My oma told me once that on the day of the vernal equinox, at the moment when the sun crosses the equator, an egg will stand on its end. That’s what this moment feels like—eerily fragile. Standing on end, ready to tip either way.
He rubs a piece of my hair between his fingers. “I miss you,” he says. “I miss your smell. And the way your hair curls so…emphatically. The way you always look surprised when you laugh. The way you stretch like a cat when you first wake up. And the way you castigate me for putting ketchup on my hash browns and—”
I smile, but a couple of tears leak out from under my eyelids and slide down to my ears. He brushes one away with his thumb and then, without intention, almost without awareness on my part, I’m holding his face in my hands, finding his mouth with mine, calculating how long it’s been since I kissed him, trying to remember exactly why.
I expect it to be awkward after all this time, but it’s almost frightening how easy it is, how comfortable. He seems less a stranger to me than I am to myself, taking me on a leisurely tour of my own body, reintroducing me to all those secret places that remain vaguely unfamiliar to me, although they clearly remember him. When his fingertips trace funny, looping circles on my skin, I imagine that they’re not random, but a sort of spell written in runes. Or some kind of agreement, like selling your soul, that I’ve signed and that’s now irrevocable and binding.
Sleep comes with the instantaneous release of shutting off a light.
I wake up in the dark and for a split second I’m startled by the sound of someone else breathing. Then I remember. I ease myself out from under his arm and tiptoe out to the bathroom. The light is still on in Tyler’s room, and the cold breeze nipping at my bare butt tells me the front door’s still open. I pull my nightshirt off the hook on the bathroom door and slip it over my head, and look around her door. The bed’s unmade from this morning.
When I go into the living room to close the front door, I see lights on at Josh’s house. He’s probably sitting over there watching TV alone, Turbo splayed across his lap, ears spread out like ceiling-fan blades. In the kitchen I’m surprised to see that it’s only 12:40
A.M. It seems like a different night that Mac wandered up on my porch instead of only four hours ago.
Didn’t take me long to cave in. He was gone a year. I couldn’t even hold out for a month. I pick his bottle up off the floor and pour the flat beer down the drain. I take a sip of the pleasantly cool wine and realize that the reason I woke up is that my stomach is growling. I’m hungry.
I open the pantry door, and survey the possibilities. Dried conchiglie. Sun-dried tomatoes. Moroccan olives. Marinated artichoke hearts. Pine nuts. Olive oil.
“What are you doing?” Mac’s voice startles me. He’s standing in the doorway wearing only his boxers. I have to bite my tongue to keep from laughing at the M. C. Escher pattern of fish changing into birds.
“I was hungry.” I hand him the food and examine the contents of the refrigerator, pulling out feta cheese and Parmigiano-Reggiano and half a lemon. “Want some pasta? You better put a shirt on. It’s cold in here.”
He laughs. “This isn’t cold. Cold is twenty below zero.”
I run water into the large saucepan and set it on the stove. “Thanks, Sergeant Preston, for the meteorology lesson.”
He goes off down the hall and comes back with a sweatshirt.
“You would have loved the Yukon,” he says.
“Probably. But then, I wasn’t invited. And don’t get too comfortable. I need you to chop some things.”
“Even if you’d been invited, you wouldn’t have gone.”
“You don’t know that. You don’t know everything there is to know about me.”
“I won’t argue with that.”
I hand him a knife and cutting board. “Sliver those sundried tomatoes and pit the olives and chop them in half.”
“Yes, ma’m. Right away.”
“Please,” I amend.
We work in companionable silence for a minute, him chopping, me grating Parmigiano and crumbling feta cheese. Then he says, “Wyn.”
I look up.
“I love you.”
For a second I forget to breathe. “Excuse me?”
“I said, I love you.” He tosses a handful of olives into the bowl on the counter.
I just stand there for a few more seconds. This isn’t how I thought it would happen. Him, standing in my kitchen barefoot, in boxer shorts at one A.M. with olive oil all over his hands.
“It’s an easy thing to say, McLeod.”
