Nora Goes Off Script(25)

My hair is right today, thank God for small favors. “You’re a grown-up person,” I tell my reflection. “Don’t act like a teenager.”

“Damn,” he says as I walk into the kitchen. He’s in a crisp white shirt and a navy blazer. He’s shaved and smiling, and well, he looks like a movie star.

“Too much?” I really just need someone to be honest with me.

“Just right.”

As expected, we walk into the restaurant and everyone takes a collective gasp. People who know me even in passing give enthusiastic waves. People who know me well plot their frequent trips to the bathroom so they can stop and say hi.

The hostess takes us to a table in the back corner, facing out into the restaurant. Leo puts his hand on her forearm and she almost faints. “I don’t want to be a pain, but would it be possible to seat us at that table over there?” He motions to a table nestled in front of a banquette.

After one glass of wine, I forget that my entire community is staring at us. We’re laughing about how he charmed those poor women into working on the play. We talk about the kids, like they’re a shared interest of ours. He wants to know about my brief career in publishing, and his responses make me realize I learned more than I thought.

“Do you date?” he wants to know.

“No.”

“Never?”

“Never.”

“Why not?”

“These are some pretty rural suburbs. Singles don’t exactly congregate here. Plus, I get up early, as you know.”

“Are you ever lonely?”

“Not as lonely as I was when I was married to Ben.”

When our desserts come, he wants to play his new favorite game, Romance Movie. “Okay, here’s one. Male talk-show host from Akron, Ohio.”

I stab a bite of chocolate cake as I think. “He goes out to the country to interview a reclusive movie star and falls for her caregiver, who probably dreams of opening a cupcake shop.”

“They all do.”

“An inordinate number of bakers in these movies,” I agree. “And no one’s overweight.”

“Community activity at the end?”

“Hmm.” I take a bite and think it over. “Oh. He’s going to MC the auction for the county fair.”

“Where she’ll be selling cupcakes.”

“Naturally.”

“And he has to leave before the event, breaks her heart but then comes back and there’s a big kiss,” he says.

“The kiss is never really that big, actually.”

He’s finished his wine, so I pour him half of mine. “So that’s it?” he asks.

“Well, there’s small stuff. If either of them has parents, they’re always exceptionally loving and self-sufficient. No one’s parents are a pain.” I take another bite of cake. “And the woman usually has a quirk that would be annoying to most men, but that this particular guy finds irresistible.”

“Seriously?”

“It’s part of the fantasy. Like the woman who’s really uptight and makes tons of lists appeals to the musician who needs to get his act together.”

“This is diabolical. What about the lunatic woman who schedules her life to run like a Swiss watch?”

“Well,” I say, draining my glass and placing my napkin on the table, “she gets a lot of shit done. But, in my experience, it’s not exactly the kind of thing a man finds irresistible.”

“I do,” he says. “We should go home.”



* * *



? ? ?

The house is dark when we get back and neither of us switches on a light. We’re just standing there in the dark kitchen, and he takes a step toward me. “Do we need to pick up Arthur?”

Arthur? I wonder. Oh right. “Kate’s giving him a ride home.”

“Okay,” he says. He’s close enough that if he took half a step forward he could kiss me. I wonder again if my imagination has gone rogue, if maybe it’s time to lay off the romance genre. And the wine.

“My salmon was perfectly cooked,” I say literally out of nowhere, mainly because I need to break eye contact. I sidestep so we’re no longer facing each other. “I mean sometimes it’s too rare, and they say pink in the middle, but it’s practically still breathing. Not that fish breathe.” I laugh a little at my truly unfunny comment, but now I can breathe. I turn to the counter and start straightening an already straight stack of papers in the dark. “Want to get that light?” I say.

“No,” he says and steps right behind me.

“Oh,” I say, turning around.

He moves a loose tendril of hair from my eyes and rests his hand on the side of my neck. I can’t remember his having touched me before, and from the tingly heat spreading through my body, I think I would have remembered. I cannot look him in the eye, but I can feel him studying me in the dark. He leans in, and his face is so close that our noses brush against each other. His breath is on my lips. The space between us is electric with want, mostly mine probably, and I’m afraid to meet his eyes because he’ll see all that want, laid bare. For some reason I want to stay in this moment, ride this line, so I can both know and not know what’s about to happen. It will be the Schr?dinger’s cat of kisses.