Thief of Words (17 page)
C
ome on, he won’t notice,” Jack said. “He’s a guy.”
Annie scrunched the left side of her face in a get-real look. “You don’t think a long silk, spaghetti-strapped dress and Joan Crawford fuck-me shoes are a
little
dressy for a coffee shop? You think he won’t notice
that?
”
Jack looked Annie up and down. “Hmmm, nice,” he said. “You’re right. He’ll know you didn’t just drive up this morning. But he knows that anyway. I told him we had a date last night and, with any luck, you’d be joining us for lunch. He’s a grown-up, Annie; he can handle the fact that his father’s not a virgin. Come on, he’s dying to meet you.”
“He’ll think I’m a trollop,” Annie said.
“Yeah, so?”
In deference to Annie’s spike heels, they drove the four blocks to One World Café, Jack’s favorite breakfast hangout. As usual, the mismatched tables were jammed with latte drinkers and Sunday
New York Times
readers. Luckily, a trio in running shorts got up just as Jack and Annie walked in.
Annie claimed the table as Jack waited in line. She’d wanted to wait for Matthew, but Jack said he was always late. “Plus, I don’t know about you, but I’m starving. I worked hard last night.”
By the time Matthew arrived—twenty minutes after the agreed noon meeting—Jack and Annie had finished two sticky buns and were starting on a spinach-feta omelet. Their table was turned away from the door and they didn’t see the brown-haired young man, who looked like a memory of Jack, standing in line, watching them.
Matthew looked at his father talking and waving his fork around like a little baton. The woman, holding a coffee cup that never quite reached her lips, was laughing. Laughing, Matthew was certain, at something his father had said, because he recognized the triumphant grin on his father’s face.
Their body language surprised him. They were looser— younger—than he expected. The woman touched his father’s hand and he squeezed hers in return. Their familiarity gave him an unexpected pang—she wasn’t his mother—but his father had needed someone for a long while, and, judging by his smile, he might have found her.
Matthew thought about saying something snappy like, “Hi, I’m the younger, better DePaul,” but he knew this meeting was important to his father. When they’d arranged to meet for lunch, Jack had told Matthew at least three times that Annie might join them.
So with all the dignity a twenty-two-year-old can muster, he walked over, reached out his hand to the woman in the long silk dress, and said, “Hello, I’m Matthew.”
Then, because he was only twenty-two, he smiled at his father and said, “Nice dress, Annie.”
For an hour, the three of them sat knee to knee at the small table, drinking coffee and talking. Matthew regaled Annie with Anasazi research and how the PC spin on them was all wrong. “Gentle natives?” he said, making the same sweep of hand that Jack did when he got excited. “Peacefully grinding corn in
matates
? How about roasting skulls by the fire? They were cannibals.”
Jack had already heard the details of Matthew’s work, but he encouraged his son on, saying, “No way,” or “Amazing,” or “That’s incredible,” at the key—and infrequent—moments that Matthew was silent. Jack smiled; his son was taken with Annie, too. Matthew’s discussions with Jack about his research had been far drier.
And Annie? Jack watched as she listened to Matthew. She seemed more interested in the Anasazi than could be humanly possible. With each question she asked, Matthew seemed to swell bigger and bigger as he dug deeper and deeper into the arcana of paleobiology. When Annie suggested he consider writing a book, Jack thought Matthew might float to the ceiling like a giant Bullwinkle in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade.
It would be easy to think Annie was just being nice; she was, after all, meeting the son of the man she thought she was falling in love with. But the truth was, Annie found Matthew charming. Annie remembered that Jack had once written of the man he used to be, before he felt the wind blow through him. Watching Matthew, she could see who that man had been.
It was nearly 1:30 when Annie stood up and told the DePaul boys she had to go back to Washington. “I’m still trying to catch up with work since my North Carolina trip,” she said. Then she reached over the table and gave Matthew a hug.
“You’re everything your father says you are—and more,” she said.
At another time in her life, Annie would have stayed the afternoon—and the night. But if she’d learned anything in her forty-four years, it’s that men need time to process. Jack was looking a little frayed, plus she knew he wanted time alone with his son.
Jack walked Annie to her car. Before she got in, they kissed and held each other, hands on waists, like two swing dancers.
