Chapter 4
Again
On Tuesdays, Mark had client dinners.
They started at seven and ended whenever the clients stopped talking, which was usually after ten. It was an old arrangement. It had been that way when they met. And somewhere in the first year Sarah had made a little ritual of it, that she never told anybody about, because it seemed too small. On Tuesdays, after work, she walked two blocks to Ruth's Coffee on Elm Street, and sat at the table in the back corner, and had one hour.
That was all. One hour, and a drink, and a book.
It was the second week of November. The clocks had gone back, and it was dark at five. Elm Street was full of wet leaves and yellow windows. She came in out of the cold with her scarf up to her chin and the bell on the door gave its small cracked ring, and the smell met her like a hand. Cinnamon. Burnt sugar. Wet wool.
Ruth's was a narrow room with a pressed-tin ceiling and a long wooden counter that had been somebody's bar. It had mismatched chairs. It had a chalkboard with a different poem on it every week. Behind the counter was a very tall girl named Mia with a ring in her eyebrow and a gift for remembering orders, who looked up and said, "Chai, oat, extra hot?"
"With honey."
"Not sugar. I know. I'm not an animal." She was already pulling the milk. "Two minutes."
"Thank you."
She turned round with her bag on her shoulder, looking for the corner table, and stopped.
It was taken.
There was a man sitting at it, with his back to her, bent over a heap of papers. He had a pen in one hand and a mug in the other and what looked like a whole forest of stapled pages spread out in front of him. His hair stuck up at the crown. There was a gray hooded sweatshirt over the back of the chair. On the floor by his foot lay a canvas bag with a bicycle helmet clipped to it, and on the helmet, in cartoon yellow, was a bee.
She stood still for a moment with her hand on the strap of her bag.
It's a coincidence, she thought. It's a coffee shop. People go to coffee shops.
It was just that she had been going to this one for three years, and she had never, not once, found another person in that chair.
She was going to turn round. She had the beginning of the idea. She would take the little round table in the window, with the wobble. But Mia, behind her, said in her carrying voice, "Hey, Daniel! Your tea's up," and the man at the corner table raised his head and looked round, and saw her, and his whole face did a thing that she would think about, later, more than was reasonable.
It lit.
It was quick. It came and went in half a second. Then he put down his pen, and laughed, and said, "You're kidding."
"I'm so sorry," said Daniel. "This is your table."
"It's not my table."
"It's got your, there's a look. You came in and went straight for it." He was already gathering papers. He did it in great untidy handfuls, as a man scoops up leaves. "I've been here since four. I didn't think. I'm at the, I'm usually at the window. But the window has a draft, and a man was doing a puzzle."
"You can stay."
"I can't. It's yours. I'm a squatter."
"Daniel."
"What?"
"Please sit down. I'd feel terrible."
"You'd feel terrible if I stayed or if I left?"
"I haven't decided."
He looked at her. Then he laughed again, in the same short surprised way, and sat, and she sat across from him, and for about three seconds they looked at each other like two people who have been introduced at a party by someone who has just walked off.
"This is weird," said Daniel.
"A bit."
"Do you, is this a, do you come here a lot?"
"Tuesdays."
"Tuesdays." He pushed a hand through his hair, and it stuck up worse. "I come on Tuesdays. I mean I've come on Tuesdays since September. After robotics. I do my grading. I've never seen you."
"I've never seen you."
"I sit by the window."
"I sit in the corner."
"We've been in the same room for," he counted, "ten weeks."
"We've been in the same room for ten weeks and never met."
"That's a lot of Tuesdays."
"It's a lot of coffee."
"Chai?" he said.
"What?"
"You've got the, I can smell it from here. It's cinnamon. It's very strong." He had gone faintly pink. "I'm sorry. That's odd. I'm just, my sister drinks it. I know the smell."
Mia put the mug down in front of Sarah. It was a blue one, with a chip. A thin wisp of steam rose off it, and a little shine of honey. Mia gave her a brief, bright, unreadable look, glanced at Daniel, glanced back, and went away whistling.
Sarah picked it up in both hands.
"It's chai," she said. "Oat milk. Extra hot. And honey."
"Not sugar."
"How did you."
"Mia said it. In the line, a minute ago." He looked, if possible, a little pinker. "I was listening. I'm sorry. I was being, I'm a very nosy person. It's a flaw. It's in the, my sister has a list."
"It's all right."
"It's really not. It's a bit creepy."
"It's not creepy if you say so yourself," said Sarah.
"Is that a rule?"
"It's a new one."
It was a quarter to six when she noticed the clock.
