The Tell (28 page)

“Do you mind?” she said. “Moving back a bit, giving me a little space?”

“I'm not doing anything.” The man sounded like a pissed-off kid and took a step closer.

“Just move back. A few feet. That's all I'm asking.” She returned to her book, but her knees bounced under the table.

People glanced up and then down again, ever curious, but never really moved these days. The man flexed his hands in his pockets. Owen pushed back his chair. He felt none of his old reluctance. He liked the fact of his height.

“Maybe you should just leave,” he said.

The man was instantly acquiescent, no fight to him at all, which made Owen an instant bully. He put his hands up and backed up. “I'm going,” he said. “Calm down, big guy.” He gave Owen the finger. “Cocksucker.”

The bells on the door barely spoke when he closed it behind him. A couple of people shook their heads and went back to what they'd been doing. Out on the sidewalk, the man drifted across the street where the teenagers cut him a bored glance. Owen turned back to the room, but no one would look at him. The girl behind the counter scowled.

“You didn't have to do that,” the woman with the purple scarf said. “He's a pain, but he's harmless. He would have moved in a minute. I think you kind of have a problem.”

“What's that?”

“Forget it.”

“No, I'd like to hear it.” Was he going to bully everyone now?

She took off her glasses. Lines appeared at the corners of her eyes. She was older than he'd imagined. “You're one of those self-appointed defender types. Look, someone would have bought him a cup of coffee eventually, and he would have left. That's how it works here. He's a regular, and who are you? I mean, have you ever even been in here before you lay down the law and act like an asshole?”

“You looked like you needed help.”

“But I didn't.”

Owen had confirmed for her and for everyone else in the place what they'd suspected about him from the minute he walked in: that all big men are aggressive dogs straining at the leash. When he looked outside again, the man in the army jacket was on the corner talking to someone in a buttery suede coat, long hair whipped up by the wind. It was Wilton who fished some bills out of his pocket and handed them over. Wilton's approach to the door was as theatrical as the other guy's departure, and the bells played a cascade of sound. He surveyed the place long enough for a few people to acknowledge him. Wilton was a regular, it appeared.

“This is a surprise.” He gave Owen's shoulder a squeeze. “May I sit with you? I'll be right back.”

On his way to the counter, Wilton said something to the woman with the purple scarf and she glanced at Owen. Wilton nodded. At the counter, he leaned on the glass display case and rested his chin boyishly in the web of his fingers as he flirted. He came back with a cup of coffee and pulled out a chair, angling himself in order to get a view of the street—and Anya's apartment. “Now, tell me why you're here.”

“Why are you here?”

“Ah.” Wilton sipped his coffee. “Sometimes I wait for Anya at this hour. If she wants to see me, she comes in. If not, she pretends she hasn't seen me. No more dates, no excuses or standing me up. None of her waffling. I'm done with that. Even a masochist has his limits. That's one of Anya's classmates over there, by the way.” He motioned at the woman with the scarf. “She thinks you're a menace. I told her you were a pussycat.” He laid both hands flat on the table, and his expression turned to concern. “How have you been? We haven't talked in a while.”

As a kid, Owen had been tossed around by the strongest ocean waves, and for those moments underwater he couldn't tell which way was up. That was the sensation he had now, caught in some dangerous tumble with this man.

“How the hell do you think I've been?” he said.

Wilton sat back. “Well, yes, Mira told me that you'd left. I'm very sorry to hear that. You love each other very much, that's clear. I know you'll work out whatever it is.”

“Whatever it is? You know exactly what it is.”

Wilton pressed his hand to his mouth, one of Mira's gestures, and shook his head, but his attention was drawn to a car that pulled up across the street under an oily column of light. A young guy got out and stood on the sidewalk while his passenger hauled something from the backseat. There was Anya's bumblebee hat bobbing above the roof of the car. Her friend was talking, clearly urging her in some way, and she kissed him on the mouth to quiet him.

“That's the son of a bitch who's sleeping with my daughter,” Wilton said. He wasn't thinking about Mira at all, and maybe never had been. She'd been a diversion—they both had been—while Anya was the real thing.

Anya ran across the street and into the Bright, spotted her friend and waved, and then turned as if someone had whispered behind her to pay attention. Distress crossed her face. She pulled at her earlobe. Her eyes met neither man's, but lingered instead on the space between them before she turned and left. Wilton gave Owen a cool, competitive look.

“Now we'll never know which one of us my daughter doesn't want to see anymore,” he said and got up to leave.

Owen shuffled. He was late to his first class, having once again mistimed his waking, his showering, his Monday morning commute from Extended Stay, but in no real hurry either. What kind of trouble could he get in anyway? At the far end of the lockers, Mrs. Tevas was taping up a poster that said:
Reading Is Traveling Without Ever Having to Leave
. The words floated above something that looked like Emerald City.

“But don't you think leaving is a good thing sometimes?” he asked, holding up a corner for her.

She glanced at him, patient but not particularly playful. She took in his wrinkled shirt, the crumbs from the donut he'd gobbled in the car. “I hear you need a place to stay for a while.”

If he passed her desk in the library at certain times, her eyes looked gold. Now they were dark and exacting, and she was the holder of information about him that she showed no discomfort in having. Information, gossip—an entitled and potent Rhode Island mix that flowed from certain taps. Mike obviously had told his friend, the principal, who'd told her friend Rosalie Tevas.

“That's true—for a while, nothing permanent.”

“You hope,” she said.

“Yes. I hope.”

She finished taping up the poster and swung the roll of tape around her finger. She knew of a furnished apartment, top floor of a house in Fox Point he might be interested in. “Nothing permanent,” she stressed again.

