He goes to a reading his former department invited him to. There’ll be drinks and dinner at the faculty club after, which he’s looking forward to a lot more than he is to the reading. He can’t stand readings and hopes this one will be short. He’s sitting in the auditorium with about thirty other people, waiting for the reader to be introduced, when someone kisses the top of his head. He turns around; it’s Ruth, smiling at him. “Wow,” he says, “what a surprise, seeing you. And what was that thing on the head for?” “That thing was to show how I feel about you,” she says. “And how did I know you’d be here? Fiction reading? You a fiction writer? I guessed. I bet you never thought I could be so calculating. And you haven’t said if you’re glad to see me.” “Glad? After what you said and did? Yes. Very. Very. Couldn’t be gladder. Here, come around and sit beside me, unless you’re with someone.” She leaves the row she’s been standing in, excuses herself past two people at the end of his row and sits beside him and takes his hand and presses it to her cheek. He’s about to say something to her when the chairwoman of the department taps the podium mike a few times, says into it “Can you all hear me in the back?” Someone in the back yells “You’re good.” She thanks everyone for braving the elements on this cold and blustery night and starts to introduce the reader. He whispers to Ruth “I was about to say I’ve been invited to dinner after with the writer, but I’m not going to go to it now.” “No,” she says, “go, and see if you can get me to come with you as your date. They’ll do anything for you. It’ll be fun and, as usual, I’m starved.”
He bumps into Whitney in Whole Foods. “You look like you’re in a rush,” he says, “but don’t go anywhere yet. Freya, my older daughter’s here with me somewhere. I want you to see her after so many years.” “Haven’t got time,” she says. “Got to meet Harold. But we have to get together. We can’t keep relying on running into each other at these places. Lunch? This Friday? Twelve-fifteen? An odd hour, but it fits in perfectly between my Pilates class and picking up Hannah at school on an early day. New restaurant I love. I’ll email you where, and it’ll be my treat.” “Oh, no,” he says. “Always on me.” “Don’t argue with me,” she says. “I’ve been working out with weights and can’t be pushed around as easily as I once was.” She writes down his email address. “Now, big hug,” she says, and hugs him and goes to the checkout area with two containers of prepared foods. She’s a good friend of Ruth’s. Or used to be and probably still is. They were grad students together in his fiction-writing class, or maybe she was a couple of years ahead of Ruth and they became friends when Whitney stayed on a few years to teach expository writing to freshmen. She emails him the directions to the restaurant from his house. They meet, talk about their children, her husband—“Still like two lovebirds,” she says. “We got lucky.” Their writing—“I’m back at it after an eight-year hiatus,” she says. “You, I know, never stop.” The fiction writers who graduated with her when it was still a one-year program—“Most have given up,” she says. “Larry Myers became a lawyer and is already a partner in a high-toned firm, and Nancy Burnett is a college dean.” “I always forget their names once they graduate, unless they publish books that get reviews in the
Times or they stayed in Baltimore and I keep bumping into them. You still in touch with Emma and Ruth, two whom I remember.” “Just Ruth. You know she’s getting a divorce.” “I do,” he says. “We’ve met a few times. She’s also, I think, dating someone in Raleigh, since she drives down there every other weekend. I didn’t ask why.” “That’s over with. It was just casual. I suppose not worth the trip anymore, though he used to come up to see her every other weekend. The guy she really has a crush on, which you must know by now — stop pretending — is our own Philip Seidel.” “Come on; what are you talking?” he says. “She’s given no signs of it. And to be completely honest with you, though please don’t repeat it to her — I don’t want to make her feel uncomfortable and stop her from having lunch with me again — it’s me who has a crush on her. Imagine; my age and with someone so much younger. It’s stupid. Though it’s also nice to know I can feel that way about someone again, but that it can never work out has made me miserable.” “She thinks you think she’s too ditzy, or frantic’s more like it — even scatterbrained sometimes and silly. You should try going through a rancorous divorce one time, in addition to everything else she’s doing.” “No, no,” he says. “I don’t think any of that about her. I think she’s wonderful, capable, smart, the rest of it — everything good. I only have the best feelings for her and I know what she’s going through.” “Tell her. I’m sure she’d like to hear it. You can even mention the crush you have on her. I know her and I know it won’t unsettle her.” “Maybe when I get home I can call her and tell her a little bit of it,” and she says “What’s wrong with now? You don’t have your cell phone with you? — because believe me, now would be a good time to call.” “I never leave the house with it unless I’m driving to Maine.” “Then use mine.” She hands him her cell phone — his is about ten years older than hers and was his wife’s — tells him how to use it and says if he wants, she’ll absent herself for ten minutes or however long he needs. He says “Not necessary. And I forgot her number — I’ve only spoken with her on the phone twice — and she probably won’t be home.” “Then she’ll have her phone with her. Her number’s the oh-four, six-seven one on the phone number scroll.” He goes outside and calls. At the end of it he says “This is too too good to be true. Let me pinch myself again. There, I did it, and it still seems real. See you tonight. I’ll bring a good bottle of wine — a great one: Chateâuneuf-du-Pape, my favorite — and a beautiful plant to remember this call and which you can replant in your garden. Now, how do I end this talk?” and she says “If you mean turn off Whitney’s cell phone, which I can see you’re using by the telephone number that came up, just snap it shut.”