“I’m not sure you ever get used to it. Maybe you do, but I don’t know. It hasn’t been long enough to know. Seven months, eleven days. Sounds like a pretty good amount of time to get used to a thing. But you just have to be inside the situation, I guess.”
“No, I get it,” she said, in between bites. “I mean, you have things a certain way for . . . I don’t know how many years . . .”
In the pause, it dawned on him that she might be asking how old he was.
“More than seventeen. I just turned eighteen recently.”
“And then everything changes. No, I get it. How long ago did your grandfather die?”
Anthony stopped chewing suddenly, his jaw muscles frozen in shock. “How did you know my grandfather died?” he asked, his mouth still rudely full.
“You just told me.”
“When did I tell you that?”
“You just swore on your grandfather’s grave.”
“Oh. Did I? Oh. Okay. Well . . . it was less than a year ago. Ten months, I think.”
“Were you close to him?”
“Very close. Everybody was. Everybody loved Grandpa Anton.”
He glanced up, and their eyes locked for a moment. Anthony found it difficult to hold her gaze. And scary. As though someone were slicing into him for a better look. But he held it anyway, because it felt like something important. Like something too good to throw away.
“So you’ve had a very bad year, then,” she said.
He broke off the gaze and stared down at the table. “You have no idea.”
He thought she might ask more. But he didn’t want her to. So he tried to put out a vibe to keep more questions away. Some variety of psychic fencing.
She didn’t ask more.
They ate their food for a surprisingly long time in silence. What was most surprising about it, Anthony thought, was that it never felt awkward. It was a comfortable silence, as if they already understood each other well enough to get by.
“So what are you superstitious about, then?” he asked.
He spoke up because he knew their time together was almost over. Because he knew he had to get the conversation started again or nothing would ever get said.
“Oh, I don’t know. Just weird little things. Like you see something, or feel something, and it feels like an omen. Like it has meaning. And then you put a lot of weight on it in your mind, because it feels important.”
“I don’t think that’s superstitious. I think that’s knowing what feels important.”
“I should go.”
It was a thing he had been expecting her to say all along. In fact, he now realized, he was surprised she hadn’t said it much sooner.
“One thing before you go,” he said, feeling uncharacteristically bold. “Well, two things, actually. I’m on my own for the holidays, and I’m having to cook for myself. I’m not completely hopeless at it, but what I’ve been making is lousy and this chili was good. So I might be back tomorrow to get more. And even the next day. And I don’t want you to feel like I’m stalking you. It doesn’t have to be about you. I might just be hungry.”
She was on her feet already, fishing dollar bills out of her purse to leave on the table. She had her sunglasses on again. “I might be tempted to think it’s a little of both.” Her voice sounded flat and expressionless. Giving away nothing, except a trace of defensiveness. “What’s the other thing?”
He felt relieved that she had followed that first statement with a question. So he could ignore that first statement.
“I told you where I live. Do you remember what I told you?”
“Apartment 14A in the building across the street.”
“Right. Good. Thank you for remembering that. Because if you ever felt like you weren’t safe, and you needed help, you could show up at my door. Anytime. Any hour of the day or night. And I would help you.”
“And then my husband would tear you limb from limb.”
“I could take him with one hand tied behind my back.”
She didn’t laugh, or even smile. Anthony knew why not. Because it wasn’t funny. It wasn’t a thing that was there to be laughed at—neither of their sides of the thing. And because he likely could not take her husband. Seven and a half months ago he would have stood a good chance. Now the man might tear him limb from limb.
“I really should go,” she said. And walked away from the table.
He sat watching her go, hating the way the meeting ended. But she paused at the door, one gloved hand on the handle, and turned back to him.
“But thank you,” she said.
Then she pushed through the door and she was gone.
Chapter Four
Foreigner
The following morning Anthony made himself a small pot of coffee and sat by his bedroom window with a mug of it. He did not look through his telescope, or even position it. He just watched the entrance of the building across the street, waiting for Edith’s husband to leave. As soon as that event was over, Anthony found himself fighting a war he had not seen coming.
He wanted to position his telescope to look through her window. Simply to see her. To watch her performing the simplest daily tasks. To rememorize her long, straight nose and wavy auburn hair, so he could see them clearly behind his closed eyes again.
He wanted this with a surprising fever, like an itch on the one part of his back he couldn’t reach to scratch. It felt like a compulsion. Something deeply hard to battle.
But of course he couldn’t do such a thing. Her husband was gone, so she could not be in danger. It was one thing to watch out for her safety, quite another to be her Peeping Tom.
He stepped away from the window and read an astronomy book in the living room instead. Forced his mind down different avenues. And, in doing so, barely won that war. But it might have been better for him to view it as a single battle, because any reasonable person could imagine that it was only the start of a much longer and more challenging war.
She stepped into the coffee shop and soda fountain at 12:05. He had been waiting for her since 11:30. He had been drinking coffee as a way of postponing ordering. It was making him jittery.
She was wearing her red coat but no sunglasses and no hat. Her eye looked better, but it still did not look good.
She sat in a booth close to his. It was across from his booth, but it was not his booth.
He experienced a sensation of his heart falling, as if literally. He now knew what it meant when someone said their heart fell into their shoes. He had always thought it was a strange thing to say, but now he understood.
He shook off the feeling as best he could, determined to speak and function through it.
“Edith,” he said, and her head jerked slightly. “Really? You’re going to eat your lunch over there?”
He almost said more. Something along the lines of “After all we’ve been through together.” But it would have been a laughable statement, because they had only spoken on two occasions. Still Anthony could not shake the feeling that what they had shared was monumental.
“Well,” she said. And seemed undecided as to whether to go on. “I wasn’t sure if I was welcome at your table. You didn’t invite me yesterday—I showed up uninvited. Maybe you’re just here for the chili, and it has nothing to do with me.”