“Thanks, Jack, I had a great time,” Annie said. Then she rolled her eyes, groaned, and said, “God, could I get any more inane? Let me try again…You were wonderful…I mean… it, we—”
Jack kissed her in midsentence, then said, “You were wonderful, too, Annie. Really wonderful. I know there’s a better way to say it, but right now I can’t think how—except to say I think we should see each other again, as soon as possible. Tomorrow night?”
“Can’t. I’m meeting an author.”
“Then Tuesday night?”
“Your conference, remember?”
“Oh, shit,” said Jack, “I forgot about the stupid conference. Well, I’ll be back Saturday afternoon. What about Saturday night? What if I came down to D.C.? What if I brought my sleeping bag?”
“I don’t think a sleeping bag will be necessary, do you?”
With the subject of sleeping together reintroduced, they looked at each other silently for a second, both reviewing images from the past night.
Finally, Jack broke the spell. “I’ll e-mail you tonight, okay?” “You better,” said Annie, “or I’ll chop your hands off. Worse: I’ll sic Laura on you.”
When Jack returned to One World, Matthew was finishing up his omelet and the leftovers on Jack’s plate, too.
Before Jack could ask the obvious question, Matthew answered it. “She’s awesome, Dad.”
Jack nodded. “I think so, too. But could you try to be a little more specific?”
“What can I say? She’s smart and funny. She’s got great hair. She’s hot. I can’t figure out what she’s doing with an old fossil like you.”
“I can’t either,” said Jack. “It must be the e-mails.”
“Yeah,” said Matthew. “This rewriting the past thing is powerful voodoo. Remember Jennifer? The girl I was with at One World a couple of weeks ago? She’s a total babe. I’m going to have to try it on her.”
“You’re missing the point, Matthew. Jennifer is what, twenty? First you have to have a past in order to rewrite it.”
Matthew shook a forkful of feta at his father. “The point is, Dad, you better not screw up this time. Annie’s a keeper. She’s real. You can tell. She shouldn’t be another stop on your midlife crisis tour.”
Jack wondered just when it had happened that his twenty-two-year-old son became the dad and started giving him advice on life. He looked at Matthew for a second; his heart was flooded by one of those tsunamis of love that parents feel. If I never do anything else in my life, at least I’ve done this. I wish it had been different between your mother and me, he thought, trying to telepath his regret to Matthew’s brain. I wish I’d never told you about Kathleen Faulkner.
But if Matthew was tuned to his father’s emotional bandwidth, he didn’t show it. Instead, he stuck the piece of feta in his mouth and said, with a smirk too cocky by half, “Of course, if you blow it, I could be next in line. Just call me the Graduate.”
“Watch it, pal,” said his father, “or I’ll rewrite you right out of existence.”
W
ould she want a small wedding the second time around? Should they have klezmer music? Annie pictured Jack dancing the hora. (Trip had refused.) Maybe they should just skip the wedding and live together. Somewhere halfway between Baltimore and Washington? Yuck, that’s Columbia. But Ellicott City would work. They could find a funky cottage; her primitive stuff would look great with his sturdy mission furniture.
They were sitting on their sunny veranda eating tomatoes, basil, and mozzarella drizzled in aged olive oil and a touch of balsamic—she was wearing an orange batik wraparound skirt and a gauzy white shirt that caught the breeze and brushed her nipples— when a ugly green sign announcing the Beltway suddenly came into view.
Annie blinked and read the white letters again. “Holy shit, how’d I get here?”
Then she realized where she was: in her car, on I-95 South. Her hands were on the wheel; she was driving.
The Beltway already? What had happened to Columbia, Laurel, Scaggsville, Burtonsville, and all the other towns between Baltimore and Washington? She didn’t remember passing any of them.
Somewhere after getting on Baltimore’s Key Highway, Annie had left her body in charge of driving and her mind in charge of replaying last night. Once again she had dinner at Remmy’s, walked in Federal Hill Park, explored Jack’s body and had hers explored. Then, most likely around Laurel, her thoughts had catapulted forward—to the hora and a summer dinner of tomatoes and basil on a big white veranda.
After coming to at the Beltway, Annie tried to stay focused. But no sooner would she force herself to concentrate on the lines in the road or the upcoming exit signs than she’d hear Jennifer Warnes and find herself dancing in the moonlight with Jack.
