“Look, Daniel! I have a baby-sitter!”Ruby cries out, with incongruous elation.
The sitter is a high school girl named Mercy.Daniel figures Ruby’s joy must mean she has extracted a promise from Mercy to let her watch TV.He chats with the two girls for a minute, and then goes upstairs to find out where he is going tonight, since as far as he knew there was no plan in place.
He finds Kate in their bedroom, a dark-green room with odd angles, wide plank floors, a Persian rug.She is putting on lipstick and keeping an eye on the portableTV, which has become indispensable to her.The sound is offand she continually checks the set—sometimes in the mir-ror, sometimes turning around to face it—in order to see ifthere’s any-thing on the news about O.J.Simpson, who for the past several months has been on trial for the murder ofhis ex-wife.
“Any news?”asks Daniel, just to be polite.
”Nothing, same old, same old.”
“What ifhe’s innocent, Kate?”
“Yeah, right.”
“You got a sitter for Ruby?”
“You said you wished we went out more.So.Presto!We’re going out.”
“Great.Where we going?”
“Iris Davenport called this afternoon.”She glances at Daniel to see his reaction in the mirror.Nothing.She’s impressed.He’s standing up well to this.“She was trying to arrange something or other for the children.I’m sort ofsurprised she didn’t arrange it with you, that seems to be the way these things get done around here.But, anyhow, she mentioned that she and her husband were going to a concert tonight and the next thing I knew I had volunteered us to go along with them.”She turns toward Daniel, puts her hand against her throat.“Is that all right?And dinner after?”
“I thought you don’t like eating with strangers,”Daniel says, struggling to keep it casual.“I thought you don’t like watching them put food in their mouths.”
Kate’s attention is momentarily seized by something on theTV screen, but it’s another black athlete, walking over a pulsating green landscape oflittle hills with a golfclub over his shoulder.TigerWoods.
How can there be no O.J.news today? Like millions ofothers, Kate has become obsessed with the case—with not only the defendant but the lawyers, the judge, the DNA experts.Stalled on her novel, unable to touch it, often unable even to think about it, she has become facile as a journalist and lately she’s been writing about the case, and since the jury is sequestered and she is not being paid for her objectivity, she has been having no trouble in clamoring for Simpson’s conviction.
“I thought you’d be happy I made these plans,”Kate says.“You mention her constantly.I figured it was time we got to know them, another couple, like actual grown-ups.”
“I mention her constantly?”
“I don’t know, probably not.I’m not trying to give you a hard time.
I’m trying to make you happy.”With rich, shining brown hair, smooth skin, and the scent ofperfume on her, she glides to Daniel’s side.She would like to put her arms around him, but it might seem she was forc-ing the issue.
“You dolikethem, don’t you?”she asks.A surviving bit ofher old southern accent stretches the“i”in“like.”
“I don’t really know him.”
“Do you like her?”
“Iris?”
She gives him a look.Ofcourse Iris, who else are they talking about?
”Yes,”he says.“Sure.Why not? She’s Ruby’s best friend’s mother.
That’s got to be worth something.And she’s nice.She’s funny.”
“Tell me something funny she’s said.It’ll whet my appetite for an evening ofunbridled hilarity.”
“Okay.”He takes a deep breath.“Last spring—”
“Last spring?You have to gothatfar back in time?”
“Actually, it was the summer.She got a mosquito bite, and I guess she was scratching it and scratching it.”His eyes shift away from Kate’s;he realizes he is talking himself into a hole.“And she turned the bite into a sore, you know how that happens.And so she took a pen and wrote‘ouch ouch ouch ouch’in a circle all around the bite.”
“That’s it? She wrote ouch on her arm?”
“You know what, Kate? I think we should call them and say we can’t make it.”
She wouldn’t mind doing just that, but she’s already set her course.
“Nonsense,”she says.She holds her pearls out to him and he comes be-hind her to fasten them.In her scoop-necked dress, Kate’s collarbones look as sturdy as handlebars.
“You look nice,”Daniel says.He seems to mean it.He even touches her hair.“You look beautiful.”
She cannot fully believe that Daniel has embarked on some flirtation.
It contradicts not only her trust in him but her sense ofhim.She met him when she was sick to death ofeccentric, neurotic men.She had a year-old baby and a busted-up marriage, a successful novel and a contract for a sec-ond, and all she wanted from a man was clarity, kindness, and dependabil-ity.She distrusted despair, had an aversion to any kind ofdomestic drama.
Daniel back then had been a lawyer in the firm that represented Kate’s publishing house and he, too, was recently out ofa shabby affair, this one with a woman who turned out to have a hair-trigger temper and a pen-chant for violence.Kate and Daniel used to joke with each other about be-ing the last normal people on earth, and the joke turned into a kind of emotional contract;they were promising each other affection with tran-quility, a life ofmeasured gestures, respect for boundaries.It would be a levelheaded alliance;they would be Swiss bankers ofthe heart.
“I can’t believe you did this, put this…this evening together,”he issaying.
She watches his face, carefully.Despite her beliefthat he would never actually have an affair, he seems to be a man who wants to take a jour-ney.He hasn’t booked passage, he doesn’t have a ticket, he doesn’t have the guts.Kate is certain that he has not betrayed her.It hasn’t gone that far, not yet.It’s still an affair ofthe mind.He thinks a love affair will res-cue him.From what?Yet in a way, that no-idea-what’s-wrong sort oflife might be exactly what he wants to be rescued from.Kate feels curious but removed.She has decided to let it play out.
She would like to take a closer look at Iris.Lately, he has been mentioning her, telling stories that have no point except to give him an oc-casion to say“Iris.”Kate, thus far, fails to see the appeal.Iris is ten pounds too thin, fidgety, psychologically evasive but physically a littletoopres-ent, with a cat-on-a-hot-tin-roofquality to her, a woman used to being sought after, loved, but not really satisfied, used to adulation, a daddy’s girl, perhaps.
Ofcourse, her blackness is a part ofwhat draws Daniel to her, Kate is certain ofthis.All those blues records, all that soul music, and even gospel music, the man listens to Sam Cooke singing about Jesus and gets tears in his eyes, though he himself has no more beliefin Christ than he has in the Easter bunny.He must have been preparing himself for this all along.Getting the soundtrack down for his big movie spectacular.The story ofhis life taking shape, the story ofhimself as a great romantic hero, crossing the color line.How passé! How pathetic!As ifgetting involved with anAfrican-American could be the solution to his problems.As ifit would give him something to believe in.The poor little unloved son sud-denly draping himself in three hundred years ofanother people’s history, the invisible man taking shape beneath the swaddling ofblack bandages.
“Do I have time for a shower?”Daniel asks.
The night is chilly.A stiffwesterly wind blows through the trees and black clouds are snapping at the moon.A steady procession ofconcert-goers march into St.John’s, where tonight the Leyden Musical Society is performing theMessiah.To Kate, even after three years in Leyden, it’s a procession ofstrangers, but Daniel knows most ofthe crowd by name.