A New Lu (17 page)

24

I'm sure I wasn't this nervous the morning after. But that morning would have been a month ago. A lot has happened since that afternoon turned night-of-wonder. As I watch him crossing the station platform I realize that no matter how right and familiar he looks, William is a stranger. So far, our relationship consists of a doctor-patient exam and a one-night stand. The mundane and the sublime.

It's the first day of summer, or will be at 7:10 p.m. He's dressed in a blue sport coat, white collared shirt, khakis, loafers, no socks, and carrying a duffel bag. It strikes me now as I wave to him from the curb where the car is running, that he's made the reverse trip of most summer weekenders, who crawl for hours through incredible traffic snarls to reach the eastern shores of Long Island. Speaking of which, Aunt Marvelle has called twice this week. She knows something's up. She's just not sure what.

Just this morning she said, “Your mother sounds strange on the phone. I don't buy that it's her dental work. My sister is hiding something. Now Dallas won't answer my
e-mail. And I know you taught your daughter better manners. Am I going to have to take the Jitney in? You know how I hate Penn Station. And that New Jersey Transit service? If I have to come up island, I'll be staying a good while.”

This is a threat.

I told my parents about Sweet Tum last week. They took it really well.

“Are you perfectly certain, dear?” Mom said. “Oh, well, these things happen.”

“You're a bit long in the tooth to be knitting baby blankets, dumpling.” Dad's laughter is always a little forced. “I wouldn't place too much stock in it.”

Then they immediately changed the subject. As if, the Fates willing, this is not something they'll need to explain to anyone else. Like shingles or late-life acne, it should clear up on its own.

But I can't quite work up the necessary pique, because William is now making a beeline for me. His open smile makes me realize that I had been counting on seeing him again, no matter what my head was saying to the most unreliable of organs, my heart.

“You look good. How are you feeling?”

“Pregnant. Five months and everything's solid.” I pat my tummy. While it's not as obvious as I tend to want to believe it is, it is obvious I no longer have a waistline.

He makes a motion to ask if he can pat. I nod. That pleases him.

After the firm medical touch he presses a huge bouquet on me. “I didn't know what you liked so I bought what looked and smelled the best.”

I sniff the freesias, a very expensive and wonderful fragrance, and mock swoon. “So you knew it was me?”

“The public display of floral ecstasy?” He looks at me for a long moment. My toes curl up like straws held before a flame. “I knew, Lu.”

Okay, we're past that hurdle.

A traffic cop shouts at me, “Move along!” breaking the moment.

“What would you like to do this weekend?” I've moved us into the line of city traffic.

“Anything. Everything.” He chuckles and rearranges his large frame on the passenger seat for more comfort. “I haven't had a weekend off in over a year.”

“Then you should be easy to satisfy.”

He flicks my earring with a finger. “I'm in your hands.”

That's intriguingly put. But I'm not ready to be alone with him, just yet. I know Cy has evening plans with his family. He left me his cell phone number, as well as those of his son and daughter-in-law. “Just in case.” I'll bet Joseph didn't watch Mary this closely.

Thankfully, Curran and KaZi are spending the weekend at the shore. Dread care won out over what I promised him would be a boring weekend of DVD watching and column writing. Tai nixed my first effort. “Big yawn!” is how she put it. So, with any luck and a bit of good timing, I can insert and extract William from my weekend without either of my guardians knowing about him. Still, I need to give Cy's family plenty of time to pick him up before I head home with my not-ready-for-public-consumption house-guest.

“It's too beautiful a day to waste indoors.” William smiles. “Where can we go and not be surrounded by other people?”

Think fast! “Are you hungry? I know a great place where we can pick up something and eat outdoors in a really lovely spot a little distance from here.”

“Sounds good.” He waits a second before saying, “How many times did you pick up the phone to tell me not to come?”

“Not even once.” I approached the phone and I stared at it many times, but I never actually picked it up. It came
down to this: if the stars are aligned in my favor for a change, why should I mess with the equation?

