Table for Seven: A Novel

by Whitney Gaskell

  “What’s that?” Coop asked. He had a premonition that he didn’t want to hear whatever it was Fran was about to say.

  But before Fran could spit it out, a man Coop had never seen before walked into the room. He was short—very short, probably no taller than five foot five—and had thinning dark hair that highlighted a pair of prominent, Prince Charles ears. He wore a short-sleeve blue plaid shirt tucked into khaki pants, and had a cellphone attached to his belt. The guy looked pleasant enough, but Coop was naturally suspicious of anyone who wore a cellphone holster.

  “Hi, I’m Kenny Stabler,” he said, approaching Coop with an outstretched hand.

  “Nice to meet you,” Coop said. “I’m Coop.”

  “Just Coop? Like Cher or Madonna?” Kenny asked.

  “That’s right,” Coop said, nodding his head. “Minus the pointy bra and sequin costumes.”

  “That’s not what I hear,” Will said.

  “Have you joined the dinner party club?” Coop asked. The idea annoyed him. Decisions about club additions should be made by the whole Table for Seven Club, not ex parte.

  “No, I’m just crashing for the night,” Kenny said.

  “Kenny works with me,” Fran explained.

  “It’s a blind date,” Kenny said confidingly.

  “A blind date?” Coop repeated.

  “Yeah, I know. Pretty terrifying, huh?” Kenny said. “But Franny did me a solid. Audrey seems great.”

  Coop looked from Kenny to Will—who was studiously staring down at his feet, as though there was nothing more fascinating in the world than his well-worn penny loafers—to Fran.

  Fran forced a smile and said, “You know me. I always love playing matchmaker.”

  “Yes. I did know that about you,” Coop said, wondering if there was any way he could make a run for it. He’d been at Audrey’s house for all of five minutes and was already dreading the rest of the evening.

  There was a knock on the door. As they were all standing in the hallway, Will simply reached out and opened the door, startling Jaime and Mark who—clearly not expecting such a quick response to their knock—were standing very close. Mark had his hand on the small of Jaime’s back and her face was tipped up toward his.

  “Ahem,” Will said.

  Jaime and Mark started apart and turned to see Will, Fran, Coop, and Kenny standing there. “Oh, hi, everyone,” Jaime said, blushing.

  “We decided to all come and greet you at the door. En masse,” Will said.

  “So I see,” Jaime said.

  The group shuffled around the small foyer to make room for Jaime and Mark, who were now holding hands, their fingers linked loosely together. Coop was pressed back against a narrow console table so as not to rub up against either Kenny or Fran—right now, it was debatable about which alternative would be more embarrassing—when Audrey appeared, looking nonplussed.

  “Hey, everyone. Why are you all standing in the foyer?” she asked.

  Coop was annoyed at the frisson of excitement that shot through him at the sight of her.

  “Yes, we deserted Leland in the living room,” Fran said. “Everyone, move that way.”

  As the group went into the living room, Audrey greeted the Wexlers, hugging Jaime and allowing Mark to kiss her on the cheek, and then turned to Coop—the last one left in the entryway.

  “Hi,” Audrey said. She was wearing a simple black sheath dress, but instead of her usual high heels, she had on black patent flat sandals.

  “Hi. For you,” Coop said, handing her the wine and brushing his lips against her cool cheek. Then, while he was close enough to not be overheard, he murmured, “Are those shoes supposed to make you shorter or to make him seem taller?”

  “Thank you for the wine,” Audrey said stiffly, ignoring his crack about her shoes. “That was very thoughtful.”

  “I’m a very thoughtful guy,” Coop said, winking as he passed by her, immensely pleased at her discomfort.

  But his victory was short-lived. Although thankfully the group didn’t linger long over drinks and quickly moved to Audrey’s small dining room, dinner seemed to drag on interminably. Audrey was distracted and uncharacteristically disorganized, and there were long gaps in between the courses. The salad course was delicious—the mini cheese soufflés perfectly complemented the tarragon-flavored vinaigrette—but then everyone grew so hungry waiting for the lamb, that they ate too much bread and drank too much wine, and when the lamb finally appeared, they were so hungry they devoured it without stopping to savor the flavors.

