Five Tuesdays in Winter(13)

On the third Tuesday, as Kate was leaving, the phone rang. Paula ran to answer it. It was for her, of course, so Mitchell walked Kate to the door alone. She was dressed up again; she had put her coat on carefully so as not to wrinkle her soft ivory shirt. She had thin, straight hair that she’d probably complained about (as Paula had about hers) all her life but that was clean and shiny and soft looking. Again he wanted to say how nice she looked but instead said that he hoped she was keeping a careful record of her tutoring hours. She nodded that she was and told him he didn’t have to keep reminding her. He was embarrassed. It was his default line; it came out of his mouth when he wanted to say other things to her.

He watched her walk to her car, which, during the lesson, had received a light coating of snow. He wondered if she’d brush off all the windows or just the front and back. She didn’t do any of them. She just got into the car, put on the wipers, and, without looking sideways to see him standing unconcealed at the window, drove away.

“Kate has a date,” Paula said, catching him in the act of watching her car disappear around the corner.

“Lincoln?” he asked hopefully, more comfortable with an old rival than a new one.

“They’re over. With some guy she met at the store.”

“My store?”

“She just said ‘tienda,’ but I think so.”

“She told you this in Spanish?”

“That’s why she’s here, isn’t it?”

“Sí,” Mitchell ventured uneasily.

The next day he told Kate she’d have to start addressing postcards for the sale he had every April.

“I don’t mind at all, but you do know it’s only the first of February.”

He remembered her approaching birthday and the dilemma about Valentine’s and said, “There are over a thousand to send out, so we should get started on it.”

He set her up in his office in the back and waited on the thin stream of customers himself.

“Call if you need help,” she’d said before he shut her in.

“I will.” But he knew even if there was a line ten deep he wouldn’t call.

Around two, a young man in a dark-green parka came up to the counter. Mitchell knew he was going to ask for Kate, and when he did, he explained that she was busy at the moment. He was careful not to indicate in which direction she was so busy. Unperturbed, the man asked where the art section was, then slowly made his way toward it, lingering at the new-arrival bin, the poetry shelves, mythology, psychology, before arriving at art. If he pulled out a book, he replaced it exactly as it had been, flush with the other spines and the edge of its shelf, just as Mitchell liked them. But he had bad posture and snarls in his hair. He could see Kate looking at her watch as she came out of his office. He couldn’t think of any way to keep her from coming forward. She looked down all the aisles until she found him.

“Hey,” Mitchell heard her say.

“How’re you doing?”

“A little disoriented.” She flexed her hand, the one that had been addressing flyers for the past five hours. Her friend didn’t ask why, and Mitchell was pleased that he shared this information with Kate alone. “Let’s go,” she said. Mitchell’s spirits plummeted.

She hadn’t mentioned leaving early. She had to stay until six. She came around the counter to get her coat and scarf. “I’m going to grab something at Westy’s. Want anything?”

He’d forgotten all about lunch. “No,” he said, even though he was suddenly starving. “Only mushroom soup.”

It was a very small joke they had. Once, about four years ago, Westy’s had served, for one day, the most delicious mushroom soup he’d ever tasted. They’d never offered it again, but he’d never stopped looking on the specials board for it every time he went in. Occasionally he put in a request, but the teenager at the register clearly had no say over soups.

The edges of Commercial Street were covered in a thick, lumpy layer of ice, and he watched them cross it slowly without touching. But they were talking a lot. Blue puffs came out of their mouths at the same time. They opened the door to Westy’s and disappeared. They’d probably eat at one of the booths. He couldn’t very well complain if once in the three months she’d been working there she ate her lunch out instead of bringing it back.

There was a couple in the far room whispering in fiction. He’d been pricing a stack of books he’d just bought from a composer, but now that Kate was gone he’d lost his concentration. He went down the aisle her friend had chosen and pulled out, one by one, the books he’d looked at. Each one was a decent book in a sea, he acknowledged with familiar shame, of mediocre books. He would have liked to have an intensely intellectual selection—no confessional poetry, no mass-market psychology, no coffee-table crap. But as it was, business was precarious. Most intellectuals were like the composer: selling, not buying. A few days ago, a woman had come in with swatches of fabric and asked him to find her books only in those colors. Last week a man had been looking for War and Peace, and when Mitchell explained that he was temporarily out of anything by Tolstoy, the man asked if he had it by anyone else. It was a terrible time for books.

“Hey, where are you?” She pulled on his sleeve. “I got it! Mushroom soup!” She held up two containers. She was smiling as wide as he’d ever seen. Her nose was red and dripping and beautiful. “It better be as good as you promised.”