Somehow, she managed to reach her Dupont Circle apartment. The light on her phone was blinking. Five new messages. The first four were from her mother (why had she told her about the upcoming date with Jack?), the last was from Laura, who had called at 8:30 that morning to see if Annie had spent the night at home. “Just making sure you did the right thing. Was I right about his butt? I expect a full report.”
After a long shower, she thought about a nap. She should be tired, shouldn’t she? But the endorphins were still carbonating Annie’s blood, so she threw on some clothes and headed for the office to finish up the pile of paperwork that had spread over her desk like kudzu while she’d been in North Carolina.
It was the brightest day of spring. The tufts of clouds merely accented the light blue sky; summer’s humidity was still in hibernation. Red, purple, and blue pansies tumbled out of clay pots and window boxes on P Street.
Annie found herself humming, “I’m walking on sunshine…” and smiling at passersby. Everywhere she looked, there were couples. They were talking intently in the cafés and holding hands on the sidewalks; men and women, men and men, blacks and whites, browns and browns, Democrats and Republicans. With all this love around, Annie thought, this could be Paris. Why hadn’t she noticed it before?
Could she be in love? The sensible-shoe side of her brain said, “No, it’s way too early.” Okay, if not love, then serious like? “All right,” said sensible shoes, “but call off the wedding and cancel the caterers. You’ve been planning weddings after every first date since Eli Weintraub in eighth grade.”
Annie unlocked the heavy, brass-trimmed doors of her building and stepped inside. For a moment it was last night, and she was stepping back into Jack’s apartment. This was a very serious like.
It wasn’t simply her body celebrating the end of loneliness. She was sure she wasn’t just trying to convince herself of that. When she had first met Jack it was like being reacquainted with an old best friend. Then the e-mails came. Just the past week she’d read another article, this one in
Newsweek,
about breakthroughs in the study of memory. Good memories can cover over bad ones, it had said. Ever since Jack had taken her to the night of flamenco, her past had become a better place. He was making love to her and healing her at the same time.
Annie walked into the office thinking she owed Laura big time—at least a dozen sticky buns.
“Hey, Punkin. What are you doing here?” It was Fred, feet up on his desk, several manuscripts on his lap.
“I could ask you the same question. You were here yesterday,” said Annie. “My excuse is I’m nowhere close to catching up from the trip. What’s yours?”
Fred swung his long legs down to the floor. Annie noticed that he was wearing his usual work outfit: slacks, white shirt, bow tie.
“I needed to keep my mind busy today. I couldn’t do it at home. Alone.”
Annie frowned. What was so special about today? She looked over at the wall calendar. And she knew. It was May 19, Fred and Lillian’s anniversary. It would have been their twenty-seventh.
“Oh. I’m sorry, Fred.”
Fred made a wry face. “No need to be. It’s not your fault she’s no longer with us. I’m glad you got to know her.”
“Me too,” Annie said. “I love that story about how you met. Tell me again. Fireworks, right?”
Fred smiled and put his feet back up on his desk.
“Fireworks, indeed,” he said. “I met her on a rooftop in Georgetown. It was the Fourth of July. Some friends had invited me to a fireworks-watching party. There were twenty or so people. Lillian and I had both been divorced for a few years at the time and we were the only singles. It didn’t dawn on me until after we were married that the hosts had fixed it up that way.
“I first saw her up there on the roof. She was holding a glass of champagne and eating a hotdog. She was wearing a straw hat and a blue-and-green madras sundress. Men don’t usually remember details like that, but I remember it exactly. The way she stood, lanky and loose-limbed like a teenage girl, how tanned she was. ‘Who ever loved that loved not at first sight?’ ”
“Shakespeare?”
“Shakespeare stealing from Christopher Marlowe.”
“What happened?” Annie sat down on a chair next to Fred’s desk and put her feet up, too.
“I did every charming thing I could think of. I regaled her, I poured her wine, I juggled nectarines. It started sprinkling during the fireworks show so I held an umbrella for us both and wise-cracked about the shapes and colors of the explosions. In other words, I was an utter idiot.”
Annie laughed. “But something worked. She fell in love with you.”