  Conversation was stilted, too. Jaime and Mark were being oddly lovey-dovey with each other and seemed like they’d rather be on their own than out in a group. Coop was avoiding looking at or speaking to Fran, as much as he could get away with it, fearing another weirdly charged interaction. Fran, in turn, was quiet, and not at all her usual animated self, and Will kept glancing uneasily at his wife. Audrey was flustered. Only Kenny seemed unaware of the tension, chatting easily with Leland about a cooking show they both watched, with Mark about junior tennis tournaments, and with Jaime about the dramas of toilet training. Despite his natural antipathy toward Kenny, Coop had to admit that Kenny seemed like an okay guy.

  Still, Coop didn’t get the feeling that there was much of a spark between Audrey and Kenny. They chatted about the benefits of massage therapy in patients recovering from sports injuries, which was apparently Kenny’s specialty as a physical therapist. Kenny lavishly praised the rack of lamb and strawberry-rhubarb pie. Audrey smiled and said all of the correct, polite things in response. But they weren’t leaning toward each other, or finding excuses to touch, to brush against each other. In fact, Audrey seemed much more interested in Leland’s story about how two women in his garden club—both widows—were competing for his attention.

  “You’re the hot stud of the garden club?” Audrey teased him.

  “They keep bringing me casseroles,” Leland said in a melancholy voice.

  “And that’s a bad thing?” Mark asked.

  “There’s only so much tuna casserole a man can eat before it gets depressing,” Leland said.

  “Maybe we should tip them off that the way to his heart is bacon,” Audrey said, laughing. Then, when she saw Kenny’s confusion, she shook her head. “Sorry. It’s an inside dinner-party-club joke.”

  At one point, when Audrey was taking a stack of dishes out to the kitchen, Coop caught Kenny looking at Audrey’s backside with frank, open admiration. Coop was seized with the sudden urge to take his fork and drive it into Kenny’s hand, but decided that might be a bit of an overreaction and wouldn’t go unnoticed by his dinner companions.

  “Next month we’re meeting at Coop’s,” Fran said, putting down her fork after taking only a bite of her pie. “And I was going to suggest that after that we take off the rest of the summer and then start up again in September.”

  “Why’s that?” Will asked.

  “We’re going to my parents’ for two weeks in July,” Fran said.

  “Oh, God,” Will said, draining the rest of his wine.

  “And Mark and Jaime normally go up north in August. And I’m sure other people will be traveling, too,” Fran continued. “It’ll be hard to find one Saturday a month when we’ll all be able to attend.”

  “That’s true. Emily has a bunch of tournaments this summer. We’re going to be away nearly every weekend,” Mark said.

  “That sounds like fun,” Fran said to Jaime.

  “Oh, I’m not going to most of them. Mark will just take Emily on his own,” Jaime said.

  “You’ll come to some of the tournaments, though, right?” Mark said, touching his wife’s arm.

  She smiled at him. “Of course. And when we start up in September, it will be our turn again.”

  “Sounds good,” Will said. “Leland?”

  “I’m going on a cruise,” Leland announced.

  “You are? I didn’t know that. Where are you going?” Fran asked.

  “Alaska,” Leland said. “I
’ve always wanted to go.”

  “And you’re going by yourself?” Jaime said. “Won’t you be lonely?”

  “Haven’t you been paying attention? Leland’s been fighting the ladies off. He has his choice of the local widow pool to keep him company,” Will said.

  “I like traveling alone,” Leland said.

  “So do I,” Audrey said. “It’s so freeing. You can do whatever you like, whenever you like, without having to worry about whether your traveling companion is having a good time.”

  “But you also don’t have anyone to share the experience with,” Jaime said.

  “Maybe it’s like dog people and cat people. People who like to travel alone and people who like to travel with others,” Audrey suggested.

  “I’d love to try traveling on my own sometime,” Fran said.

  “I thought you hated traveling alone,” Will said, turning to his wife.

  “Not at all. Why would you think that?” Fran asked.

