“Did you decorate yourself?” she asks.
“Mostly,” he says.
Steam starts to rise out of a kettle built in the shape of a perfect triangle.
“Let me ask,” she says, “though I know it’s not the case with you, let me ask anyway, all right, you know how you go to some old Colonial restaurants, any of them, there are a dozen around here, five minutes outside the city. You know how you go and they seat you in, say, ‘the library room,’ ‘the study,’ right, they always call it something like that. And they bring you into this big, high-ceilinged room lined with natural-wood bookcases. And your table sort of comes right out from the bookcase. So that while you’re eating you can look at the titles, right? And then there’s that moment, right after you’re seated and they hand you the wine list and leave you alone, and you put the wine list down and turn your head to the bookshelf.”
“Yes,” Woo says, eyes squinting at her, intrigued.
“And you see that all the books, every one of them, are like these Reader’s Digest Condensed volumes, or like old high school trigonometry textbooks. And you know, again, that they just bought these things gross, right, bought them in carton loads from furniture stores or something. Bought them by the pound. And it just takes something away from the whole place.”
Woo stares at her while he fills two triangular-shaped mugs to the brim with boiling water, then he smiles and says, “I’ve not had this particular experience, but I assure you, Lenore, every book you see here was purchased with my own hand. Nothing bought by the pound.”
“Must have cost you a small fortune.”
“Spread out over a period of years. I follow the wisdom of Gertrude Stein. ‘If you have money buy books, if you have any left over buy food.’ Or something like that.”
“Most of them on language? Linguistics?”
“The majority, yes.”
He pushes the mug in her direction. “Best to drink it just after boiling,” he says. “It’s a special blend from the homeland. I have cousins who are kind enough to ship it over.”
Lenore takes a sip. The tea tastes a little bland after all the coffee she’s had, but it’s warm and she thinks it might settle her stomach.
Woo holds one hand on the side of the mug and places the other over the top. Lenore thinks this must be burning him and she starts to wonder if he’s some sort of fellow control freak, ready at all times to go beyond the limits of pain and good taste in order to prove a point. Or it could just be that he’s got a chill and has a high tolerance for tactile heat.
He stares down into the black of his utility island and says in the low voice of an actor, “You know, Lenore, I was more than a bit surprised when you agreed to come back here.”
Lenore stares at him, lets a few long seconds drag by, then, sucking back any sarcasm or anger, she says, “Yeah, well, don’t count your chickens, you know, Freddy?” She takes a sip and shrugs. “I was feeling way too closed in in that cellar. We’d gotten what we needed off the tap. I had to get out of there, come down a little. And I really didn’t want to go back to my place.”
“I see.”
“You see what? Besides, I was pretty curious how a guy like you lived, what your setup would be and all.”
“And do you approve?”
“Beautiful place, if you can afford it. St. Iggy’s must be paying sweet these days.”
“I have to say there have been a few grants. But I can’t believe in all these years no one’s ever told you it’s rude to inquire about someone’s income.”
Lenore lets out a sharp bark of a laugh that almost echoes at the other end of the loft.
“Give me a freaking break, Freddy. This is America. Twentieth century. Income is all we fucking talk about now that sex is dead.”
“My mistake. I thought it was God that was dead.”
“What do you think killed him?”
Woo smiles, takes a deep breath, finally takes his hands off the mug and sips his tea. “Lenore,” he says, “you are truly unlike any woman I have ever known.”
“You’ve got to get out more, Freddy.”
“You want to know what I think? I think you have a problem turning off, what shall we call them, certain police traits, investigator’s characteristics—”
“—Gestapo tendencies, Nazi reflexes.”
“No, no, no. That’s not what I said.”
“Comes pretty damn close.”
“I apologize, then. I should have been more clear. What I meant was that you look at me and you see a typical academic—”
“You’re not so typical, Freddy.”
“—and you see my home and a spark goes off, a little buzz sounds, and your brain is already ahead of you, doing the math, saying ‘teacher’s salary, great big loft, something is wrong,’ and you’re off and running the possibilities.”
“So which one is it?”
“Which?”
“Possibility?”
“Oh. Yes. The most obvious one, of course.”
They stare at each other, mouths closed, shoulders squared.
Woo smiles first and says, “My parents had some money.”
“First guess,” Lenore lies. She’d had an offbeat suspicion that Woo had twenty over-the-limit credit cards in his desk drawer and a shaky and stupid mortgage destined to fall on him when the first grant ran dry.
“So, now, let me invade you for a while,” Woo says.
“Excuse?”
“This man, Zarelli, when did things start to go wrong with you and him?”
“Ooh, I’m impressed. Let me guess, you did body-language seminars in the seventies.”
Woo is genuinely thrilled and amused by her comment.
“Closer to the truth than you’d think.”
“I think I’m pretty close. We Nazis are like that.”
His smile fades. “Lenore, honestly, I’m sorry if you misinterpreted—”
“C’mon, Freddy,” she says, calm, still friendly, “I didn’t misinterpret a thing. But there’s no need for an apology. Really. I know the truth about my beliefs. You know me for a matter of hours and make a judgment. You know I’ve done the same about you. Big deal. Happens every day. It’s how adults live. It’s practically our right. So enjoy your opinion. It doesn’t change the truth. I’m the one who knows the truth. There’s no fascist inside of me, Freddy. No way.”
Woo gives up on apology and says, “Confident woman.”
“Oh yeah. Read ‘bitch.’”
“Oh no. This I reject. The chauvinism charge I reject. Absolutely not. I don’t even acknowledge the word bitch in its colloquial sense.”
“Good word. I use it all the time.”
“I’m a little sensitive about being clear on this point. Yes, I’ve made a judgment concerning your natural aggressiveness. No, I do not regard that aggressiveness in terms of your sex.”
“So, if I was standing here, minus breasts and plus penis—”
“—I’d be a very disappointed man.”
“Scuse me, we’ll get back to the jokes and the flirting in a minute. If it was Zarelli’s body with Lenore’s personality, Lenore’s character, the fascist implications would have still come out.”
“First of all, I reject the fact I implied fascist tendencies. I did not. You want to think I did. Not the case. Plain and simple. The word police, the word investigator, does not equal fascist or Nazi. Not even close. Not in the context I used. But, to your point, yes, had you been a man, and had there been an implication, it would have come out. I would have thought the same thing. And no bitch word. Vocabulary of the oppressors.”