“Not for me.” He pops an olive in his mouth. “In fact, I’ve never said it before.” He chews thoughtfully for a second, then deposits the pit in the garbage. “Unless you count last night, practicing in the mirror.”
I scrape feta cheese off my hands. “I guess you’d better kiss me then.”
When he does, I put my arms around him, being careful not to get feta on his neck, and he slips his hands up under my nightshirt.
“I said kiss me, McLeod. No freebies. You’re getting olive oil all over me.”
“I don’t suppose you’d want me to lick it off,” he offers helpfully.
“Not right this moment. I have to put the pasta in.”
“So this is how it’s going to be. Always runner-up to some kind of carbohydrate.”
“Pretty much…” When he moves against me, I can feel his erection. His mouth brushing the notch of my collarbone makes my whole body simultaneously contract and expand. “Well, maybe there’s a tad too much water there. Maybe we should let it boil down a bit.”
“Good idea.” But instead of heading for the bedroom, he backs me up against the wall. “We’ve never done it standing up,” he says in my ear.
“Mac, this may not be the time to—I mean, what if—” Then I’m talking into his mouth, so he can’t hear me. Okay, I know the olive oil is messy, but it makes his fingers glide over my breasts like—well, there really is nothing to compare it to. Nothing I’ve ever felt, anyway. I’m making a lot of noise, pressing against him, and then, he stops.
I open my eyes and look right into his.
“You didn’t say it.”
“What?” I gasp.
“When I said I love you, you didn’t say it.”
My head falls back against the wall. “Are we following a script?”
“Say it.”
“You know I do.”
“Say it, or I turn back into a frog.”
I smile. “I love you, Mac McLeod.”
He’s just taking up where he left off when I hear, “Holy guacamole!” My eyes fly open like window shades pulled down too fast. Tyler’s standing in the doorway.
“Whoa, hide the salami in the kitchen,” she hoots. Mac is laughing, sputtering, trying to tuck Elvis Jr. back inside his shorts.
I jerk the nightshirt down over my olive-oiled body. I grab my hair and pull it back, never mind that my hands are full of feta cheese. I wipe them on the nightshirt and I look at the two of them bent double with laughter, practically on the floor. And I say, with all the dignity I can muster, “So. How many want pasta?”
At first light, I open one eye, absolutely certain it’s all been a dream. Then I see the warm bulk of him buried in my comforter, and I close my eye. But I can’t go back to sleep. I just drift, dozing on his arm, waking periodically to watch him breathe, the tiny pulse beating in his throat.
I want to get up and clean up the kitchen. We left it looking like the sack of Troy. But it’s cold out there, and it feels so good in here. Although a double espresso sounds very tempting.
He smiles without opening his eyes. “Stop it.”
“Stop what?”
“I know you’re lying there thinking about cleaning up the kitchen.”
I stifle an embarrassed snicker. “I’m not either. I wouldn’t—”
Now he rolls on his side, propping himself on one elbow, grinning broadly. “Don’t even try to weasel out of it. I can hear the wheels turning.”
“Maybe you should forget bartending and develop a nightclub act—mind reading by McLeod the Mysterious.”
He pulls me against him, kisses me deeply and sweetly.
“I’m not so mysterious.”
“Yes, you are.”
His thumb strokes my bare shoulder. “How so?”
“Those letters. What was that all about? Why couldn’t you just say those things to me?”
His eyes close. “I don’t know.”
I poke him in the ribs. “Look at me, McLeod. No more evasive tactics.”
His eyes open again and there’s a sadness in them. He rolls onto his back, one arm around me, the other behind his head.
“When I first got the manuscript back from Steve, I couldn’t write anything. Not even in my journal. I’d think about things I wanted to write, but I’d get about two sentences out and that would be it. The thing that saved me was that first letter to you. After that, when I wanted to write, I’d start with a letter, and then just keep going. Finally all the rest of it just came out.” He turns his face to me. “Sounds weird, doesn’t it?”
Instead of answering, I get out of bed. In the bookcase I find the blue notebook.
“What’s that?”
I walk over to the bed, holding the notebook like a fig leaf. “Your next book.”
