into a small hotel. Harry had been inside a few times, to eat dinner with his father, or his father and Alice. He’d seen the bar, but he’d never had a drink there. It was a small alcove off the main lobby, wood paneled and with just eight padded stools along the bar. It was empty when Harry arrived, not even a bartender. He sat on a stool. The oak bar gleamed with polish, and low lighting illuminated the high-end bottles displayed behind the bar. Harry was used to college bars with Budweiser mirrors and J?germeister dispensers. While he was trying to decide what to drink, the bartender came out. She was a heavyset woman with old-timey tattoos on both arms. Her hair was dyed a bottle blond and she wore thick glasses. She startled a little when she saw Harry.
“Where’d you come from, sweetie?” she said, as Harry asked her if they were open yet.
“We’re open. What can I get you, and can I see an ID, please?”
Harry fished out his driver’s license, showed it to the bartender, and ordered himself a bourbon and ginger ale. She made his drink in a low tumbler, garnishing it with a thin sliver of lemon, then fiddled with her phone, which was attached to the speakers, selecting a song, a man’s deep voice over drums, bass, and a saxophone. Harry looked at his own phone as she began to prepare the bar, shifting bottles around, cutting up fruit. It was half an hour before Grace was due to show up. Harry told himself to sip his drink, and make it last. He was anxious to see Grace again, and he wondered what she thought about his invitation. He didn’t know what to think of it himself. Had he invited her out on a date, or was he trying to find out what connection she might have had with his father? Both, probably, although it was easier for Harry to consider it a fact-finding mission.
Harry had had two major relationships in college. The first had been with Florence Lee, a girl he’d met his first week at Mather when they were both volunteers at the student-run movie theater. Their first night together they had stayed up till dawn talking about the French new wave and Vonnegut novels. She’d done most of the talking, actually, but it was like she was speaking both his thoughts and her own out loud. The next night they stayed up till dawn having sex. Those two nights combined to convince Harry that Florence Lee was the one and only true love of his life. They were inseparable until the following spring, when Harry discovered that she’d never stopped fucking her high school boyfriend back on Long Island. Harry had been inconsolable, even considering leaving Mather. Paul Roman, claiming he’d never liked Florence, had finally gotten Harry out of the funk.
Then Harry had started spending time with Paul’s friend Kim, so different from the cerebral, depressive, highly sexual Florence. She was a very sarcastic theater major who wore retro dresses and smoked American Spirits. They stayed close all through sophomore year, Harry coaching Kim through her own complicated, emotionally abusive relationship with a fellow theater major named Antoine. When Kim finally shed Antoine, at the beginning of junior year, Harry and Kim started fooling around, jokingly at first. They agreed to keep it quiet, and they agreed to take it slow, each having been damaged by previous sexual relationships.
“How slow?” Harry asked, the first morning after Kim had spent the night in his bed.
“When it snows we’ll do it. How about that?”
Harry pulled up his dorm room’s blind and looked out at a blue sky. It was early November, and most of the trees were still holding on to their changed leaves.
“First snow, really?”
“Sure. Sounds about right. When it snows I’ll let you put your penis in my vagina.” She was hooking her bra behind her back and smiling widely.
“Promise?”
“I promise.”
By the middle of December, there hadn’t been so much as a snow squall, and the weathermen were predicting a decidedly nonwhite Christmas. The mild fall had become a constant joke between Harry and Kim, the weather conspiring to keep them apart. On the last night of fall semester, Harry had one paper left to write, five pages on the Protestant Reformation. He was just finishing up when he received a text from Kim.
Done yet?
Almost.