Madly

by Ruthie Knox

  Jean obliged. Allie pushed her sunglasses onto the top of her head. The city rolled out in front of them, color everywhere she looked, lush green leaves overhead, orange traffic cones, the fuchsia head scarf of a pedestrian holding her daughter’s hand, and she felt light and elated to be heading to see Winston, floating on an endorphin cloud from having made up with her sister and worked out a plan.

  “Dan Einarsson is worried about your father.”

  “Yeah, he’s in pretty deep, I guess, and Dan’s tried to send him some staff of helpers, but my dad isn’t having it. So Dan’s idea—since me and May want to get my dad to New York, because we have to, right? We need to swarm, like Ben said, which means the whole family has to be here together, and we have to try to get my mom to see us and talk to us before this thing goes down on Saturday. So Dan thinks it would be good for my dad to ease up on the Syria thing, anyway, and his idea is to give my dad his private plane to fly out, and in the meantime Dan will send, like, three people to finish up getting all these donations ready to ship from Manitowoc.”

  “Dan Einarsson is going to loan you his private plane.”

  “You can just call him ‘Dan.’ ”

  Jean gave her a stern look. “No.”

  “Suit yourself, friend. Oh, is that Central Park?”

  “Yes.”

  “It’s huge.” It looked different than she’d expected—much larger, and wilder.

  “It’s very big, yes.”

  “That’s so cool.” New York seemed kind of great, actually. There was something hidden around every corner, surprises stacked one on top of the other, so much to do and see.

  “And your dad is willing to do this?” Jean asked.

  “That’s where Ben comes in. May stayed behind so she can get Ben on a plane to Wisconsin, and he’s going to talk our dad into coming.”

  “This is the Ben who’s always at his restaurant?”

  “Yep, and I guess he’s never left it in anyone else’s hands even one day since he opened it, despite having a sous chef he’s trained for this express purpose. May wasn’t even sure she’d be able to get him to go to our parents’ anniversary party after they bought the plane tickets, and now he’s going to have to leave even earlier, which she says he isn’t going to like, but it’s not like either of us can go. We’ve got too much to do here.”

  Jean pulled the car up to the curb beside a brownstone. Three steps up from the street, a uniformed doorman stood beside a red door decorated with a discreet brass plaque that read THE IMPERIAL CLUB.

  “This is a restaurant?” she asked.

  “This is the Imperial Club.”

  “Is it like a restaurant, or…?” Jean had brought her a change of clothes from Winston’s apartment, but she’d assumed they’d be eating somewhere laid-back. Not at a place with a doorman that looked like the Swiss Embassy.

  “I’ve never been inside, but I hear it’s like nowhere else in New York.” Jean got out and came around to open her door. “Enjoy your lunch, madam.”

  Allie gathered up her purse and clambered out. She lowered her sunglasses for protection. “Thanks for the ride.”

  “My pleasure. I’ll be texting you about that football.”

  “You do that.”

  She watched him flip on the stereo and pull away from the curb into the flow of traffic, waiting until the Town Car had disappeared from view before she turned to confront the hurdle of the doorman and whatever lay beyond.

  —

  Allie closed her menu and offered it to the waiter, a dour man who looked like every character John Cleese had ever played. “I’ll have the blood pudding.”

  “Excellent.”

  “And can we have the cheese course?” she asked Winston. “And the drinks you have after you finish eating, the espresso and the booze, too? I want to do it up right. I don’t get to eat at places like this. Ever.”

  “Of course.”

  He instructed the Cleese-bot waiter on various intricacies of the meal, and Allie settled back in her red plush throne-chair to examine the decor in more detail. Winston hadn’t been kidding—the Imperial Club was England in New York, in precisely the same way that Pulvermacher’s was Wisconsin in New York. Sadly, Wisconsin suffered by comparison. Where Pulvermacher’s had Milwaukee’s best on tap, cheese-head lights, and a lot of green and gold, the Imperial Club was all burnished wainscoting, tasteful drapes, and a wine list so extensive it made Allie’s wrists hurt.

