The Last Book Party(42)

I decided not to make it easy for Henry to quit me. I continued to play the free spirit, dressing in a way that I hope looked effortlessly sexy, showing up to work in skimpy halter tops and sundresses. I wanted Henry and wanted him to want me back—at least for a few more weeks—and I didn’t feel it was something I should hide or apologize for.





36





I didn’t usually work on Saturdays, but Henry and Tillie asked me to help set up for the party, so I drove over to their house in the afternoon before meeting Jeremy and Malcolm at Truro Center.

“Excellent, you’re on chair duty,” Tillie said, as I got out of the car. She pointed me toward Henry, who was standing on the lawn by the front porch with a piece of paper that looked like a map. In front of him were two stacks of tables, one of round table tops and one of rectangular, legs folded beneath them, and several stacks of folded white wooden chairs, all rented for the party. Henry kept looking at the paper and then the chairs and the yard and back at the paper as though it were all a puzzle beyond his ability to solve.

“Spatial relations. Not my forte,” he said, holding the map out toward me, as if he had neither use for nor interest in it. I took the paper from him. It was immediately clear where the tables should go—three rectangles in the front of the house, for drinks and food, three round ones on the side of the porch with ten chairs around each, and two more round ones at the back of the house, also with chairs, on the flat grass outside the porch.

Before I started to explain the layout to Henry, Lane pulled into the driveway in her pickup truck.

“Finally!” Tillie said. She walked up to Lane’s truck holding a tall pile of folded paper bags. As the bags slipped from Tillie’s grasp, Lane grabbed them. Tillie said something that I couldn’t hear, and Lane said, “‘Whoopsy-daisy’? Did you really just say ‘whoopsy-daisy’?” and they both laughed. Annoyed by Lane’s ease with Tillie, I turned to Henry and asked what the bags were for.

“Paper-bag candles,” he said, looking somewhat surprised that I asked.

“For where?”

“To line the driveway, of course,” he said. I must have looked confused as he said, “Ah, right, you’ve never been to the book party. I forgot. Thought you had.”

His comment made me feel as though I was an afterthought—like a piece of furniture so plain and functional that you had to think hard for a moment to remember if you still had it in your house or had already given it away.

The phone rang and Henry turned to go inside. “That’s probably Franny. Damn him. We really could have used his brawn today. Mind starting with the chairs?”

“Has Franny decided not to come?” I called out, as Henry opened the screened door to the porch. As curious as I was to meet Lil, I would have been relieved to learn that Franny wasn’t coming, after all.

“No, no, he’ll be here,” Henry said. “Too late to be of much use—some to-do with Lil, it seems—but not too late to enjoy the party.”

By the time Henry returned, I had unfolded all the chairs that were to stay on the side of the porch and had carried most of the rest to the back. When I returned to the front for my last load, Tillie and Lane were by Lane’s pickup truck filling paper bags with sand.

Henry walked briskly toward me and with a quick glance toward Tillie and Lane, took my hand and pulled me around to the back of the house and down the sloping lawn toward the storage shed beside the tennis court.

“What are you doing?” I asked, annoyed that he’d been inside so long.

“Don’t say a word and come with me.”

He opened the door and pulled me into the shed. It was dark and damp. He pushed aside some old wooden tennis rackets hanging from the ceiling and sat on the bench along the back wall, a devilish smile on his face.

“Oh, no,” I said, shaking my head but feeling a little excited both by the possibility of being with Henry again and that he was willing to risk it while Tillie was home. I found it impossible not to return his smile with one of my own. “Tillie’s right outside. And besides…”

I wanted to say something about the way he’d been with Tillie the other day—about the unmade futon and their lounging together while doing the crossword puzzle—to make him realize that he couldn’t have it both ways. And yet, who was I kidding? There had never been a question of his having to make a choice between Tillie and me. Ours was a summer affair. And it was still summer.

I sighed as Henry lifted my tank top and pressed his lips to my stomach. I ran my fingers through his hair, pulled him to his feet. We went at each other quickly, our manner nearly rough. And yet, even before we were done, I couldn’t help feeling that it didn’t really matter to Henry that it was me there in the shed with him. I could have been anyone at all.

“You walk out first, to the side of the house,” Henry said, his face flushed, zipping his shorts. “I’ll go in the kitchen.”

From the side of the house, I could see the driveway, already halfway lined with paper bags. Lane’s pickup truck was gone, as was Tillie’s station wagon.





37





By the time I pulled into the parking lot at Jams, Malcolm and Jeremy were already there, leaning against Malcolm’s red Mazda convertible. I stepped out of the car and went to kiss Malcolm on both cheeks, as was his custom, but he stopped me at arm’s length and took my hands. “Yowza!” He looked me up and down, nodding at my loose hair, which had grown lighter in the sun, and my bright red tank top and short denim skirt, a summery outfit that was a far cry from the loose black vintage clothes I’d favored in New York. “You are literally sun-kissed,” he said. “Or something kissed.” Malcolm turned to Jeremy, who was grabbing his duffel bag from the back seat. “Is she not a vision?” he said.