She had meant to read. She had a book in her bag, an old paperback about a lighthouse keeper, with a cracked spine. She had not taken it out. They had talked, instead, about nothing at all. They talked about the library roof, which had finally been fixed, and the robotics club, which had been given a very small budget and a very large dream. He told her about Priya, who was making a robot that could sort the laundry. She told him about the boy in the T. rex costume, who had been banned from the story hour for biting a grandmother, and had come back with a note from his mother, in crayon.
"What did it say?"
"I am very sorry about the grandmother."
"That's a good note."
"It was the only thing he'd written all year. It was, there was a drawing of the grandmother. She had little X's for eyes."
He put his head on his arms and laughed until the table shook.
She watched him do it. It was a very uninhibited laugh, helpless and loud, and he seemed to have no idea how it sounded. He had a way of laughing that took up his whole body. His shoulders went, and his hair, and he seemed to forget altogether that there were other people in the room. A woman at the next table gave them a sour look. Sarah did not care. She sat with her chai going cold, and a smile on her face that she could not make go away.
She realized she had not looked at her phone.
It was face down on the table by her elbow. She had not touched it for an hour. It was a peculiar thing to find out, as one finds out suddenly that a toothache has stopped.
"Okay," said Daniel, wiping his eyes. "Okay. That's a, I'm sorry. I'm going to be fine."
"Take your time."
"I just keep thinking of the X's."
"I know."
"That's a gifted child."
"He's six."
"That's the best kind." He sat up. He picked up his tea, which was the color of a puddle, and took a gulp, and made a face. "That's cold."
"How long's it been?"
"I don't know. I think I ordered it before you came."
"It's been an hour and a half."
"That's, no. That can't be right."
"It's a quarter to six."
"It was four-fifteen. I looked at, I was going to leave at five. I've got Pickles in the car."
"You've got what?"
"My dog." He was already half out of his chair. "I'm so sorry. He's out front. I tied him to the rack, he's, it's cold. I always, I always do five minutes. I say five minutes. And then it's, you can't just go."
"Gus said twenty minutes," said Sarah.
He stopped.
He stood there with one arm in his jacket, and his mouth a little open. Then he began, very slowly, to smile.
"Gus said twenty minutes," said Daniel. "That's exactly what, that's the thing. It's never twenty. It's never even close."
"Not once. In the history of Gus."
"I'd like to put that on a mug."
"It would sell."
"It would be a, it would be a philosophy." He shrugged the jacket on, and grabbed his bag, and half the papers fell out of it. He bent to catch them. "I'm going to use that. I'm going to use it on my students. Mr. Moore said five minutes."
"They'll hate you."
"They already do. It's fine." He stood, with his arms full. He seemed to be about to say something, and then he said a different thing. "Do you want to meet him?"
"Who?"
"The dog."
He was sitting on the sidewalk outside, under the bicycle rack, with his lead looped round a post, and an expression of the most profound injury.
He was a beagle. He was tricolor, brown and black and white, with long soft ears like two pieces of velvet and the saddest face Sarah had ever seen. He had three legs. The left front one was missing at the shoulder, and he had learned to balance with a sort of rolling tilt, as a sailor does in rough seas. When he saw Daniel, he did not wag. He closed his eyes, slowly, as one does to a person who has done something unforgivable and is not worth a look.
"I know," said Daniel. "I know. I'm a bad man."
The dog sighed.
"Sarah, this is Pickles. Pickles, this is Sarah. She's a librarian. Be nice."
"Hello, Pickles."
He opened one eye.
She crouched down. She held out the back of her hand, as her father had taught her, and waited. He looked at it for a long moment, with great suspicion. Then he heaved himself up on his three legs, and came across the pavement in a rolling lurch, and sat down very deliberately on her left foot.
"Oh," said Sarah.
"He does that," said Daniel.
"Does he?"
"Not to people he doesn't like. He's, he sat on a man's foot once, at the vet, and stayed there for twenty minutes. The man had to call his wife."
"What did the man do?"
"He was a shoe salesman. He took it as a compliment."
She was laughing. She was crouched on a cold sidewalk with a dog on her foot, in the light of a yellow window, laughing so hard that her eyes ran. The dog looked up at her. He gave a long slow wag, a single sweep of the tail, and rested his chin on her knee.
"Why three?" she said, when she could.
"He was a stray. Somebody hit him with a car. They took the leg off at a shelter and nobody wanted him. I got him in March." He crouched too, a little way off, and scratched the dog's ear. "They said he'd never be right. He's very right. He's just, I think he's decided to be dignified about it."
"He's got a good face for it."
