Jack (Gilead #4)(5)

“Indeed I am!” He was happy suddenly, because she had laughed. Feelings ought to be part of a tissue, a fabric. An emotion shouldn’t be an isolated thing that hits you like a sucker punch. There should be other satisfactions in life, to maintain perspective, proportion. Things to look forward to, for example, so one casual encounter in a cemetery wouldn’t feel like the Day of Judgment. He had let himself have too few emotions, so there wasn’t much for him to work with. But here he was, abruptly happy enough that he would have trouble concealing it. He came down the slope sidelong because the grass was damp and slippery, but almost as if there were a joke in the way he did it. I’m imitating youth, he thought. No, this feels like youth, an infusion of something like agility. Embarrassing. He had to be wary. If he made a fool of himself, he’d be drinking again.

“This is quite a surprise,” he said, standing in the road, in the light. “For both of us, no doubt.”

She said nothing, studying his face forthrightly, as she would certainly never have studied anyone in circumstances her man ners had prepared her for. He let her look, not even lowering his eyes. He was waiting to see what she would make of him, as they say. And then he would be what she made of him. He might sit down beside her, after all, cross his legs and fold his arms and be affable. At worst he’d go find that half cigarette he had dropped in the grass, which was damp, not wet. Once she was out of sight. He was pretty sure there were still three matches in the book in his pocket. And she would walk away, if she decided to. Her choice. The darkness of her eyes made her gaze seem calm, unreadable, possibly kind. He knew what she saw, the scar under his eye, which was still dark, the shadow of beard, his hair grazing his collar. And then his age, that relaxation of the flesh, like the fatigue that had caused his jacket sleeves to take the shape of his elbows and his pockets to sag a little. Age and bad habits. While she read what his face would tell her about who he really was, she would be remembering that other time, when for an hour or two she had thought better of him.

She said, “Why don’t we sit down?”

And he said, “Why not?” And as he sat down he plucked at the knees of his trousers, as if they had a crease, and laughed, and said, “My father always did that.”

“Mine, too.”

“I guess it’s polite, somehow.”

“It means you’re on your best behavior.”

“Which in fact I am.”

“I know.”

“Which can fall a little short sometimes.”

“I know that well enough.”

He said, “I really would like to apologize.”

“Please don’t.”

“I’ve been assured that it’s good for the soul.”

“No doubt. But your soul is your business, Mr. Boughton. I’d be happy to talk about something else.”

So she was still angry. Maybe angrier than she had been at the time. That might be a good sign. At least it meant that she’d been thinking about him.

He said, “I’m sorry I brought it up. You’re right. Why should I trouble you with my regrets?”

She took a deep breath. “I’m not going to get into this with you, Mr. Boughton.”

Why did he persist? She was reconsidering, taking her purse and her bouquet into her lap. Could that be what he wanted her to do? It wouldn’t be self-defeat, precisely, because at best there would be only these few hours, tense and probationary, and then whatever he might want to rescue from them afterward for the purposes of memory. That other time, when the old offense was fresh, she had seemed to regret it for his sake as much as her own. He had seen kindness weary before. It could still surprise him a little.

He nodded and stood up. “You’d rather I left you alone. I’ll do that. I’ll be in shouting distance. In case you need me.”

“No,” she said. “If we could just talk a little.”

“Like two polite strangers who happen to be spending a night in a cemetery.”

“Yes, that’s right.”

“Okay.” So he sat down again. “Well,” he said, “what brings you here this evening, Miss Miles?”

“Pure foolishness. That’s all it was.” And she shook her head.

Then she said nothing, and he said nothing, and the crickets chanted, or were they tree toads. It had seemed to him sometimes that, however deep it was, the darkness in a leafy place took on a cast, a tincture, of green. The air smelled green, of course, so the shading he thought he saw in the darkness might have been suggested by that wistfulness the breeze brought with it, earth so briefly not earth. All the people are grass. QED. Flowers of the field. The pool of lamplight kept the dark at a distance. Shunned and sullen, he thought. Injured. He did not look at her, because then she would look at him. He had noticed that men in his line of worklessness, which did involve recourse to drink, were marked, sooner or later, by a crease across the forehead, but he did not touch his brow. It was nerves that made it feel that way, tense. If they sat there side by side till dawn, that would be reasonably pleasant.

She said, “I owe you an apology. I haven’t been polite.”

“True enough,” he said. “So.”

“So?”

“So, pay up.”

She laughed. “Please accept my apology.”

“Consider it done. Now,” he said, “you accept mine.”