He takes the notebook from me and opens the cover. “My letters?” He flips through the pages. “In chronological order?” He sets the notebook on the floor and tugs me down next to him, laughing. “Ms. Morrison, you are so…”
“If you say anal, you’re toast.”
“Actually, I was going to say…awesome. Amazing. Astonishing. And…”
“And what?”
“A great muse.” He laughs again.
“What’s so funny?”
“I love that image of you. Stark naked. Hair curling over your shoulders. Blue notebook strategically placed. I think I need a picture of that to keep on my desk. To inspire me when I’m working.”
I narrow my eyes at him. “I thought you didn’t believe in photography.”
“I’ve changed my mind.” He pulls me over on top of him. “I now believe in photography. And all manner of things that I never believed in before.”
On the last Friday of April, we have an all-day open house at the bakery. We bake off everything we can, trying to empty the storeroom and refrigerators. Starting early in the morning, we put out trays of food, the muffins—blueberry, pumpkin millet, apple cinnamon—our famous refrigerator bran muffins. Cappuccino-hazelnut scones, Jen’s short scones; Scottish cream scones; apple-cardamom coffee cake, Ellen’s cinnamon rolls; carrot cake and lemon tart; peanut-butter cookies, Garibaldis, Mazurka bars; Ellen’s special gingerbread, hot with fresh ginger, sweet with honey and smoothed out with chunks of milk chocolate; our killer brownies with chocolate-covered raisins; big thermal carafes of coffee and tea. And of course the breads—white sandwich, whole wheat walnut, Tyler’s Indian Maiden Bread, banana-cinnamon swirl, olive rosemary, pumpernickel raisin. With tubs of whipped butter and cream cheese. Everything is free except the T-shirts, baseball caps, and coffee mugs sporting Tyler’s beautiful woodblock prints. They sell out by noon.
The place is mobbed all day long, with people coming in, eating and talking, laughing, crying, telling stories about the bakery. One woman tells us her husband proposed here over nonfat mochas. “At that table right there,” she says, pointing to the corner by the window.
“That’s so romantic,” Ellen says, dabbing at her eyes. “Tell him to come in later and say good-bye.”
The woman blushes furiously. “Actually, we got divorced last year and he moved to Minneapolis.”
The mailman elbows his way in and hands me a couple of envelopes and a direct-marketing piece about leasing postage machines.
“Sure am going to miss you guys.” He helps himself to a scone. “It just doesn’t seem right.”
“Yeah, well…” I’m running out of gracious replies.
He elbows his way back out, and I look at the two envelopes. One, bearing the return address of a Capitol Hill law firm, is addressed to Ellen. I reach over Jen’s shoulder to hand it to her and glance at the other one, addressed to me. It’s a long, odd-size envelope, one of those pale blue, tissue-papery ones. Then I notice the “Par Avion” sticker and French stamp. There’s no return address.
Ellen’s standing beside me. “What’s that?”
“I have no idea.” I slip my index finger under the flap and separate it carefully from the envelope. When I extract the triple-folded sheet of white paper, something falls out on the floor and Ellen bends to retrieve it. She straightens up, staring at the photograph in her hand, an odd smile coming slowly to her mouth. She doesn’t say anything, just hands it to me and pulls the letter out of my grasp.
It’s a picture of a startlingly blond woman wearing a bright teal-colored dress, hands on her hips, smiling broadly. Beside her is a huge painting, all red, purple, and orange. A sign underneath it says “Oeuvres d’une Vie Ancienne, par Dailie Valentin.” It takes a full ten seconds of staring before I recognize the painting as a garish birthday cake and the artist as…Maggie.
Holy shit. I turn quickly to Ellen. “What’s the letter say?”
“Nothing—”
“Don’t tell me that!” I grab the paper away from her. It’s blank. But stapled to one corner is an American Express money order for two thousand, one hundred and thirteen dollars and twenty-four cents. The exact amount of our bank deposit that never was.
I look into Ellen’s dark eyes. “Dailie Valentin. Bless her heart,” she says.
