Rebecca said, “I’m meeting someone, but I don’t suppose he’s—”
“Would that be him?”
She followed the girl’s eyes. In the dimness she could barely make out the dozen or so tables, but she saw that two of them were occupied — one by a dressed-up young couple, the other by a skinny old man. “No,” she said.
And then she said, “Oh.”
He was sitting by the window, his beaky profile silhouetted against the dark curtain and his hair a radiant cloud of wild white corkscrews. When she started walking toward him (leading the hostess, now, instead of following), he sent her a glance, and she could tell that he was equally uncertain. He hesitated, then half stood, then hesitated again before rising to his full height. “Rebecca?” he said.
She said, “Hello, Will.”
She held out her hand, and he took it. (This must surely be the first time they had shaken each other’s hand.) His fingers were as knuckly and wiry as ever, but there was a difference in the texture of his skin, a kind of graininess that she saw in his face, too, now that she was close enough — a sandy look to his cheeks, a trio of fine lines straining across his forehead. His lips, which had once been very full and sculptured, were thinner and more sharply defined. He was wearing a wilted suit jacket over an open-necked white shirt — elderly clothes, sagging off his bony frame in a slack and elderly way.
She settled in the chair opposite him, and he sat back down. “What happened to your long golden braid?” he asked her.
She raised a hand to her head. “My…?” she said. “Oh. I cut it off. It was too much trouble to take care of.”
A menu arrived on her plate, and another on Will’s. The hostess said, “May I tell Marvin what you’re having to drink?”
“Who’s Marvin?” Will asked.
“Iced tea for me,” Rebecca said, although she could have used something stronger.
Will said, “Just water, please.”
“Sparkling, or still?”
“Pardon?”
“Tap,” Rebecca volunteered. (That much she felt sure of, although the question would not even have been thought of in their dating days.)
As soon as the hostess had left, Will turned back to Rebecca, plainly expecting her to begin the conversation. Instead, she spent some time placing her purse just so on her left, then unfolding her napkin in slow motion and smoothing it across her lap.
Why was she acting so gracious, she wondered — so matronly, so controlled?
It was the way she behaved with strangers. Really, he was a stranger.
But she said, “It’s wonderful to see you, Will!”
He blinked. (She may have been a bit loud.) He said, “Yes, me too. For me to see you, I mean.”
There was a pause.
“And all except for the braid, you look exactly the same,” he added.
“Yes, fat as ever!” she said, laughing brightly.
He cleared his throat. She rearranged her napkin.
“I took the Poe Highway over here,” she said. “Goodness, things have changed! So many new housing developments, or new to me, at least, and Macadam looks very different. I doubt I’d even—”
A young man dressed in black set their drinks in front of them. “So,” he said, whipping out a pad and pen. “Decided what you’re having?”
Rebecca said, “Not quite yet, thanks,” but Will said, “Oh, sorry, wait a minute, let’s see, what am I—”
He took a pair of rimless glasses from his breast pocket and hooked them over his ears. (Now he seemed downright ancient. She could draw back from him and imagine that she had never seen him before.) “You go first,” he told Rebecca.
She said, “Well, I… The salmon, I guess.” It was the first thing her eyes landed on.
Will was peering at his menu. “Salmon, veal, rib roast…” he said, his index finger traveling down the page. “Ah, maybe the rib roast.”
“And how would you like that cooked, sir?” the waiter asked.
“Medium, please. No, better make it well done.”
“Well done it is,” the waiter said, writing on his pad.
“On second thought,” Will told him, “I believe I’ll have the Award-Winning Swordfish.”
“Swordfish,” the waiter said. He scratched out what he’d written.
“But without the Caramelized Onion Sauce,” Will said. “Unless…” he said. He beetled his snarly white eyebrows. “Would it still be the actual Award-Winning Swordfish if it didn’t have the sauce?”
“It wouldn’t be the actual Award-Winning Swordfish in any case, sir,” the waiter said, “because that one was eaten by the judges.”
Rebecca laughed, but Will just said, “All right, then, no sauce. And no dressing on the salad.” He looked across at her. “I’m trying to watch my cholesterol.”
This surprised her at least as much as his having Caller ID. Mentally, she supposed, she had sealed him in amber — imagined him still a college boy wolfing down milk shakes and burgers.
“I’m not used to eating out much,” Will told her once the waiter was gone. “Generally I cook at home. I make my famous chili. You remember my chili.”
“Oh! Your chili,” she said. She did remember, she realized. Or at least she remembered Will chopping onions into tiny, uniform squares, and Mrs. Allenby tut-tutting at the red spatters across her clean stovetop.
“My particular recipe constitutes a completely balanced meal,” Will was saying. “I mix up a double batch every Sunday afternoon, and I divide it into seven containers and that’s what I eat all week.”
“All week?”
“Now I’ll have an extra container on hand because of this evening. I’m not sure yet how I’ll deal with that.”
“But don’t you get awfully bored, eating the same meal every night?”
“Not a bit,” he said. “Or if I do, what of it? I’ve never understood this country’s phobia about boredom. Why should we be constantly diverted and entertained? I prefer to sink into my life, even into the tedious parts. Sometimes I like to sit and just stare into space. I don’t require newness just for newness’ sake.”
“Well… you’re right, I guess,” Rebecca said. “Goodness! I don’t know why we mind boredom so much.”
“I have my lunches in the college cafeteria. Spinach salad and yogurt.”
“That sounds extremely healthful,” she told him.
The waiter set a basket of breads between them, and Rebecca selected a roll and put it on her bread plate. Then she reached for the butter. The silence was that obvious kind where every gesture becomes important. The slightest turn of her wrist seemed almost to make a noise.
“So,” she said finally, “I gather you’ve adjusted to living on your own, then.”
“Yes, I can’t complain. I rent a very nice apartment over on Linden Street.”
“An apartment,” she repeated. (Cancel that image of the tenured-professor’s house.)
“In the home of Mrs. Flick. You remember Dr. Flick of the English department, don’t you? She started renting out her top floor after he died. I have a good-sized living room, dining room, kitchenette, bedroom, and study. The study can double as a guest room if my daughter ever wants to stay over.”
“Oh, Will, you have a daughter?”
“Seventeen years old — a senior in high school. Beatrice, her name is.”
Beatrice! Rebecca was struck dumb with admiration. Beatrice would be a female version of Tristram. Rebecca pictured her in a modest muslin dress from the nineteenth century, although she knew that was unlikely. She pictured Beatrice and her father joined in some scholarly endeavor — Beatrice reading aloud while Will nodded soberly in his rocking chair by the fire.