"It's a face of great integrity."
"It's a face that thinks you're a fool."
"That's the integrity."
She put her hand on the dog's head. It was a broad, warm, bony head, and it pressed up into her palm. She had not meant to feel it so sharply. It was a small thing. It was only a dog, with a sad face, leaning on her knee.
It was just that nobody had leaned on her in a long time without wanting something.
She stood up. She brushed off her coat.
"I should go," she said.
"Where do you live?"
"Pearl. It's the next block."
"I'll walk you." He stopped. "I mean, if you'd like. I'm going that way. Sort of. My car's at the end of Pearl, by the, there's a lot. It's not a, I don't want you to think, it's on my way."
"It's on your way."
"It really is. I could draw you a map."
"I believe you."
They went down Elm together in the dark, with the dog between them. It was a short walk. It took six minutes, and she would have said afterward that nothing had happened in it. They did not talk about anything important. They talked about the bakery on the corner, which was shut. They talked about a house with a plastic skeleton in the yard that nobody had taken down since Halloween. They passed a lamp post that Pickles stopped at for a long time, with the air of a man reading a paper.
At the end of Pearl Street, he stopped.
"This is, I'm there." He pointed to a battered green Subaru under a light. "That's the car. The brakes are, they're very good now. I can stop for a duck."
"That's reassuring."
"I'm a safe man."
"I'm sure."
"I just, I'd like to say. It was nice." He rubbed the back of his neck. "I mean, to run into you. Again. It's a, you're very easy to talk to. I'm usually, I'm not, I get nervous. And you didn't, it wasn't."
"It wasn't awkward."
"No."
"It's a bit odd," said Sarah.
"Is it?"
"I'm usually, I'm not very good with, I never know what to say. I always think I've got to be, I have to be interesting."
"You're very interesting."
"I'm not. I'm a librarian."
"That's the most interesting," said Daniel.
She felt her face go warm. She looked down at the dog. He was sitting on her foot again.
"I'm going to say something," said Daniel. "And I'd like you to, it's not a, I just want to be clear. I'm not, there's no thing. You've got a boyfriend. He seemed very nice. I'm not trying to, I'm not that guy."
"I know."
"I'd just like to say that I'd like to be your friend. If that's, if you'd like that. I think we'd be good at it."
"Friends."
"I think we've already done most of the paperwork."
She laughed. It came up suddenly, and it was a different laugh from the one in the library, softer, with something in it that she did not recognize. She looked up at him, a tall untidy man in a canvas jacket with his hands in his pockets and a dog on a rope, under a lamp, in the cold.
"Yes," she said. "I'd like that."
"Good."
"I'm here Tuesdays."
"I know."
"And sometimes Thursdays, if it rains."
"I'll check the forecast," said Daniel.
She walked the last block alone.
She went slowly. The night was very still and the street was empty. There was frost on the parked cars. She walked with her hands in her pockets and her scarf over her mouth and her mind blank, and at the door of her building she stopped, and looked back.
He was still there.
He was standing under the lamp at the end of the street, a small dark figure with a dog. He had not gone. He was waiting, she realized, until she was inside. It was an old courtesy. It was what her father used to do, in his truck, at the curb, with the engine idling, until the light in the hall came on. She lifted a hand. After a moment, he lifted his.
She went up.
It was a quarter past six. The kitchen was dark, and the radiator was cold. She turned on the light. She stood in the middle of the floor in her coat with her bag still on her shoulder, and she looked at her phone, which she had not touched in two hours. There were four messages.
Dinner's at seven babe. Late again 😩 Might be 10.
Where are you?
Hello?
Sarah.
She read them all. She felt it start in the pit of her stomach, a small hard knot, the kind that comes before a test. She wrote, Sorry! Phone was on silent. At Ruth's. Home now. Love you. She sent it. She watched the screen, and the little word Delivered, and the three dots that appeared, and went, and appeared.
Okay, wrote Mark. Who were you with?
She stood in her kitchen with the phone in her hand.
It was an ordinary question. It was one anybody might ask. It was only that, until that moment, she had not known that she was going to have to answer it.
She thought of a dog on her foot.
She thought of a man laughing so hard that he had to put his head down on a table.
Nobody, she typed. She looked at it. It was not a lie, quite. It was a very small word, that went in easily, and closed over behind it, like water.
She deleted it.
Just the usual, she wrote. Reading. Missed you.
She sent it, and put the phone face down on the counter, and turned on the kettle, and found that her hands were shaking. She held them under her arms until they stopped.
It's nothing, she told herself. You didn't do anything.
The kettle began to sing.
It was just a conversation.