  Even if she hadn’t been wearing a black World War II naval uniform complete with jaunty Donald Duck hat, she would never fit in a place like this.

  Winston, on the other hand, looked right at home: just as handsome and expensive as the decor, but when she studied him now, she didn’t notice the polish as much as she noticed the smile lines at the corners of his eyes and bracketing his mouth, how deft and competent his hands were, and how comfortably he inhabited his own life.

  He’d uprooted himself to be with his daughter. He’d made significant mistakes and watched his life buckle and break apart because of them. In New York, he was drifting and uncertain, but he was also good and kind and human, and she liked him.

  She liked him a lot.

  “How old are you?” she asked.

  “Why, how old are you?”

  “May thought it was insane I hadn’t asked you. She told me to guess, and I guessed you were somewhere between thirty-five and fifty.”

  “Fifty, really?”

  “Some men age really well, and plus you use all that fancy European spa stuff. You could be a lot older than you look. May pointed out you probably weren’t thirty-five, since your daughter is, what, nineteen?”

  “Nearly.” He frowned. “Dear God, when did she get so old?”

  “And you’re not really teen dad material, so we guessed forty at the young end.”

  The server returned with a bottle of wine in a silver sleeve that served no purpose Allie could discern. He and Winston performed a ritual involving bottle presentation, intense study of the label, uncorking, and making a very serious face after swallowing a minute quantity. The wine was approved, poured, and the server sent away.

  “I’ll be forty in December.”

  Allie sipped her wine. It tasted like dark forest fruit and truffle-hunting pigs, but in a good way. “Nice.”

  “I’m not sure.”

  “Are you one of those people who freaks out about getting older?”

  “It’s not that. It’s more…I think perhaps if I’m freaking out, it’s because I got old too young. Now that I am, in fact, old, I don’t feel as though I’d like to stick here. But I’m not sure what the options are.” He swirled the wine around in his glass, watching her over the rim. “Obviously, there are no options, speaking realistically. One simply gets older. Is the wine all right?”

  “It’s great. You know you’re just whatever age you are, right? It doesn’t mean anything except that it’s taken you this many years to be the you who you are right now. Which is the correct you, and someone who I really like. I’m sure you’ll only get better.”

  “That’s a nice perspective. Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  “There’s also the perspective that I’m considerably closer to death than you are.”

  “See, you think so, but you don’t know. Any of us could die at any time.”

  “You still haven’t told me your age.”

  “What’s your best guess?”

  His forehead furrowed. “I’m afraid to guess.”

  “How come?”

  “If I guess too old, you’ll be insulted. If I guess too young, I’ll start to feel as though I’m robbing the cradle.”

  “I’ve always thought cradle-robbing was a gross idea. I mean, either a woman is old enough that she’s a woman, or she’s not. She doesn’t become a baby just because the guy she’s with is super old. It gets all pervy in my head when I think about it.” She tipped her glass at him. “I’m twenty-six. Make of that what you will.”r />
  His eyes widened a fraction before he took them away to examine the wine in his glass. “I believe there’s a piece of cork in here.”

  “That’s outrageous. You should tell the waiter.”

  He glanced up to see if she meant it. She didn’t. She’d only been trying to get him to look at her.

  “I couldn’t do that. If I told him, he’d be terribly embarrassed, and then I’d be embarrassed, and there’d be no way to put it right, and that’s our meal ruined.”

  “I don’t know how you people ever managed to build an empire.”

  He smiled. “I’ll admit, I’ve had the same thought.”

  The waiter brought them a platter with crackers and breads of various sorts, cheese, and pickles.

  “This is like a ploughman’s platter, right?”

