Writers & Lovers(39)

‘You’ve had a walk and a beer with him. I would be wary of the guy who locks in too soon. It’s a sort of premature commitulation.’ He laughs at his own joke then gets up to tip out the kitchen. He has a new crush on a surly line cook. I watch him push hopefully through the kitchen door. He can sound wise in love, but he’s bad at it, too.

I meet Oscar at a small restaurant called Arancia off Brattle Street. I didn’t want him to pick me up and see where I live. He’d want to come in and have a look around.

He’s talking to a couple outside on the sidewalk. He breaks away from them when he sees me coming.

He kisses me on the cheek. ‘Third date.’ He kisses me on the lips. ‘I have something for you. Shut your eyes.’

I feel something hard cover my head.

‘Perfect fit.’

I reach up. A bike helmet. I take it off. It’s silver and sleek and must have cost a lot.

‘Thank you. It’s lovely.’

He laughs. ‘I promise I will buy you something lovelier. But at least now I don’t have to worry about you cracking your head open.’ He slides his arm through mine, and we walk down the brick steps into the basement restaurant. It’s tiny. Eight tables. On the far wall a velvet curtain separates the dining room from the kitchen. The smells are Mediterranean: heated balsamic, shellfish, fig. I’m hungry. I hope he orders two courses. We wait at the door for someone to greet us.

‘Who were those people you were talking to?’

‘Tom and Phyllis McGrath. They were out for a stroll.’ He hesitates. ‘She was reading my book. Recognized the mug.’

‘That photo looks nothing like you.’ I harden my face and squint like a cowboy smoker.

‘That’s how I look.’ He tries to strike the pose.

‘You look nothing like you.’ There’s a woman at a three-top who’s watching him. He is good-looking, with those eyes and thick copper whorl of hair. I lower my voice. ‘Does that happen a lot, people recognizing you?’

‘Not enough,’ he laughs. ‘Around here occasionally. I mean right here. This block. Maybe the next. Go to Central Square and forget it.’

The hostess emerges through the velvet curtain and shows us to a table. It’s round, wood, no cloth, no flowers. Instead of a candle there is a small lamp with an old-fashioned chain. The setup and breakdown here must be so fast.

‘So, you’ve seen the photograph but haven’t read the book?’ Oscar says.

It catches me off guard. ‘I’ve been planning to get to the library.’

‘Oh, the library. That will boost my sales.’

A waiter appears, lifts our glasses away from the table to pour water into them, tells us the specials. He’s older than Oscar. He’s been doing this kind of work for decades, you can tell. He tells us the rack of lamb comes with yardlongs and a gentleman’s relish.

Oscar lifts his head. ‘Who’s writing this menu, Hugh Hefner?’

I cringe. This is not the kind of career waiter you want to mess with. But the guy cracks up. His laugh is loud and fills the small room. It takes him a while to compose himself. ‘No one has said anything all night. It was killing me.’

He leaves us to contemplate the menu. I see him go to the back and tell another waiter what Oscar said. At the table next to us an old man’s sweater slides from his chair to the floor and Oscar gets it for him and they have a small exchange about the bottle of wine on the man’s table, which was from Australia, where Oscar lived for a year it turns out.

The waiter comes back, and Oscar orders mussels for us to share and the sea bass. I order the grilled shrimp and the tagliatelle. I ask him to fire the shrimp app with the mains. He nods and leaves and Oscar says, ‘Listen to you, speaking the native language.’

I ask him about his boys.

He reaches for my hand and traces a finger along the inside of my wrist. ‘You have the softest, most velvety skin.’ After a while he says, ‘My boys are well. They know I am seeing you tonight. John can still get very frothed up about your mini golf boast.’

He’s not much of a drinker, and I like that. We each have a beer then switch to water. The mussels arrive, smelling of vermouth and shallots.

‘I saw your friend Muriel Wednesday.’

I’ve been avoiding the topic of the Wednesday night group. Silas might have been there, and that was strange. And just the word ‘Muriel’ made my stomach turn over.

‘What? Did you two have a falling out?’

‘I gave her my novel four days ago.’

‘You didn’t give it to me.’

‘After your freak-out in the arboretum? No, I did not.’

He laughs like he totally forgot about that. ‘I was a freak. I’m sorry. Have you heard anything from her?’

‘Nothing.’ A fresh round of anxiety floods in, the voltage amped up.

He nods, opens a mussel. ‘All these writers you’ve gone out with,’ he says. ‘Any of them famous?’

I shake my head. ‘Just you. In a two-block radius, at least.’

Our entrées arrive. The man at the next table gets up to leave with the rest of his companions and examines Oscar’s sea bass, whose head is lolling beyond the edge of the plate.

Oscar tips the fish’s eye up toward the man. ‘Irises backed and packed with tarnished tinfoil seen through lenses of old scratched isinglass.’