I swing by a Vietnamese take-away I love and order cold udon noodles and spring rolls with peanut sauce, then head out on the highway. Where do you take a person who lives in one of the most coveted beachfront property areas in the U.S.? The hills, of course! The Watchung Mountains, to be precise.

Northern New Jersey is beautiful on this early-summer afternoon, all dappled light and green spaces. Colonial villages set on winding roads follow paths laid down by the Raritan Indians long before this area was a British land grab.

William seems content to gaze out the window and ask the occasional tourist question. We are studiously not talking about pregnancy, Jolie's or mine.

Finally, I pull in at a narrow lane between trees that leads to a tourist stop of historic interest, the lookout point called Washington Mountain that allows a panoramic view southward of the plains of central Jersey.

Once we've gotten out and walked up to the summit, William whistles. “I've heard Jersey described as the Garden State. I always thought it was a joke.”

“You think this is nice, you should see the area in autumn. That's northern Jersey at its absolute best.”

He nods thoughtfully. “I hope to see a lot of Jersey in the future.”

Okay, it could just be me. I'm reading all kinds of things into remarks that, if made by anyone else, wouldn't hang me up for a second.

William is now staring into space, and I wonder if we share the same qualms about our weekend. But then I remember Andrea's advice about men.

Sex was on his mind before you even agreed to this. He's a man. Sex is on his mind!

We spread out an old car blanket I've kept in the trunk
since the kids were small, in case we broke down in winter weather. Then we sit and eat with chopsticks, which I'm pleased to see William handles like a pro.

I admit it. I'm waiting for the disappointment. Last time was perfect. This must be the prelude to inevitable disillusionment. Only a really determined Pollyanna would think otherwise. I haven't gotten to my age without learning something about human nature and relationships. If he still looks and sounds this good, it's because I'm not seeing reality.

It's just that I can't help it, I like watching him, like the way his hands look. Doctor's hands, well-kept and smooth, but strong with well-defined tendons. Helpful hands. Healing hands. And his ears. And the way his hair lies against his neck in little Vs, damp with perspiration. I am fascinated by the way the sparse hairs on his arm glint red highlights as he reaches for another spring roll. The smell of his aftershave, faint and lemony, makes me want to lick his neck. I could be eating ashes. My senses are consumed by the man beside me.

“…slept here?”

I realize William is speaking and my mind has wandered. “What?”

“He slept here?”

“Who?”

“Washington.” William is looking at me with a puzzled expression. “The historical sign I just read says General Washington stayed in many of the local colonial homes. It was actually his troops who kept watch up here for the British camped in the south. Do you have a sign that says Washington slept here?”

I roll my eyes. “If Washington slept everywhere people say, he must have had narcolepsy.”

William laughs, and I feel like singing.

We finish eating and close our cartons, but neither of us moves to leave.

I lean toward William and he reaches out for me. His hand is firm at the back of my neck as he pulls me closer. I collapse forward, my cheek finding the hard curve of his shoulder. My lids flutter shut over unfocused eyes. I feel his arm come around me from behind and it feels so good, so just what I needed…a shoulder to lean on.

I wake in a half-prone position, my face pressed into his thigh. And William is taking my pulse.

“I was just checking. You were sleeping awfully hard.”

I sit up, unsure of anything. “And?”

“You're fine. Pulse nice and steady.”

I look away and surreptitiously wipe my mouth. Jeez! I hope I didn't drool on his trouser leg. I check my watch. Forty-five minutes. Yep, that's my usual afternoon interlude these days.

“Sorry about the nap.”

He just smiles. “Are you ready to go home yet? Or do I need to look into booking a hotel room?”

Touché! “I'm ready.”

He helps me pick up and then collects the blanket. “Mind if I drive?”

“Why, does my driving bother you?”

“Not at all. You just look so relaxed that I don't want the hassle of traffic to change that.”

I hand him the keys.

I direct him onto my block, but I'm having second thoughts as I glance at my watch. Six-thirty-three. “Do a drive-by first, if you don't mind.”

