When No One Is Watching(34)

“Well, it makes as much sense as kids getting kidnapped by hospital ghosts.” His lips are all tooted up like I didn’t respect his clown story enough.

“Well. At least one person who had a relative killed by the Tuskegee experiment lives on our street. It’s not that hard to figure out where the fear of hospital kidnappers might come from.”

“Yeah.”

Awkward silence descends upon us again and I sip my coffee, trying to figure out why I keep dunking on him like this. I want to have a conversation, but I’m annoyed at literally everything this perfectly nice and normal man is saying.

Marcus’s voice pops into my head. “You’re just too difficult. Why would anyone put up with it?”

“So,” Theo says. “What do you do for work?”

“I work at an elementary school.” There. I was able to respond without snapping, finally.

“A teacher? I should have known.”

“Why?” I ask.

“Because you like sharing knowledge and you enjoy disciplining people,” he says.

“No I don’t. I’m actually very nice to most people.”

“Okay. Then you just like disciplining me. Even better.” He grins, then keeps it pushing before I can object. “Also explains why you haven’t been working for the last couple of months. I thought maybe you’d gotten laid off, too.”

I glance at him out of the corner of my eye. How did he know I haven’t been working? Though I’ve been all up in his window like it was prime reality TV, so I have no right to be weirded out.

“I work in a school office. Admin stuff. My mom knows a lot of people there, and she got me a job after I moved back here.”

What am I gonna say next week when school starts? I wonder. What am I gonna say when I get back and people start asking harder questions than “How’s she doing?”

“Your mom?”

When I sip my coffee and fall back into silence, he quickly gets the point.

“Why’d you move back?” His choice of subject startles me—I didn’t even realize I’d told him that but, yeah, I did. He’s maybe a little too observant for his own good. Or for mine.

I stop and lean back to look down my nose at him. “Why are you all in my business?”

He brushes some of the sweaty hair sticking to his forehead away.

“Because I’m curious about you. Breakup?” He bites his lower lip, studying me, then nods once. “Breakup.”

“I look like the dumpable type or something?” I turn and start walking faster, like I can escape the shame of his accurate guess. The reminder of what I’d put up with and how I hadn’t even been the one to put an end to it.

He catches up to me in a couple of long strides. “You don’t look dumpable, whatever that means. You have the eyes of someone who’s been treated worse than they should’ve been, that’s all.”

Okay, yes. He’s way too observant.

“It was a divorce,” I say.

“Divorce isn’t the end of the world, you know. I’m not judging you. In fact—”

“Drop it, Theo.”

“Dropped.”

I look down at the cracked sidewalk, up at the bottom of the LIRR tracks on the bridge that runs along Atlantic Avenue, at the short squat houses, and postwar tenements, and brown-brick projects with inspirational murals curling along their foundations.

Anywhere but at this man who apparently can tell I’m hurting with a look into my eyes. I’m not into that shit and I forgot to bring sunglasses.

He starts talking about painting a mural at one of his high schools, even though he’s a terrible artist. How he’d been in charge of painting a wolverine, the school’s mascot, and how it’d come out looking like a zombie cat creature. I nod my response, and he segues into a story about how he once lived in a town with a coyote problem. He’s not trying to force interaction, I realize; he’s giving me background noise so I don’t have to talk if I don’t feel like it.

By the time we reach the center, an incongruous glass-and-metal structure, we’re both soaked in sweat. Theo’s breathing a little heavy and the one-sided conversation has tapered off; we make a mutual sound of pleasure as we enter the air-conditioned welcome area, then laugh.

I glance at him, and he’s looking at me like he always does, with that wide-eyed interest. No pity. No scheming to use my obvious loneliness against me.

I tilt my head to the reception desk and then walk toward the woman sitting at it, while Theo heads over to the huge glass windows lining the other side of the lobby, looking out at an open field.

“Hi, how can I help you?” the young woman at the desk says just as Theo calls out, “There are tiny houses out there!”

The woman grins in response to his excitement, her smile scrunching up the freckles on her light brown cheeks. “Those houses have been here since the 1820s. They were regular-sized back then. We give tours of them, but our tour guide is on summer break so those restart next week.”

I wilt a little with disappointment. This is what I get for putting things off for months instead of walking a few blocks to do my research. “Oh. That’s . . . fine.”

“Sorry.” She actually looks like she means it. “You can explore outside around the houses if you want. And our exhibits are open if you want to check those out. We have three pretty great ones right now.”