  “Probably because you’ve told me that. On several occasions.”

  “You must have misunderstood me,” Fran said.

  Will was looking at her oddly, as though Fran had just announced that she was taking up cannibalism.

  “I’ve always wanted to go backpacking through Europe,” Fran said defensively.

  “But you can’t read a map. And you get lost here, in town,” Will said in a teasing voice. “How would you possibly navigate yourself through countries where you don’t speak the native language?”

  “I can read a map!” Fran said crossly.

  “Can’t a person be both a dog person and a cat person?” Kenny asked.

  “No,” everyone said together.

  “But I had a dog growing up. Now I have a cat.” Kenny shrugged. “I like both.”

  “You can like both. But you have to prefer one to the other,” Fran explained. “If you had the choice of living with a cat or a dog—and you didn’t have to concern yourself with the details about how big your house is, or the hours that you work, or anything like that—which would you choose?”

  “I don’t know,” Kenny said, shrugging. “They both have their pluses and minuses.”

  “I think you’re definitely a cat person, Kenny,” Coop said.

  “How can you tell?” Kenny asked.

  “Oh, I can just tell these things,” Coop said. He grinned at Audrey, who shot him a sharp, warning look. “No, I can’t really. It’s just that you chose to get a cat. That must mean you prefer them.”

  “I didn’t choose him. He chose me. He showed up on my doorstep one day and pretty much never left,” Kenny said. “What does that mean?”

  “It means you’re a very nice man,” Audrey said. “Now, who wants another slice of strawberry-rhubarb pie?”

  AUDREY KEPT HER COOL until her guests had left, including Kenny, who had seemed reluctant to leave with the others. But she insisted that she didn’t need help with the dishes and accepted his invitation to lunch the next week, mostly because she couldn’t think of a way to say no without hurting his feelings. It didn’t escape her attention that she hadn’t had any similar problem with hurting Coop’s feelings. But Coop was different, she decided. He needed to be taken down a few pegs.

  Coop. Audrey scrubbed at the roasting pan—the meat juices were caked on the bottom, forming a substance so hard and resistant, NASA could use it to patch space shuttles—and wondered what the hell his problem had been. Okay, so maybe she wouldn’t have liked it if he had been the one to show up to the dinner party club with a date. But she couldn’t believe that her having done so would really affect him. It wasn’t like he was in love with her. If anything, his ego was probably bruised.

  The phone rang. Audrey checked the caller ID, which flashed a local number without giving a name. Probably a cellphone, she thought, and considered not answering it. But then she wondered if it was someone who had been at the dinner party calling, looking for belongings accidentally left behind.

  “Hello,” Audrey said.

  “He’s not the guy for you,” Coop said, his voice deep and warm in her ear.

  Audrey leaned back against her kitchen counter and wrapped one arm around herself.

  “And how would you know that?” Audrey asked.

  “He has a cat. That’s all I need to know,” Coop said.

  “What is it with you and cats?”

  “I don’t trust single guys with cats. It’s not normal. Do you know what sort of guys have cats?”

  “Do tell.”

  “The kind who buy pre-distressed jeans and call themselves metrosexuals,” Coop said.

  Audrey laughed. “I thought you were going to say the kind of guy who murders his mother and buries her body under the floorboards of his house.”

  “You got that kind of a vibe off Kenny, too?”

  “No. I did not get the feeling that Kenny’s a sociopathic killer. He seems like a perfectly nice man.”

  “And what sort of a grown man goes around being called Kenny?” Coop countered.

  “He can’t help what his name is,” Audrey said.

  “He could go by Ken. But Kenny? I never get when grown men want to be called Kenny, or Bobby, or Billy. Why not just have everyone call you Pee Wee and be done with it?” Coop asked.

  “Pee Wee?” Audrey felt guilty laughing at this—Kenny had been a perfectly nice man—but couldn’t help herself. “Come on. Pee Wee is much worse than Kenny. And maybe he didn’t want people making Ken doll jokes.”

  “I don’t think he’s in any danger of being confused with a Ken doll. For one thing, Ken doesn’t have ears like that,” Coop said. Then, his voice growing softer, he said, “Do you want me to come back over and help you with the dishes?”