  “Like. Everything here is like it might be in England, but nothing here is as it would be actually. This is a sort of ploughman’s lunch, served as an appetizer course alongside wine you’d never find in an English pub, on a menu that includes everything from aged game to fish and chips to blood pudding, which comes from Scotland. It’s rather a mess.”

  “That makes me like it so much more. And I already liked it a lot.”

  “Glad to hear it.”

  “Why do you eat here if it’s a mess?”

  “It was Beatrice’s idea the first time. She loves it. And it sounds like home, and looks a bit like my parents’ dining room at Leyton, if you squint.”

  “Leyton? That’s the town?”

  “That’s the name of the house.”

  “I’ve never known anyone whose house had a name. It’s very Downton Abbey.”

  “I haven’t seen it. It’s in my queue, though.”

  “Mmm. So, I’m still waiting to hear you say something about twenty-six…? Don’t think I didn’t notice that whole duck-and-roll you did there.”

  He put his index finger into the glass, removed a speck of cork, and wiped his finger on his napkin. Somehow, he made this seem as though it was the only thing to do, and perfectly correct in every way. “Twenty-six is your age, and so twenty-six must be the correct age for you.”

  “Very deft, Chamberlain.”

  He raised his glass and touched it to hers. “Cheers. Now, tell me about May.”

  They snacked on the cheese and crackers as Allie caught him up on all the developments of her morning and he told her about work and Bea’s touristing around the city with Nev and Cath. Their salads arrived and were dispatched as they talked about some of the things Allie would need to decide if she was going to finance Ben’s restaurant, which Winston seemed to find an intriguing possibility.

  He was in every way pleasant and interesting company. Which shouldn’t have been a completely unfamiliar experience to Allie. But it was.

  The main courses arrived.

  Allie poked her blood pudding gently with her fork. “It looks like ordinary sausage, but turned evil. The evil older brother of sausage.”

  “What were you anticipating?”

  “I sort of hoped I would cut into it and the blood would ooze all over my plate. Like molten chocolate cake, but more disgusting.”

  “That’s vivid.” Winston had ordered filet of sole. It was a very correct piece of fish, with a wedge of lemon, a sprinkling of salt and pepper, and three precise sprigs of parsley.

  “I’m lying. Sometimes I lie just to be colorful. May claims it’s a bad habit, but I’m not convinced. I mostly just wanted to see what blood pudding was like.” She cut off a bite and tried it. “Not bad. I might not choose it over a McDonald’s sausage-egg-and-cheese biscuit, but it’s edible.”

  “High praise for the kitchen.”

  Allie grinned and forked herself another bite.

  “Did I mention you look lovely today?”

  She glanced down at her sailor suit, then back at his face. What she found there made her go warm all over—a sudden rush of embarrassed pleasure that hardened her nipples. “You mean it.”

  “Of course.”

  “You mean I look lovely, and not that I’d look more lovely if I was wearing something normal, or that I look lovely but I’m kind of making you uncomfortable, or that I look stupid and you’re teasing me.”

  “Why would I mean any of those things?”

  She shrugged. “That’s what people mostly mean when they talk about what I wear. What men mean. Almost always.”

  As a kid, Allie hadn’t truly understood the things people felt free to tell her about her clothing choices, or that they were telling her because they were trying to “help her make better choices.” Then she’d understood but defiantly decided not to care.

  But with Matt, and ever since, she’d been forced to accept that she did care. That every time she went out in public in clothes that made her happy, she was also inviting the possibility of being hurt—sometimes by someone she loved, or liked, and usually when she least expected it.

  Toward the end of her relationship with Matt, she’d just given up. There was only so much hurt she could bear.

  Winston shook his head. “The way you dress is interesting, and I like it, but that’s beside the point. It’s not for me. If I tell you that you’re beautiful, it’s because you are, with no illusion that you ought to be beautiful for me, or that you are beautiful for me, and certainly not with the idea I ought to have a say in it.”

  Allie rose and leaned across the table to plant a kiss on his cheek. “I really like you, Winston Chamberlain.”

