I said I’d be right back with the bags. I got only as far as the top step when I backtracked to ask, “If it’s not your ex-wife or someone totally age inappropriate or an escort service, what’s the big secret?”
“Jesus! Where do you come up with this stuff?”
I said, “I’m not asking out of nosiness. I might know her! She might be an alum—”
“And I might never see her again after one drink, so why discuss it at all?”
“I won’t get invested. I won’t even text you later to see how it went. That’s how uninterested I am.”
When I returned with the trash bags, a broom, and a dustpan, Joel was wrestling with the large corrugated box that had housed the unassembled bed.
“Can’t you put it on the truck without getting all neat about it?”
“That would be too easy,” he said.
I was dabbing the floor with the broom as Joel watched. “Who taught you how to sweep?” he asked, and when I didn’t answer, he said, “If you must know, her name is Leslie.”
“Thank you. Does she have a last name?”
“Probably. Okay, listen . . . I didn’t think you’d love this part. Leslie has a sister who used to be married to Stuart.”
I couldn’t make immediate sense of that confession. “Stuart? My Stuart? Stuart Levine? You’re in touch with him?”
“No, I am not.”
“So you just ran into her somewhere, and she mentioned she had an ex-brother-in-law named Stuart, and you put two and two together?”
“Calm down. No. One of his mothers gave her my number.”
“Stuart’s mothers? When did you meet Stuart’s mothers?”
“I didn’t. Mom did.”
“They met here! There wasn’t any matchmaking going on.”
“All I know is that at some point Mom mentioned what I do, since all it takes is a weather forecast, and they came away with a business card, and who knows how one thing leads to another?”
“What if you like her? What if you marry her?”
“Let that be your biggest worry,” he said. “Now give me the broom. End of discussion.”
Clearly I’d annoyed him. He was collecting not just the newly filled trash bags but also emptying every second-floor wastebasket. With arms full, he said, “I hope your guest will find his very heavy, solid ash, hard-to-assemble bed very comfortable. Would you prefer I leave by the servants’ entrance?”
I said, “I’m sorry! You were a huge help with all of this.” I propped the broom in the nearest corner. “Put that stuff down so I can give you a thank-you hug.”
Post hug, post apology, over glasses of water in the kitchen, I asked, “Have you spoken to Mom today?”
“Why?”
“She told me she had to rush off the phone because it was now a business line.”
“Oh, that,” he said.
“What business?”
“It’s bogus, a make-work project. She volunteered to be Dad’s booker because he doesn’t answer his phone.”
I put an imaginary receiver to my ear. “Hello. Frankel Forgeries, Incorporated. And for your towing and plowing needs, you can also leave a message here for my only son.”
“You think that’s a joke? Tommy McKeon—you remember him? We used to caddy together? He told me that Mom was getting gas at the Pride station, and his dad was at the next pump. She called over to him, ‘Snow predicted for tomorrow! How are you set for plowing?’ He said, ‘I do my own shoveling.’ You know what Ma said? ‘Does your wife know CPR?’?”
I said, “I kinda admire that.”
He helped himself to one of the apples I’d arranged in an artistic, nutritional fashion. “This new housemate,” he asked. “He’s a good guy?”
I said, “He was the only one who stuck up for me at work, at the inquisition. And this arrangement is very temporary, only until he finds what he’s looking for.”
“Maybe this is what he’s looking for,” Joel said.
Besides his duffel, Nick arrived with a suitcase, a knapsack, two boxes of books, an electric frying pan, and the contents of his wine rack. After another trip to his car, he returned with a bulging brown grocery bag.
I hadn’t thought this far ahead as to whether we’d be dining family-style, sharing the cooking, or labeling yogurt and condiments in the unfriendly, proprietary manner of my Brooklyn roommates.
He said, “I didn’t want to take anything for granted. Such as breakfast. I wasn’t sure what you had for a coffeemaker. I guessed and bought ground. And half-and-half.”
I’d been standing in the front hall, not meaning to block his entrance but frozen to the spot due to the sudden reality of Nick extracurricularly.
“How about a tour?” he asked.
I wasn’t expecting to feel this self-conscious about everything, about my humble five rooms, about me in jeans, my hair in a ponytail. Had I thought this through? Would we be breakfasting in bathrobes? Commuting in one car or two? Using the same bar of soap? All of this seemed to be manifesting itself as social paralysis.
“Faith?” he prompted. “You okay with all of this?”
I said, “Yes, of course. And now the tour . . . this is what I call the parlor. This will be the dining room as soon as I get a dining-room table. This is my china closet. There’s plenty of room if you have dishes. Or stemware.”
“Hmm . . . stemware,” he said. “I don’t believe I do. But thank you.”
Next was the kitchen. “It’s probably self-explanatory,” I said, but narrated anyway: stove, breadbox, sink. “It’s soapstone,” I said. “The original sink. I keep my cleaning products under it . . . Here. Whatever you need.”
“And would this by any chance be the refrigerator and the toaster?” he asked.
I confessed that I was a little nervous. It wasn’t his being here. It was seeing my very modest house through new eyes. Maybe he’d been expecting something bigger or grander or newer.
He said, “You’re forgetting the large number of photos you showed me between your first visit and your moving in. So cut it out. It’s great.”
“Even if I don’t have a microwave?”
“I’m antimicrowave. And I don’t like big houses. They’re so . . . big. So pretentious. So head of school.”
“Whew,” I said. “Thank you.”
“Who’s thanking who here? I could be at The Evermore. Or on Reggie’s couch.”