Jack (Gilead #4)(29)

“Yes, you do.”

She looked at him. “You don’t.”

He laughed. “I’m a special case. For me, turning the other cheek is only prudent. Everyone on earth is a stranger, and I’m another one, so that rule doesn’t really apply. No one to do the welcoming.”

He had turned in his chair to stretch out his legs and cross them at the ankles. He put his hands in his pockets. Slick. He did want those pancakes, and courtesy obliged him to eat them, but there was something just a little mendicant about it. He couldn’t quite pass from the thought to the deed.

She stood up and took his plate. “Nobody likes cold eggs.”

“I actually—”

“I suppose you like them better cold? Jack Boughton, it’s a shame how you lie.” The plate in one hand, she went to the sofa table and picked up his hat. “Now I have a hostage,” she said, and took it with her into the kitchen.

It was true, he wouldn’t leave without it. If it had been sitting there much longer, reminding him by its battered raffishness of who he actually was, or who he usually was, anyway, he’d have been out the door. There was no gentlemanly way to take it away from her. Well, he could hear pancake batter hitting the skillet, so leaving was out of the question, hat or no hat.

He thought he might go out to the sidewalk to see if he could find a couple of roses in the bushes. It would seem a little miraculous to her to find roses on the table, slightly elegant, even if they were wilting. They would be something to give her, and then he could accept breakfast without being abject about it. She would see the roses and be pleased and probably laugh. But then he thought how bizarre it would seem to anyone who saw That White Man groping around in the shrubbery before dawn, only stranger if he did happen to find a rose or two. And then he realized that anyone passing her doorstep in the morning would see those roses and wonder what to make of them, and they would add interest to whatever stories might be circulating about lovely Della, who only meant to be kind. He felt his doom, that old companion who knew the worst about him long before he knew it himself, settle into him, however that happened. But it did. So when Della came into the room again, he could hardly look at her. This time she had a plate for herself, too, which made things better.

“Excellent,” he said.

A moment passed, and then she laughed. “I guess somebody’d better say grace.”

“All right.” He folded his hands and bowed his head. He heard himself saying, “‘Down to the grave will I take thee, Out from the noise of the strife; Then shalt thou see me and know me— / Death, then, no longer, but life.’” He looked at her. “I don’t know why that came to mind. I hope I wasn’t— I sometimes think the Lord might enjoy a few lines of poetry. I apologize—”

She said, “I know why it came to mind. You were thinking of that night the world didn’t end.”

“I guess I was. Sunrise was a disappointment, but not really a surprise. Otherwise, it was about perfect, I thought.” Should he say he didn’t write those lines? Well, of course she would know Paul Dunbar wrote them. He said, “Paul Dunbar,” so she would know he wasn’t trying to take credit for them.

She nodded. “‘I am the mother of sorrows, / I am the ender of grief.’ I like that poem.”

Then they sat there eating together, sharing the syrup, stirring their coffee. He was the one who remembered that there was coffee, and he went into the kitchen and found the cups and saucers and filled them, and realized there would be less chance of a spill if he had filled them at the table, but he was very careful.

How had he found the nerve? She smiled at him and said thank you, as if it were just a pleasant, ordinary thing. She opened a little porcelain box with sugar cubes in it and dropped two in his cup and two in hers. After a while, Lorraine, in her robe and slippers, came down the hall and stood there a minute, looking at them. “Awfully quiet,” she said.

Della laughed. “Have we been keeping you awake?”

“Yes, you have. It’s almost seven. The sun will be up.” She said, “The two of you just sitting there!” She could find no words. It was a little strange, that they had hardly spoken at all for a long time, he had no idea how long.

“I really should go now.”

“Yes, I’ll get your hat. It’s a quarter past six, by the way.”

He had seen his hat on top of the icebox, looking as alien as a thing could look. She brushed at the brim a little before she handed it to him.

He said, “I’m afraid it’s beyond help.” Then, “I have a confession to make.”

“You wrote in my book.”

“Actually, no,” which wasn’t entirely true. “Something else. This is a little embarrassing. I meant to bring you flowers last night, but at the last minute I lost my courage. I got them cheap, they were wilting. So I threw them into the bushes there by the steps.”

“What kind of flowers?”

“Roses.”

“What color?”

“Red. But my point is that they might look fairly scandalous—proof that you had a gentleman caller in the middle of the night. There are probably petals all over the place. I’d pick them up—but I guess that wouldn’t be wise in the circumstances.”

She said, “You have strewn my steps with rose petals. That’s poetic.”