Writers & Lovers(33)

Oscar is studying me. He’s making decisions already. I can feel this. Between our call and today he talked himself out of me, and now he is coming back around. I squat there and think about how you get trained early on as a woman to perceive how others are perceiving you, at the great expense of what you yourself are feeling about them. Sometimes you mix the two up in a terrible tangle that’s hard to unravel.

Bob bolts toward me. Oscar, holding the other end of the leash, gets yanked along. I let Bob snuffle in my ear. I stand, and we start walking.

‘So,’ Oscar says.

‘So.’ I look at him. He’s not a tall man, and our gaze is nearly level. I’m not used to that.

‘Here we are.’ His eyes are even lighter today, with dark rims. ‘Walking Bob.’

The dog is on the scent of something now, head sunk between his shoulder blades, nose skimming a quarter inch above the asphalt. Oscar examines me as we walk. He’s much looser than he was with the kids or at the signing table. He’s looking at me with mirth, as if I’m already saying something funny, as if we have a history of little jokes between us.

‘Just so you know, I’m a bit scared of trees,’ he says.

There are trees everywhere. It’s an arboretum. They all have small brass name tags nailed into them. We’re in the maple grove: Korean maple, fullmoon maple, painted maple. ‘Is this some kind of exposure therapy?’

‘It’s the holes in the trees, mostly. One time when I was a kid I was sitting on the limb of an oak and I see this hole and I peer in and next thing I know I’m on the ground. Just bam. I peer in’—he makes his face like Jasper’s—‘and then I’m staring straight up at the sky and my mother is screaming from the house. She’s not running toward me or anything. She’s just screaming.’

‘What happened?’

‘An owl sank his beak into my forehead.’ He stops to show me. There’s a deep divot just below his hairline.

‘Jesus.’

He smiles when I touch it.

We start walking again.

‘Casey what?’ he says.

‘Peabody.’

‘Ah. Very quaint,’ he says. ‘Very Mayflower. Peabody. It’s one of those names that happens at the front of your mouth. Peabody.’ He says it fast, exaggerating the popping sounds. ‘As opposed to Kolton, which happens all in the back.’

I say both names and laugh. He’s right.

He tells me he and his sons have a running list of place names like that, words that pop from your lips. He says some of them: Pepperell, Biddeford, Mattapoisett, Cinnabon.

‘Surely you don’t let them eat Cinnabons.’

‘What do you mean?’

I imitate his growl: ‘No chocolate! As you put three packs of sugar in your coffee.’

He laughs. ‘Who are you? Where did you come from?’

‘You’ve seen me before. Or I’ve seen you.’

‘Where?’

‘At your book party. On Avon Hill.’

‘This summer?’

I nod.

‘You weren’t there.’

‘I was.’

‘I would have noticed, believe me.’

‘I was there. Fancy house. Mansard roof. You were in the dining room, signing books.’

‘Did Iris cater that party?’

‘I wasn’t working. I was with my friend Muriel.’

‘Muriel. Muriel Becker?’

I nod.

‘She’s a friend of yours?’

‘Basically my only friend here. Aside from Harry.’

‘Harry from the phone?’

‘Uh-huh.’

He squints. ‘You and Muriel are friends. Yeah, okay, I can see that. She’s a good writer.’

‘I know.’

He stops walking. ‘Are you a writer?’

I suspected this might throw him off. ‘I’m a waitress.’

‘You’re a writer.’ He’s really not pleased by this. He tips his head back. ‘First woman who doesn’t make my skin crawl and she’s a writer.’

‘Guess you have a problem with that.’

‘I don’t date writers.’

‘Who says this is a date?’

‘This is a date. This is my first date in a very long time. Please don’t say it’s not a date.’

Bob chooses this moment to put his hind legs though his front legs and produce a soft tan coil of poop at the base of a Japanese lilac. Oscar pulls out a plastic bag from his pocket. He sticks his hand in it, grabs the pile, turns the bag inside out, and knots it twice. He crosses the path to toss it in a trash can and comes back. ‘Is that why you’re here? Is that why you were all flirty at the restaurant with me?’

‘Flirty? With you? With the grumpy dad who can’t make eye contact?’

He smirks very slightly.

‘I liked your boys, not you. I wouldn’t say I was flirting with them, but their concern for you touched me. John was trying so hard to make it a special day.’

He nods. An off-leash dalmatian runs up to Bob’s bum and sniffs and prances off. Oscar wipes his nose with the back of his hand. ‘You know then, about their mom.’

‘I was trying to make a rough day easier.’