After Charles Walker’s attempt at strong-armed rushing, and Pansy’s attempt at blatant coercion, Nell’s had enough of dinner. She’d chew glass before she stayed for coffee and those sticky coconut macaroons they served at the hunt club. She gathers her things, quickly shaking everyone’s hand like a grown-up, while she steams on the inside. She heads out to her car fast enough that no one can collect themselves to come after her.
She jumps a little when the passenger-side door opens and Louis leans in.
“We’re going to need to talk,” he says.
Nell’s so relieved it’s him and not Baldwin or Pansy or Charles Walker that she starts up the car and merely asks, “Where to?”
He directs her downtown. Putting miles between them and the scene at dinner calms her. While she drives, Louis keeps up a reassuring patter of small talk, avoiding anything of substance, letting her calm down.
When he directs her to the exit next to City Hall, Nell remembers the way to the boxy Victorian with flaking white paint. The lawn is still in the need of a cut, as it was the last time she was here.
In the kitchen there’s a fridge with some beer inside and little else. Louis offers her one, but quickly pulls it back. “Oh, right,” he says to himself, and that sends him rifling through the cupboards, which turns up an ancient bottle of warm white wine.
“I’m good, really,” she says, but he opens the bottle and pours some over ice anyway.
She takes a sip; it’s sour, corked.
“To Chuck Walker,” he says.
Nell almost snorts her drink through her nose. It’s such a perfect name for that aging good old boy.
“Really?”
“All his life,” Louis says. “Took an iron hand and the determination of a beaver for him to get everyone to call him Charles. But my sister went to college with him and he was Chuck all the way until law school. Every once in a while someone from his past calls or visits and ‘Chuck’ gets out, then he has to enact a reign of terror all over again to stuff it back in its box.”
“That’s so perfect. It makes me think God’s on his cloud throne and all’s right with the world. He’s a total Chuck.”
“Isn’t he, though?”
“But smart,” she says. Walker may have been an ass, but he hadn’t been stupid.
“Decently.”
She follows Louis to the sofa in the living room. The only furniture besides an elaborate television setup; she remembers this from before. The house is mostly bare, with clean floors and white walls, cut up into dinky rooms. The fixtures are cheap, likely replaced in the sixties. He told her last time that he’d bought it as an investment, a fixer-upper in a gentrifying neighborhood. The place has the air of the unfinished about it, the bachelor, the workaholic. There are no photos on the walls.
“But I don’t think they’ll make it difficult for you now that we know why they’re pushing so hard for you to donate,” Louis says, sitting down. “I didn’t get it at first, but as I sat there I realized they must know they’re not going to have a real basis for a challenge, not legally. So maybe this is their way to control it.”
“And look like big shots all over town.”
“There is that.”
“If that’s the worst of it, I can handle it,” she says.
“If you donate it, the tax apportionment issue would go away, too. I’m sure Chuck explained that to them. Another reason they’d be keen to have you give it away. I should have sewed it up during drafting, but it wasn’t important at the time. These things have a way of biting you in the ass.”
There’s zing in this throwaway line; it comes out of his mouth with intent.
“God, that sounded weirdly . . .” To her delight, his ears turn red. “Literal.”
She waves off his discomfort as she fiddles with her glass, glad to have him on the back foot for once.
His beer is finished, and he tips it toward her, as if to ask, “Want another?”
Her sour wine is forgotten, left on the floor, as there’s no coffee table. Right now she knows what she wants, and it’s not another drink.
She’d been hesitant to see him, wondering if it would be awkward in person after weeks of writing. But her doubts disappear when he stands, offers her a hand, and leads her upstairs with no hesitation.
His bedroom is as spartan as the rest of the house. The bed is on a basic metal frame, smack in the middle of the room, and sex immediately comes to her mind. Plain white sheets smell like clean laundry and him.
“You’re going to stay,” he says with a cheeky smile. They both know she’s staying.
“Tonight?”
“Yeah, or, you know, forever. Whichever you want.”
He’s charming, yes, but there’s something in this sentiment that irks her. He’s all intensity and certainty, which is flattering, but the unspoken is that she will stay here with him. She will fit into his world. And Nell is sick of trying to fit in.
But she lets it go. She’s been looking forward to this.
“Maybe I should keep you here as my captive. Never let you go back.” He’s teasing, of course, playful, and not at all serious. It would have been a turn-on before, but it frays the same nerve now. She’s not some damsel. He’s not some knight.
She checks herself, again. She hasn’t been with anyone since the last time with him, and she’s feeling pent-up, ready for a night of sense pleasure, if he’d just stop talking.
But he’s not reading her silence correctly, probably thinking she’s nervous.
“?’Cause I could, you know. Keep you here with me, keep you all to myself.”
Three strikes and you’re out, she thinks. She’s fully annoyed now.
“You know, I really should be getting back,” she says.
“Wait, what?” he asks, shrugging his shirt back on. “What just happened?”
“I need to go back to the farm.” Let’s see if he can be accommodating, she thinks. “You could come with me,” she says.
“But we’re here. You don’t need to go.”
“I do.”
“Let’s not leave.”
“Look,” she says, sighing, realizing the truth. “We both know this is impossible.”
Stunned, he says, “Impossible?”
“Well, I mean, you won’t even come out to the farm. Are you going to move?” At the look on his face, she says, “Right. It’s not like you’re going to move across the country, and so it’s going to be me who’s going to have to uproot her life. And frankly I’m too old and too good at what I do for that. So really, what is the point of this? You’re not keeping me here. I’m not staying back here. My parents left for a reason and they never came back. We don’t come back.”
He freezes and then says, “You just did a whole thing in your head.”
“Maybe. Doesn’t mean I’m wrong.”
“Do I get a say in any of this?”
“You have something to say, say it.”
When he’s silent, she turns to gather up her stuff and go.