After school, Owen went to the Ives Street address. Mrs. Tevas answered the door. She hadn't told him this was her house. She'd changed out of her work clothes into a purple warm-up suit. He felt as if he were seeing something he wasn't supposed to see. Without her heels, she was even shorter, which only made her more commanding. He remembered how he'd seen her fiercely confront a student who'd threatened her. She'd pushed the kid up against the wall, grabbed the neck of his shirt, stuck her face in his. Her husband, George, passed behind her and gave Owen a cursory look. As she opened the door to the apartment upstairs, the late winter gray fell into the concern on her face. The furniture belonged to her son, she explained, as did everything else in the three rooms. The poster of the World Series–winning Red Sox. The URI beer mugs on the bookshelf, the cacti in tiny pots. This was his place, spotless, with the caustic odor of Ajax in the air. Even the old chenille bedspread with little white balls was perfectly even.

“He's a Marine, in Iraq,” Rosalie said, hesitant to step into the room. “He could come back any time, and then you'd have to—”

“Decamp. I understand,” Owen said. George paced around the floor below. “It's temporary.” The word was hopeful for everyone. Everyone would go home. He was six houses down from the Bright and could see a corner of Anya's apartment.

“I used to live in this neighborhood, around the block actually, when I first came to Providence.” He wanted to tell her more, but she was snapping her nails. His story wouldn't mean anything, and now she knew enough.

“Everything you need is here,” she explained. “No smoking. No dog.”

“Nope, no dog.”

“Or cat. George and I are right below, so no—” She paused and absently touched the door lock. “No loud noise.”

They nodded at each other, an exchange between people who didn't know each other at all but were now going to be living very closely. She would take only very little money from him. After all, she said, she knew what he made.

“I'm very grateful for this,” he said. “My wife and I—”

“Fine.” She put up her hands; she didn't want to know his problems. Her clock and calendar were set to her son. “If you could keep it neat. George comes up and cleans, vacuums, dusts. Waters those things. He might still want to do that.”

“He doesn't have to. I'll keep it clean.”

“He might do it anyway.” There was no doubt that this was exactly what George was going to do. Owen suspected that the man did not want him in the apartment at all.

Later that night, after he'd brought his things over from Extended Stay, he watched the cars slide by on Route 195, and beyond, the gas tanks banked on the edge of the bay with their crowns of red stars. He wanted to remember what he'd felt years before looking at practically the same view. It was possible he'd felt nothing then—or so much the same thing as he did now that it was undetectable. In bed, he sensed the imprint of Rosalie's son on the mattress. Owen was a body double, a place-holder. His beating heart was someone's good luck, and he was glad for that. The street sounds were familiar still—wisps of Portuguese, little kids up too late—life unlike the aristocratic, chilly hush of Whittier Street. He'd stopped thinking of Mira for a few minutes. And then there she wasn't, not in the bed with him, not standing at the foot of it in one of her engaging insomniac wanders. Not telling him on the phone she wanted him to come back. It was, for a second, as though he'd never met her, he was back here starting all over again, and only dreamed that he might someday be with her.

Weeks before he'd left, he'd told Mira that he'd go to Ellie Cotton's memorial service with her, and last night she'd called to ask if he would still come. She was hoarse and she didn't want to talk. Ten days had passed since he'd moved out, and the house was alien territory already. He paused at the front door. The UPS truck pulled up in front of Wilton's and cut the engine. The usual driver emerged with a stack of boxes, which he placed on the porch, but this time he dropped them and rushed away as if he didn't want to have to talk to Wilton. The thuds of Saturday's delivered booty drew Wilton out. At one in the afternoon, he was in his dingy white bathrobe, his face in its private sag.

Owen didn't want to be spotted by him. And not in a jacket and tie like he was some sort of suitor. He let himself in. The house was stuffy. There were two plates on the table painted with dinner's red and green remains, two wineglasses. Mira's napkin, always in a tight ball, was under a plate rim. Morning hadn't happened in the house yet—no coffee cup, no newspaper, no keys tossed on the counter to show that Mira had been in and out. A vague sense of dread followed him upstairs. Already the smell of heating dust rising from the carpets was part of a memory. He was revisiting, not visiting. There was a time I lived in this house, he said to himself. Mira was still asleep. She'd thrown off her nightgown and the blankets, and her body was huddled in a punishing chill, her hands stuck between her thighs. Blue veins ventured across her skin.

He sat on the edge of the bed. His fingers hovered above her shoulder. He traced the spiral of her ear. When he said her name, Mira didn't wake up so much as emerge from something dense and sticky. Was she hungover? She rolled onto her back and pulled the blanket up. Its tattered satin edge rested on her upper lip. He wasn't prepared for how he felt seeing her for the first time—breathless, light-headed, willing to give up everything to come back.

“Hey,” she said.

He couldn't bear to look at her any longer—or have her look at him. “We don't have to go to this thing. The woman's been dead for months, so it's not like she's going to notice. You never even liked her.”

“I have to go.” Mira sat up. The skin on her arms looked too white. “I want to see her house without her in it. See what that's like. You don't have to come.”

“I told you I would.”

“But that was before.” She put on her robe.

“I'm here now. And I have a nice tie on. That doesn't happen very often.”

“I hate this, you know,” she said, as she went into the bathroom and turned on the shower.

Owen waited downstairs in his study. Forgotten student papers were still on the desk. He'd give them all 100s at this point. He searched again for his squid pen, wriggling his fingers around the shallow back of the drawer, but didn't find it. Mira came downstairs wearing a shapeless black dress and black boots. Her face was splotchy, as though she'd scrubbed it. She hoped she looked appropriately funereal even if she wasn't at all mournful for Ellie Cotton, her father's lover. She swiped on some deep red lipstick, and they walked silently to Power Street.