  “I’ve already done them,” Audrey said.

  “Even better,” Coop murmured.

  Audrey tried to ignore the physical effect these words had on her. It was what had gotten her in trouble the last time.

  “No,” Audrey said. “I don’t think that would be a good idea.”

  “That’s too bad,” Coop said. “Lamb is an aphrodisiac.”

  Audrey burst out laughing. “I think you’re thinking of oysters.”

  “I like oysters, but red meat is much sexier. It’s much more primal.”

  “I’m hanging up now,” Audrey said.

  “Take it from me—real men do not own cats.”

  “Good night.”

  “Good night. I’ll call you tomorrow.”

  “Are you asking me or telling me?” Audrey asked, annoyed at how pleased she was. Especially since he probably wouldn’t even call.

  Coop laughed. “I was telling you. You can always screen my call if you want.”

  “I just may do that,” Audrey said.

  “I guess we’ll find out tomorrow,” Coop said. Audrey could tell that he was smiling, too. “The suspense is already killing me.”

  “I’m hanging up now,” Audrey told him.

  “You got that coming over to help you with the dishes was a euphemism for having sex, right?”

  “Yes. Shockingly enough, it wasn’t that subtle.”

  “Just wanted to make sure.”

  “Good night.”

  “Talk to you tomorrow.”

  june

  GREEN SALAD WITH WHITE BALSAMIC VINAIGRETTE

  STEAMED LOBSTERS WITH MELTED BUTTER

  POTATO SALAD

  KEY LIME PIE

  A WEEK AFTER THE MAY dinner-party, Fran was still jittery with excitement. Something had passed between her and Coop. A charge. A frisson. Whenever Fran thought of it, she felt a shudder of excitement, a delicious sensation she distantly remembered from younger days, when a crush ran his hand down her back or brushed the hair away from her face.

  At first, Fran had wondered if the moment had been one-sided. But Coop had been uncharacteristically quiet for the rest of the evening, which made sense. If he was having feelings for her—the wife of his oldest friend—of course it would bother him. Just look at w
hat happened that day on the boat, all those years ago.

  The question was, what was she going to do now?

  I can’t do anything. I’m married. I would never cheat on Will, Fran kept telling herself. But then, a minute later, she’d think, But I have to find out if Coop is having the same feelings that I’m having. I have to see him. And I have to do it alone, not when Will and the girls are around. But when? And what will I say?

  These thoughts swirled around and around, refusing to dislodge themselves. Coop hovered in her consciousness while she packed lunches and vacuumed, and even while she was working with one of her physical therapy patients. He was quickly becoming an obsession, which was both exhilarating and exhausting.

  What do I do? I can’t do anything. But why can’t I? Will, that’s why. But Will and I barely even touch anymore, much less have sex. Aren’t I too young to already be a celibate, to have all of my life’s passion behind me? Fran wondered, as she chopped tomatoes for the chicken Cobb salad they were having for dinner. She always added extra avocado and blue cheese and dressed it in a tarragon vinaigrette.

  “Bye, Mom.”

  Fran looked up to see a flash of black pass by the kitchen door.

  “Iris?” she called out. “Where are you going?”

  “Over to Hannah’s,” Iris called back.

  Fran heard the front door open. “Wait! Come back here,” she said.

  “I’m going to be late!”

  “Then you’ll be late,” Fran said.

  Iris huffed, but closed the door and returned slowly, reluctantly to the kitchen. Fran looked at her daughter and recoiled.

  “What in God’s name did you do to your hair?” she asked.

  Iris rolled her eyes, which were rimmed with thick black kohl liner. Her bangs had been inexpertly cut. They were far too short—ending an inch above her eyebrows—and had been curled under, probably to disguise the uneven ends.

  “I cut it,” Iris said, on the defensive, as usual.

  “But it’s …” Fran had been about to say it’s awful, but stopped herself. It was hard enough being a teenage girl as it was, and she didn’t want Iris to feel self-conscious. Then again, she had to know it didn’t look good. “Did you cut it yourself?”