While she talked, he looked at her hands. They were small hands, thin, with long fingers — a young woman’s hands. How was it possible that Louise’s hands were so much larger? How could hands get bigger as you got older? She was staring at the tabletop.
“What are you thinking?” he said.
“Oh,” she said, shaking her head in apology. She shook her head again. “I was thinking about a friend of mine who has nightmares about the bomb. Very specific nightmares. He dreams that it’s exploding, and he’s not supposed to look at the fireball.” She took another drink. “This is an odd conversation to be having. Did I start this odd conversation?”
“I don’t remember.”
“Did we somehow get to Spangle and the fireball by way of your daughter’s problems in summer school?”
“Spangle?”
“That’s his name. He’s in Madrid, trying to talk his brother into coming back to the States to reenroll in law school. Ann Landers would say he’s doing the right thing, right?”
“I imagine,” he said. He was tapping the salt and pepper shakers together. “I’m glad you wanted to come to lunch,” he said.
That seemed to be the wrong thing to say. For some reason, that seemed to embarrass her, while other things hadn’t. She sat up a little straighter and didn’t say anything. He looked at some of the other people in the restaurant. It was definitely not a restaurant in New York at one o’clock. The middle-aged women leaned forward or sat close together like conspirators, and the few younger women in the restaurant seemed formal, stiffer, almost alienated from each other. He saw only two other pretty women, neither one as pretty as Cynthia. And he suddenly remembered part of the reason he had dreaded meeting her: that notice she had sent around, with a picture of herself on the top, like an egomaniac’s stationery. Perhaps she had done it as an ironic frame.
“On the off chance that I get drunk,” he said, “tell me what ideas you have, if any, about how Mary could pass the course.”
“Tell her to come see me. I asked her to twice, and she didn’t. If she and I could work it out privately — if nobody else has to know that she cares about passing the course but Mary and me — maybe she’ll be more willing to try. We can hush it up that she cares.”
“All right,” he said. He moved his hands above the tabletop, crossing one over the other. “Now you don’t see them,” he said, when his hands were over the salt and pepper shakers. “Now you do.” He moved his hands again. “You don’t care, and then you do.”
She was staring at him, with her mouth open.
“What?” he said, smiling nervously.
“What you just did,” she said. “What a coincidence. I was thinking about a magician, and that was such a strange thing to have happened.” She picked up her wine glass and put it down. “There’s a man in New Haven, where I’m living, who turned up last night. I met him a little while ago, at a laundromat, and last night when I was going out I bumped into him again, except that I had the spooky feeling that I didn’t really bump into him, that he had been out on the street on purpose.” She picked up the glass again and took a drink of wine. “Never mind,” she said. “I’m sorry. I didn’t get much sleep last night because the damned fan doesn’t work.”
“No,” he said. “Go on.”
“Oh, he’s just a harmless eccentric, I’m sure, but it was so strange seeing him again, and he wanted to have the exact conversation we’d had before, in the laundromat. That didn’t make sense, because it was obvious that he recognized me. He stopped and said hello, and I said hello to him, and he turned and started walking in my direction, and he started to tell me all over again how he was visiting his mother in New Haven, that he lived in California. I was sure he had the same things to do tricks with in his pocket.” She shook her head. “This is silly,” she said. “Forget it.”
“What happened?” he said.
“Nothing, really. He just acted like we were old friends, or something. When I told him I was in a hurry, he just kept pace with me. So I got in a cab and got away. But it was strange, having him walk toward me on the street, and acting so casual, but when I was looking for a cab he seemed almost desperate to tell me things about some Houdini conference that was held every year, and to tell me what was behind Houdini’s trick of breaking out of chains when he was under water. I was really getting frightened. I just — I thought he was going to do something to me.”
“Christ,” he said. “I don’t think that’s nothing. I think you ought to stop going out alone.”
“New Haven’s full of nuts. It doesn’t mean anything.”
“Really,” he said. “The way you describe it, it doesn’t sound harmless at all.”
She stopped running her fork over the top of her salad. She stopped, and ate some lettuce. He wanted to say more, but he didn’t want to scare her, and it was obvious that she wanted to change the subject. He picked up his sandwich and bit into it.
“You drive in all the way from New Haven?” he said.
She nodded yes.
“But you don’t like living in New Haven.”
“It’s close to Yale.”
“Do you live there alone?” he said.
“No. I live there with a man. The one who has the nightmares.” She laughed. “One of my students’ parents comes to see me and I say I’m living with a man who’s scared of looking at a fireball.”
“My heart can take it,” he said. “My sense of morality is not outraged.” He took another drink. “People should live together before they get married.”
“Except in the world of Vanity Fair.”
“Of course,” he said. “Of course not in the world of Vanity Fair.”
When they had finished eating, the waiter came and asked if they wanted anything else. He went away to add up the check. When he came back, he put the small tray with the piece of paper on it by Cynthia.
“He guessed wrong,” Cynthia said.
He reached for the check, took money out of his wallet. “Do you need money?” he said. He realized that even asking would be embarrassing, but if she did, maybe she would take it. Then maybe they would have another lunch sometime and she would pay him back.
“No,” she said, embarrassed. “I hope it didn’t sound like I was hinting for money.”
“Oh no,” he said. “I just thought you might need some money.”
They were both a little embarrassed, and he was embarrassed, too, in the parking lot when they had to shake hands. He almost always found it awkward to shake hands with a young woman. He also felt strange because her hand was so much like Nina’s, and he felt strange because there was a Nina, and strange that he had almost told Cynthia about her, but he had stopped short and only said that people should live together.
He drove into New York at sixty-five, sixty-eight, needle edging onto seventy at times, almost hoping that he would be stopped. He wanted to think, but he didn’t have time to stop and think. He was late for work.
He took a paper cup out of the dispenser by the water cooler and thought of two things: the robin’s egg (just as the cup seemed too fragile to hold water, the egg seemed too thin to have contained anything living) and the napkin, folded into a triangle in the Chinese restaurant, Louise carefully refolding it, putting it into the glass, walking out He had another throbbing headache and he would have to work until eight or nine o’clock to get everything done. The headache had come on him like a mosquito bite rising. His temple had suddenly been filled with pain when he opened his car door in the parking garage. He had gotten out, turned when the man gave him the receipt, and leaned back, touching the car, standing there with his hands curled into fists on top of the roof, supporting his head on them. The young black man working in the garage had hit him on the shoulder. “Don’t you grieve for it now,” he said. “Seven dollars and ninety cents, you can have it back any time.” The man had laughed at his own joke. Don’t you grieve for it. Certainly everything was not loaded with meaning. Why was he getting stopped by things so often? That things just fall into place. Because he wouldn’t be able to rest until the situation with Nina was settled.