Five Tuesdays in Winter(49)

He held out a thin paperback.

“No thanks,” she said, more civilly now, understanding the knocking was part of a religious fervor, a feeling, perhaps accurate, that this house or half of a house (their childless neighbors were rarely home, never shared the brunt of the peddling that went on during the day) needed conversion.

“I’ve come from Smything and Sons,” the man said.

“Who?”

“The publishing house.” He shook the book at her. “They’ve given me this and I’ve come to talk to you about it.”

She shifted the baby upward, hoping to cover up a little more. “Why?” She read the largest words on the cover. It was the working title of her novel, the one in the notebooks on her kitchen table. She pinched the book between her thumb and fingers but could not loosen it from the man’s grasp. “Give me that.” Then she let go. The sound of her own voice scared her. It was her voice as a small child. She even felt the slight resistance of the words in her mouth, as if language were still somewhat new. “Please,” she added.

“That’s what I’ve come to do. Will you have me in?”

She looked at his face for the first time. He was a familiar stranger, someone you know you haven’t met but could have, perhaps should have. There was a little Bing Crosby in the heart-shaped mouth, a little Walt Whitman (when he was younger and kept his beard trimmed). There was even a bit of Gerald Ford somewhere, maybe only because she’d recently read an article about his hidden integrity and decency. It was clear that the only way she was going to discover how there could be another novel with that name, despite the searches she’d done to make sure there wasn’t, was to let the man in.

So often, when she made a dubious decision like this, she followed it up extravagantly, as if flaunting it to her better judgment. She led him into their small living room and said, “Can I get you something to drink?”

“I’ll take a gin martini if you’ve got it.” He gave his trousers a quick tug before bending to sit in the middle of the couch. A diaper peeked out from beneath his left thigh though he didn’t notice it. He balanced the book on his gray flannel knees. She smiled, waiting for him to acknowledge his joke. A cocktail at nine thirty in the morning.

He smiled back. “On the rocks.”

“I’ve got coffee, seltzer, OJ, tap water.”

“Hmm?”

“What can I get you, really?” Her anger was back. The baby was asleep and her writing time was dwindling. Why had she let him in?

“Here, let me help you with the martini.” He nestled the paperback in the seat of the bouncy chair on the coffee table.

She followed him into the kitchen. “I’m sorry but that’s not a possibility. We don’t have any—”

He opened the pantry door and there, instead of the teetery plywood shelves her husband had nailed in, instead of the thin boxes of rice and couscous, instead of the baby’s mixed grain cereal and jars of sweet potatoes, instead of the pasta and beans and cans of soup and the precious bottle of sun-dried tomatoes from Liguria she had splurged on but never wanted to use, was a long, glass-covered counter stocked with two chrome shakers, a strainer, a jar of onions, a jar of pimiento olives, a box of toothpicks, five glass swizzle sticks, and the ice bucket with the silver pine cone sticking up on top. She didn’t have to look any farther to know that below, behind the white cabinet doors, were bottles of vodka, gin, bourbon, and vermouth or that above, upside down on paper towel lining, were her father’s Class of ’62 highballs, the muscular bull fading with all the trips through the dishwasher of her youth.

“I’m glad you’ve got Beefeater,” the man said over his shoulder. “No need to get any fancier than that.”

She watched the sureness of his hands, the love that went into the preparation. She had forgotten, long forgotten, the ritual of it all. She had carefully married a man who, like her, did not drink a drop.

He made his martini. She’d never noticed, as a child, the tenderness between a drinker and his drink. He didn’t grab the bottle by the neck as she remembered, but lifted it with two gentle hands, one at the base and one at the belly. His hands moved delicately from ice to glass, bottle to glass, each gesture a signal of love. As a result, the liquor seemed to shine with a thousand glints and glimmers of gratitude as he carried it, close to his breast, back to his spot on the diaper on the couch. She sat down in the chair opposite him. She didn’t realize until she released the weight onto the armrest what a strain the baby had been on her arms and neck. With her free hand, she reached for the book, saying, only when she had firmly secured it, “May I have a look now?”

“Of course. It’s your book.”

“It’s not mine,” she laughed. “Mine’s not finished. Someone else beat me to the punch.” But there was her name below the title, in a sort of swirly script she didn’t like. The words ADVANCED READER’S COPY ran diagonally across the upper left corner. Was it the first of April? She was conscious of how long it took her sloggy mind to find the month. January. Even if it were April Fools’, this was not in the realm of the sense of humor of anyone she knew. And no one knew about this novel.

She opened the book. On the left-hand side, opposite the title page, which again declared this to be hers, was the copyright date. She gasped.