I rip the money order off the piece of paper. “Oh, rat’s patootie!” I wad up the paper. “No explanation, no apology. Like it was just some…spontaneously self-approved, unplanned, interest-free loan. No, not even that. It’s like she’s doing us a favor paying us back. After all that shit—after she rips us off—”
My rant stops when I realize Ellen’s laughing, silently, so hard she can’t catch her breath, holding her sides while tears slide down her face. “Oh God, Wyn. You’re a piece of work.” She wipes her eyes and we study the photo, both of us temporarily removed from the commotion in the bakery. “Interesting painting.”
“Not my cup of java, but then I’m sort of a representational kind of girl.”
She thwacks the money order. “Well, somebody obviously likes them.”
“True. But then the French love Jerry Lewis, too.”
Tyler shows up about two-thirty with Mac, Josh, and Turbo trailing behind. Mac looks around the room.
“Looks like a wake,” he shouts over the noise.
“That’s because it is,” I shout back.
“Except no whiskey,” Josh says. He takes a wedge of shortbread and breaks off a piece for Turbo.
By four-thirty nearly everyone has said good-bye, sworn that they’ll never patronize any business that takes over our space, wished us good luck, and departed. Tyler announces that she’s going out to dinner. Josh and Turbo are off for a run in the park.
Mac helps us clean up, which is mostly throw away, since we used paper plates and cups. He puts all the recyclables in our crate in the alley, empties everything else into the big metal Dumpster. Ellen and I hand out checks and hugs and the staff of the bakery goes home for the last time.
“You don’t have to come in tomorrow,” she says.
“Don’t be daft. I’ll see you whenever I wake up.”
Mac says, “Would you like to come to dinner with us?”
She smiles and pats his arm. “That’s really nice, Mac, but Lloyd’s actually coming home tonight, so I’ve got his favorite pot roast in the Crock-Pot, and barring any unforeseen power failures, we’re planning a nice meal at home. Thanks for helping out. See you tomorrow, Wyn.”
I stand by the ovens. We never shut them off at night because they take so long to heat up, but this morning, after we finished baking, Ellen quietly turned the thermostats all the way down. They’re
made of steel and concrete, and because of the sheer mass, they hold the heat for hours. They’re still warm now, but by tomorrow night, they’ll be cold.
“Is the auction house taking the ovens?” Mac asks, as if he’s reading my mind.
“No.” I lay my hand against the warm, black side. “They’re too old. Nobody would buy them. They’ll just get—when they renovate—” I seem to be having trouble keeping my voice steady.
He comes behind me, wrapping his arms around my shoulders, resting his chin on the top of my head.
“I’m sorry,” he says. “I don’t think I knew what this place was to you.”
My eyes brim. “That’s okay. I don’t think I did, either.”
In a few minutes, the stone in my chest lightens a bit. “So, should we get pizza?”
“Actually I made a reservation at the Queen City Grill. I can cancel it, if you don’t feel like going out.”
I tilt my head back and smile at him. “No, that sounds nice. All I have to do is find something to wear.”
I manage to unearth one outfit left over from my days and nights as an advertising executive’s wife, a copper-colored sand-washed silk tunic and bronze panne-velvet leggings. The only reason they didn’t get sold at a garage sale was because I always loved the earthy, metallic colors. I take out my one piece of good jewelry that isn’t in my mother’s safety-deposit box, a handmade silver necklace with a luminous moonstone that CM gave me for my thirtieth birthday.
I don’t know why Mac picked the Grill, but now that we’re here, it feels somehow appropriate to this day. It’s in an old building on First Avenue, near the Market, one of those places where the mottled ochre walls and original brick are sufficient decor. The room is long and narrow, with a mahogany bar running down the right side to the open kitchen. The left side is all high-backed wooden booths; a few tables dot the minimal open space on the worn, wooden-plank floor. With candles reflecting in all the glass, and the softly glowing sconces, the effect when you walk in is like being inside a magic lantern.
The place smells like a grill should—like steak—and is full of men in blue jeans and Italian jackets and women in little black dresses.
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