  Winston caught the back of her neck and held her still to kiss her. “I really like you, too, Allie Fredericks. You know…” He paused a beat too long.

  “What?”

  “I was just thinking of what a very beautiful spy once told me. That you never know when someone you meet at a bar might turn out to be the most interesting thing to happen to you in all your life.”

  Poised over the table with his hand at her nape, her butt in the air, Allie felt her heart skip a beat.

  Because it was perfect—the perfect line, delivered at the perfect moment, by a man who was just so…

  He scared the ever-loving crap out of her.

  “Dang.” The word came out breathless and hoarse. “You have all the right moves, mailman.”

  Winston did the eyebrow thing, but it twanged something horrible in her chest and she couldn’t figure out what to say or do to keep from ruining the moment, so she drank all of the rest of her wine and ate a piece of cheese without looking at him.

  He picked up his knife and touched it to the china plate with a plink. Then set it down again.

  “It’s frightening,” he said. “I find. It’s frightening to realize I care for you, when—”

  “Maybe we shouldn’t do this.”

  “What is it that we shouldn’t do?”

  She gestured back and forth between them. “This, this thing, with us, we’re just going to hurt each other unless we keep it…I don’t know.”

  “Light?”

  She nodded, which made the heart-twanging thing much worse.

  “Allie, if we’d wanted to keep it light, we missed our chance our first evening together.”

  She knew that already. Even at Pulvermacher’s she’d been spilling her secrets to this man, one after another, and the thing that scared her the most now was that there wasn’t any bottom to it. He knew it all, and anything he didn’t know he had a right to know, because that was the groundwork they’d laid.

  With Winston, she could have the kind of relationship she’d never had with anyone. One based on respect, honesty, boundaries, bravery, communication.

  He would expect that from her, and she couldn’t imagine herself ever being able to measure up to it. She was barely handling this family stuff. She had a birth father she’d never met or spoken to, who she couldn’t imagine wanting to meet and speak to without a decade of therapy. She had a mother she would have to figure out a way to reconcile with, or lose her. She had Matt back in Manitowoc, like a giant scab waiting to get pe
eled off.

  The whole reason you were supposed to be your true self with the mailman was that you didn’t have to be authentic all the time—just for a few seconds, a minute or two, out of your whole day.

  You didn’t have to deal with the mailman and his feelings about you when you were with your family, duking your way through all the hardest stuff.

  “I realize this wasn’t what you intended,” he said quietly. “It’s not what I intended, either, and it would be difficult to pursue a relationship, but it’s not impossible. You must agree it’s not impossible.”

  “I’m only here for a few days. For my mom.”

  “Your sister is here. You were just talking about investing in a business here. And we have enough resources, financial resources, personal resources, for travel. We could try.”

  She hated that she was arguing with him, making him lay it out for her so she could turn it down. It wasn’t fair, and it wasn’t how she felt. “I think—yeah, okay? Yeah. I like New York. It’s interesting, and I’m going to want to see May more, see her here, get my hands dirty at this restaurant if she’ll let me. Maybe my mom will end up here, although I hate to think it’s going to come out that way, and you’re here, and that’s very attractive. You’re—” She lifted both hands to gesture at him, sitting across from her, all hotness and kindness and great. “It’s not like I haven’t imagined you coming to see me in Manitowoc, either, because I have. But…”

  There were too many things to say after that but, and it made her ache the way he looked at her with his whole self in his face, as vulnerable as she felt, which wasn’t really fair because she was starting to fall for him, or she had fallen for him, maybe, already, a not-quite-forty-year-old dad from thousands of miles away who didn’t belong in this country any more than she belonged in the Imperial Club.

  It ached because it was exciting, and because it scared her to be excited when she wasn’t ready yet.

  She just didn’t want to do this. She didn’t want to feel anything else today, nothing really big, not during her nice lunch, not with Winston.