Just Last Night(77)

To put it mildly.

Finlay nods. “Yes. Exactly. She’d have assumed my friends were the enemy, informed them of her rights, shed few tears about me, and got the hell out. My friends would have thought she was, how did you put it? A lot.”

He goes back to his rillettes. His point’s been made decisively yet effortlessly.

It’s not like me to be at a loss for words.

How had I not seen this? How had I, someone who prides herself on thinking hard on things and being a sharp judge of character, never seen Finlay and Susie were, in fact, very alike?





31


Aware things have got heavier than we want them to be, we manage to steer back to discussing the joys of life in Park Slope and matching it to my scant touristy knowledge. I tell him about Mark’s job in San Francisco to try to sound like more of an internationalist, hoping I’m eloquent enough that he doesn’t notice I’m piggybacking on my ex-boyfriend’s accomplishments.

As we decide we’re having a cheese board instead of dessert, another diner interrupts us.

“Excuse me . . . ,” says a woman with gray hair in a bun.

“Beverley, don’t!” says a well-spoken man standing behind her. “Leave them in peace.”

“I want to let you know, you’re the loveliest couple I think I’ve ever seen.” She puts a palm to her chest in a theatrical swoon. I suddenly remember the girls at school and the smudged ink initials ‘FH’ on their books.

“Really . . . ?” we both say, simultaneously, looking at each other in surprise.

Although I’m sure my surprise is the greatest. I’m not anything like an equal to Fin aesthetically, I don’t think, all false modesty aside. Shows what sitting opposite him can do. Like when film crews hold up reflectors.

“I’ve enjoyed watching you.” She leans down and squeezes my arm, resting on the table. “Have a long and happy life together, won’t you. For me.”

She picks up my left hand, sees the ring finger is ringless.

“Ask her, you fool!” she stage-hisses to Fin.

“Forgive my wife, she’s had a lot of Bordeaux,” says the man, and we laugh, and they leave.

An awkward pause ensues.

“OK, since Bev’s brought it up, we can’t avoid it any longer. Will you marry me?” Fin says. “We don’t know each other but we can’t make a worse mess than most people who do get to know each other first, right?”

“Since you put it like that.”

I laugh gratefully, and we clink glasses. I initially took his words as a graceful way of breaking the tension, but he’s gazing at me in a way that might, just possibly, be construed as flirtatious? Nothing thus far has prepared me for Finlay Hart, flirting. Had you asked me the one thing he’d never do, I’d have said flirting.

It’s not fair, in these surroundings, in his white shirt, with his bone structure, after Jesus has dropkicked me through the goalposts of life.

“Can I tell you something weird, without you thinking I’m weird?” Fin says.

“Probably depends on it not being too weird?” I say, trying to reassert some sass, as I feel vulnerable and a little bit . . . what would my mum call it? Squiffy.

“Years back, maybe five years ago, I was in a bar in the East Village. The kind of self-regarding place that plays Yo La Tengo and Whitney Houston and the barmen have sex-offender mustaches. There’s a dog walking around and it serves melon-flavored cocktails in jelly jars . . . The dog’s not serving.”

“Jelly?”

“Jam jars, sorry. See, I’ve got some American in me now. And ‘Catch’ by The Cure came on, you know it?”

“Yes, this is my wheelhouse! Kind of a ditty . . . ? ‘I’d see her when the days got colder’—that one?”

“Yes!” Fin’s the most animated I’ve ever seen him.

“That song came on and all of a sudden, out of nowhere, I got this pin-sharp image of you standing at the door when you used to call for Susie. A big bow in your hair. Your solemn eyes.”

I gasp. “I didn’t think you remembered me! Or any of that. Or I’d have mentioned it.”

Finlay frowns. “Of course I do. I’ve been away for a while but I don’t have amnesia. Listening to that song, thousands of miles away, so many years after: I realized what it was about you that felt so unusual.”

“Was it the Edwardian ghost hair accessory?”

“You always looked so worried. For a kid.”

“Did I?”

He plays with his wineglass stem again and looks at me, and I feel seen, though I’m not fully sure why.

“Yeah. Well, to me. Maybe it takes one to know one.”

I puzzle.

“Shall we get the bill?” Fin says.

“FANCY A NIGHTCAP?” I say, when we get back to The Caley. “On me too! I don’t like not paying for anything.”

“Why not,” Fin says.

Its bar is a narrow, galley space so we have to sit side by side on high stools at a counter, which I always like.

I watch the barman rattle ice in a shaker like a maraca after we order two smoked old-fashioneds.

With minutes to go, I remember my nine p.m. check in with Ed, and apologize while I hack out an EVERYTHING FINE, SITUATION NORMAL bulletin, without explaining that’s what it is.