William glances at me. “Are we hiding from someone?”

“In a manner of speaking.”

He frowns. “Your ex-husband?”

“No, two of my dwarfs, Doc and Dope.” I make the “lifted elbows, hands angled inward at the wrists hip-hop” sign as I say
dope.

William chuckles. “Why do I suspect you aren't joking?”

“Ever seen a redheaded Rastafarian from Iowa?”

“Do I have to?”

I'm too busy watching first Cy's windows and then the shrubs around my own house to reply. I don't mean to seem paranoid but I don't want to be caught, especially on film by Curran and his camera. “Looks clear.”

“You never can be too sure.” William speeds up and makes the turn at the corner.

“Where are we going?”

He rolls to a stop at the entrance to the alley. “I'll drop you off at your back door, then park up the block and walk back.”

I don't quibble for an instant. I grab his bag. “If you're stopped by an older man in spectacles, or happen to spy a Rastafarian with a camera in the bushes, keep walking, circle round to the alley and come in the back way.”

I'm out the door so quickly I catch only a vague glimpse of his startled expression. But I figure, hey, hang with me, you got to go through the motions of my life.

William's at my door in less than five minutes. But his smile is wearing thin.

“As a mature individual, I no longer assume the actions of the person I'm with are solely because of me. Therefore, I'm going to assume that this is your usual way of dealing with a long-standing problem.”

It occurs to me for the first time that I may not be the one who's going to come out of this weekend disappointed by reality.

“It's a long story.”

He follows me into my kitchen where we both sit at the table. I offer water.

“No, thank you.”

Next I offer iced tea, then juice. He shakes his head. “I
think there's a bottle of unopened wine around here somewhere.”

William reaches out and snags me by the hand as I rise to search for that wine. That touch is enough to hold me in place, for more reasons than one. “Know what I said about being mature? Forget it. I'm really going to need that explanation.”

I relax back into my chair.

“My next-door neighbor is an elderly widower named Cy Schelgel. He appointed himself my guardian since Jacob walked out. Now that I'm pregnant he's morphed into this super-parental figure, part godfather, part Mother Superior.”

“And Island Man?” He says this with a straight face.

“Curran has dreads. He's twenty-four and the staff photographer at
Five-O.
He's making a photo journal of my pregnancy for the magazine. The problem is, he likes spontaneous moments.”

“This explains his hiding in the bushes?”

I nod. “Ready to go home?”

William shrugs, and it's really one of indecision. Good, a sane person should be having second thoughts. Then he smiles again. “I'm not bored around you.”

“That could change.”

I rise and head for the refrigerator. After a nap there's nothing I like better than a snack. I had just enough energy this morning to clean up Davin's room for William. I decided I shouldn't presume he came here to sleep with me, even if it's on both our minds. When I open the fridge I remember I didn't get to the grocery store. Hoping for a miracle of inspiration, all I find are two milk cartons, old cheese, OJ, eggs, assorted condiments and the remains of last night's pizza.

William comes to stand beside me and stares into the vast cool space.

Just as I think he's about to offer to whip up something
gourmet-ish and delicious from those eggs and air, William shakes his head. “You've nothing to eat. Where's the nearest grocery store?”

Fair enough.

William does a mean bag of salad, and burns the best sirloin strips this side of, well, damn good. He bought beer for himself, and something truly horrendous called near-beer for me. Thankfully, there's a can of frozen lemonade in the freezer. I contribute couscous—boiling water, I'm there—and lemon bars that Andrea brought me a while back and I froze.

We move through the kitchen as if we've done this many times before. William seems to know where to look for pans and utensils. This makes me proud. A sign of a well-laid out kitchen is one where things are where we intuitively expect them to be.

When dinner's ready, we eat like two ravenous bears.

Right in the middle of the thawed lemon bars, William reaches out and pulls me to him, and kisses me as if it's the first and only thing that's been on his mind all day. This kind of interrupts the dessert portion of the evening for a while.