“Then after we talked about my bureau awhile I asked if he’d come look at my apartment,” Rita said, “just so he’d have an idea of the scale.”
Daphne pulled her eyes away from the résumé. She focused on Rita’s face for a moment, and then she said, “Don’t you live with Nick Bascomb?”
“Well, I did, but I made him move out,” Rita said.
“Oh? When was this?”
“Wednesday,” Rita said.
“Wednesday? You mean this Wednesday just past?”
“See,” Rita said, “Monday I went to visit Ian at the wood shop, and that night I asked Nick to move out. But I let him stay till Wednesday because he needed time to get his things together.”
“Decent of you,” Daphne said dryly.
“So then Friday Ian came by and we settled on what size bureau I wanted. I invited him to supper, but he said you-all were expecting him at home.”
Daphne tried to remember back to Friday. Had she been there, even? She might have gone out with her usual gang and forgotten supper altogether.
“So when was it you saw him the second time?” she asked Rita.
“Well, that was it. Friday.”
“You mean the second time was when he came to measure for your bureau?”
“Well, yes.”
Daphne sat back on her stool.
This Rita was so big, though. She had that angular, big-boned frame. You’d expect her to be immune.
“Um, Rita,” she said. “Ian’s kind of … hard to pin down, sometimes. Also, I believe he has this sort of girlfriend at his church.”
“So what? I had a boyfriend, till last Wednesday,” Rita said.
“Yes, but then besides he’s very, let’s say Christian. Did you know that?”
“What do you think I am, Buddhist?”
“He’s unusually Christian, though. I mean, look at you! You’re sitting here in a bar! Drinking beer! Wearing a Hell Bent for Leather T-shirt!”
Rita glanced down at her shirt. She said, “That’s not exactly a sin.”
“It is to Ian,” Daphne told her. “Or it almost is.”
“Daphne,” Rita said, “you get to know folks when you rearrange their belongings. Ian’s belongings are so simple. They’re so plain. He owns six books on how to be a better person. The clothes in his closet smell of nutmeg. And have you ever honestly looked at him? He has this really fine face; it’s all straight lines. I thought at first his eyes were brown but then I saw they had a clear yellow light to them like some kind of drink; like cider. And when he talks he’s very serious but when he listens to what I say back he starts smiling. He acts so happy to hear me, even when all I’m talking about is drawer knobs. Okay: so he does that to everyone. I don’t kid myself! Probably it’s part of his religion or something.”
“Well, no,” Daphne said. She felt touched. She was seeing Ian, all at once, from an outsider’s angle. She said, “I didn’t mean to drag you down. I was just thinking of back in school when some of my friends had crushes on him. They used to end up so frustrated. They ended up mad at him, almost.”
“Well, I can understand that,” Rita said. She took a hearty swallow of beer and wiped the foam off her upper lip.
“And he is a good bit older than you,” Daphne pointed out.
“So? We’re both grownups, aren’t we? Anyhow, in some ways it’s me who’s older. Do you realize he’s only slept with two women in all his life?”
“What?” Daphne asked.
“First his high-school sweetheart before he joined the church and then this woman he dated a few years ago, but he felt terrible about that and vowed he wouldn’t do it again.”
Daphne didn’t know which shocked her more: the fact that he’d slept with someone or the fact that he and Rita had discussed it. “Well, how did … how did that come up?” she asked.
“It came up when I invited him to spend the night,” Rita said calmly.
“You didn’t!”
“I did,” Rita said. “Bartender? Same again.” She met Daphne’s eyes. “I invited him when he came about the bureau,” she said, “but he declined. He was extremely polite.”
“I can imagine,” Daphne said.
“Then all last weekend I waited to hear from him. I haven’t done that since junior high! But he didn’t call, and so here I sit, drinking away my sorrows.”
He wasn’t ever going to call, but Daphne didn’t want to be the one to tell her. “Gosh! Look at the time,” she said. She asked the bartender, “What do I owe?” and then she made a great to-do over paying, so that when she turned back to say goodbye, it would seem the subject of Ian had entirely slipped her mind.
Agatha and Stuart didn’t come home for Christmas. Stuart was on call that weekend. Thomas came, though, and they spent a quiet holiday together, rising late on Christmas morning to exchange their gifts. Ian gave Daphne a key chain that turned into a siren when you pressed a secret button. (He was always after her about the neighborhoods she hung out in.) Her grandfather gave her a ten-dollar bill, the same thing he gave the others. Thomas, the world’s most inspired shopper, gave her a special crystal guaranteed to grant steadiness of purpose, and Agatha and Stuart sent a dozen pairs of her favorite brand of black tights. Daphne herself gave everybody houseplants — an arrangement she’d made weeks ago when she still worked at Floral Fantasy.
For Christmas dinner they went to a restaurant. Daphne viewed this as getting away with something. If Agatha had been home, she never would have allowed it. But Agatha might have a point, Daphne thought as they entered the dining room. The owner kept his place open on holidays so that people without families had somewhere to go, and at nearly every table just a single, forlorn person sipped a solitary cocktail. Across the room they saw Mrs. Jordan, which made Daphne feel guilty because if Bee were still alive she would have remembered to invite her. But then Ian and the owner conferred and they added an extra place setting and brought her over to sit with them. Mrs. Jordan was as adventurous and game as ever, although she must be in her eighties by now, and once they’d said grace she livened things up considerably by describing a recent outing she’d taken with the foreigners. It seemed that during that peculiar warm spell back in November, she and three of the foreigners had driven to a marina someplace and rented a sailboat; only none of them had ever sailed before and when they found themselves on open water with a stiff breeze blowing up, the one named Manny had to jump over the side and swim for help. After they were rescued, Mrs. Jordan said, the marina owner had told them they could never take a boat out again. They couldn’t even stand on the dock. They couldn’t even park on the grounds to admire the view. By now she had them laughing, and she raised a speckled hand and ordered a bottle of champagne—“And you must join us, Ezra,” she told the owner — along with a fizzy apple juice for Ian. It turned out to be a very festive meal.
In the evening Claudia and her family telephoned from Pittsburgh, and Agatha from California. Agatha didn’t seem as distressed about the restaurant as she might have been. All she said to Daphne was, “Did Ian bring Clara?”
“Clara? No.”
Agatha sighed. She said, “Maybe we’ll just have to marry Grandpa off, instead.”
“Actually, that might be easier,” Daphne told her.
In January Daphne started working at the wood shop, performing various unskilled tasks like oiling and paste-waxing. She had done this several times before while she was between jobs, and although she would never choose it for a permanent career she found it agreeable enough. She liked the smell of sap and the golden light that the wood gave off, and she enjoyed the easy, stop-and-go conversation among the workmen. It reminded her of kindergarten — everyone absorbed in his own project but throwing forth a remark now and then. Ian didn’t join in, though, and whenever he said anything to Daphne she was conscious of the furtive alertness in the rest of the room. Clearly, he was considered an oddity here. It made her feel sorry for him, although he might not even notice.