After leaving the Mallorys’ last night, Alex sat at the kitchen table of his house in Pennsylvania, where he opened his laptop and a bottle of red wine. He found Diane easily online. The bio on her company’s website told him only that she’s a New Jersey native who’s worked in catering for over two decades and enjoys the ocean, classic rock, and cooking for friends. Her social media presence is mostly photos from events she’s catered—elaborate raw bars, wedding cakes, a whole pig roasting on a spit. After two pages of relevant search results, Alex found himself staring at other Diane Alisons from around the country, a sorority sister from the University of Oklahoma, an elderly legal assistant from Des Moines. The dearth of information on the woman he just met raised his suspicions and meant that observation was required. He’s done this before. As a former colleague pointed out, you can learn more in six hours of surveillance than six weeks of dating. He suspects Diane is who she says she is, but can’t write off a chance encounter in which someone claims to recognize him.
Two miles outside town, she takes the on-ramp for US 1 South toward Hamilton and Trenton, exits south on Market Street and, to Alex’s relief, passes the courthouse and the criminal justice building without touching her brakes. Two miles later, she turns into the parking lot of a Chinese restaurant. Alex pulls into the lot across the street and finds an empty spot facing the restaurant’s door. A quick search on his phone reveals that Szechuan House offers takeout, which means he can’t use the bathroom of the thrift store behind him in case Diane is picking up her food. They’re five minutes from the courthouse, which makes Alex wonder if she’s meeting someone here. And then he spots her through the window, alone at a corner table, scrolling through her phone. Alex skims the menu and a few online reviews; the restaurant is an under-the-radar critical darling, known for authentic Chengdu dishes, which explains why she came all this way for lunch. He wonders how Diane chose her profession, if catering is what she does. He’s been wondering that about a lot of people lately. These days, the past two decades of his life seem to him like a long string of wrong paths and bad choices. It wasn’t always like this. For years, Alex felt like the world’s freest man, taking only jobs he wanted, unencumbered by a nine-to-five, content with solitude. The shift was sudden. He feels trapped inside his life in the same way he feels trapped inside his car this afternoon.
Diane’s food arrives, and Alex wonders if she’d like company on these expeditions. Part of him wants to join her inside but lately he’d rather eat alone than start another rapport with half-truths and omissions. He’s been putting up walls for so long that he feels unknowable. Alex reaches into the cooler at his feet and unwraps the BLT he packed for lunch. He washes the sandwich down with iced tea, pisses in the empty bottle, and settles in to wait.
Forty minutes later, Diane exits the restaurant, talking to herself as she walks to her car. She’s about to duck into the driver’s seat when something across the street catches her eye. Alex freezes. Is she looking at him or beyond him? He can’t be sure, and now she’s coming toward him, pausing on the shoulder, waiting for an opportunity to cross. Turning his head to hide his face, Alex throws the car into reverse. Seconds later, Diane walks through his empty parking spot and disappears into the thrift store. He wonders, as he circles the block, if she shops here for aesthetic or financial reasons. Alex guesses that her income, like his, is sporadic. Is she struggling? He’s been there, but not recently. Alex has spent the past decade in a position that few people can relate to: flush with cash but unable to deploy or even discuss it. There’s money offshore and in the walls of his home, bricks of crisp bills bagged and boxed and buried in the yard. How could he explain that to someone like Diane, who exits the thrift shop with a stack of green glass plates in her hands.
She heads back the way she came and, two miles from Princeton, takes the exit for Cold Soil Road.
“There we go,” Alex says as she turns onto Wargo Lane.
The road leads to a farm he visits every weekend in summer to collect his share of vegetables from the CSA. This, he tells himself, is where they’ve seen each other. When Diane turns down the dirt road to the farm stand, Alex keeps going.
Half a mile down the road, he doubles back. He won’t approach her, not today. He’ll collect his rainbow chard and plum tomatoes, which he had planned to do tomorrow. Alex parks as far as possible from her Accord, unlocks his glove box, and removes a CSA membership badge from underneath a loaded Glock 19.
He’s bagging flat-leaf parsley when he hears his name. Diane stands behind him, head cocked, basket resting on her hip. Short denim cutoffs show her long tan legs and her forehead shines with sweat.
“Twice in two days?” she says. “Are you following me?”
“That’s right,” Alex says.
Her smile tells him that she sees some meaning in this second encounter. This is why Alex puts no stock in coincidence: It’s either meaningless happenstance or part of someone’s well-laid plan.
Diane points at the badge pinned to his tee shirt and says, “I thought the green ones were for weekend pickup?”
“I was in the neighborhood.”
“So the rules don’t apply to you?”
He balks at this, unsure if she’s actually offended.
“Don’t worry,” she says. “I’m not a narc.”
“Good to know. What should I do with all these leeks?”
“Cold soup with potatoes, frittatas. Anything you can do with onions, you can do with those.”
“Another question for you,” Alex says, surprising himself. “What are you doing tomorrow night?”
“I’m working all weekend. Are you asking me out?”
“I am.”
“How’s next week?”
“I’m out of town,” he says. “Back Friday.”
“When I’ll be working again.” She checks her phone. “What are you doing now?”
“Right now?”
“This afternoon. After you put that basket in your car.”
“I hadn’t gotten that far.”
“Well, I’m free then if you’d like to do something.”
“I’m free too, actually. What should we do?”
“Do you like wine?”
“I love wine,” Alex says.
“There’s a winery down the road that makes a decent Riesling, if you can believe that.”
“I can’t believe that, to be honest. But I don’t mind being wrong.”
“That’s good, I like that in a man. You’re completely wrong, by the way. Do you want to follow me?”
“Sure,” Alex says. “I can do that.”
In a renovated barn a few miles from the farm, Diane introduces him to the winemaker at Unionville Vineyards, a prematurely balding twentysomething whose face lit up like a struck match when she came through the door.
“Tim,” Diane says, “my friend Alex has some doubts about the wines made in the Garden State. Can we show him the light?”
“We can try,” Tim says. “I’ve got some white on ice back there. How does that sound?”
“Perfect,” Diane says. “Can we take it to go and I’ll give him the tour?”