She also went with Iris to the Pier 1 on Walnut Grove and used some of the senator’s gift certificate on flatware, dishes, place mats, tablecloths, linens, bath towels, and soaps. And she spent the mornings helping Iris with exercises for her injured knee. The two women avoided the subject of the news, though both of them were paying attention to it.
Work on the house was so involving that Faulk would periodically lose track of the noise on the TV. He was displeasingly reminded each day when he emerged from the house, and there would be a plane coming over toward the airport, nine miles to the south. But he saw that Natasha seemed better. In the nights, in the apartment, they held each other. She was having her period — the beginning of it had come with a feeling of inexpressible relief — and it was a heavy one, causing the usual headaches and cramping, but the headaches were more severe. He read Aquinas into the nights, and she would lie trying to sleep, hearing the little shuffle of the tissue-thin pages turning. It was the thinness of the sound that told her what the book was. “Honey,” she said, “what are you looking for in Aquinas?”
He said, “Remember, I talked about rereading it.”
“You don’t find it a little dry?”
“Have you been reading it?”
She had only looked at the first page of it. “I’ve browsed through it some.”
“Why would I be looking for anything?”
“I don’t know. Come be with me.”
“In a little while. Go on to sleep.”
He brought her coffee in the mornings and gave her time alone to rest. She lay with her head burning, having drunk the coffee, and listened to him moving in the other room, preparing a breakfast for them. It was always something new: French toast stuffed with blueberries; a one-egg omelet thin as a soufflé, with cheese and spinach in it, on two toasted English muffins topped by Canadian bacon, with hollandaise sauce poured over the whole thing; or an egg cooked on a slice of provolone cheese and sprinkled with lemon juice. It was always arranged so elegantly on the plates, and he would bring it all in on a tray, with fruit and glasses of orange juice and, twice, a little half bottle of champagne, to make mimosas.
“You’re spoiling me,” Natasha said to him.
“It makes me happy,” he told her. And it did. He spent some of his reading time looking up the recipes each evening after she was asleep, and when he went out to get things for the house he stopped and bought what he would need for the next morning’s feast.
The following Wednesday, he went to the new job at Social Services. Lawrence Watson showed him around the place and introduced him to the other man who worked in that office — a young man on whose desk were two heavy books, like account books, and a lot of typing paper. “This is Pete,” Watson said. “Pete’s condensing the state regulations to a manageable size for field workers. Been on it since the beginning of the summer.”
“Pleased to meet you,” Pete said.
“Hello, Pete.”
Pete had little round dark eyes and a very long nose, a pleasant gentle smile. They shook hands, and then Pete stood by while Watson demonstrated the use of the computer files, data banks concerning jobs in the area and within a twenty-five-mile radius of the city. Parolees were not allowed to travel farther.
“That’s basically it,” Watson said. “Your clients will come through here.” He pointed to another doorway. “There’ll be a steady stream of them on some days, not so many on others. They all have their referrals, from the various officers. They line up out there to sign in, and then they’ll be funneled this way to see you, or Pete if there’s a long wait. Any questions?”
“None that I can think of,” Faulk said.
“Okay.” Watson left them alone.
For a few seconds they just stood as if waiting for him to come back. Then Faulk went around and sat at his new desk. Pete stayed where he was, watching him.
“Like some coffee?”
Having had a mimosa that morning with Natasha, Faulk said, “Sure. Black. And strong.”
“That’s the way I like it, too.”
When the younger man returned, he pulled his chair around to sit at Faulk’s desk. They sipped their coffee. “I’m in your church,” he said suddenly. “I mean I’ve seen you preach.”
“Oh,” Faulk said, dismayed and trying not to show it. “I hope you weren’t disappointed.”
“I liked what you had to say.”
“Well, the gospels, you know.”
“So, you’re not a priest anymore. Is it because of the attacks?”
“It predates all that.” Something about this earnest young man made him feel stiff, almost pompous.
“I would bet it got a lot of religious people thinking.”
“It probably got everybody thinking, wouldn’t you say?”
“The Taliban kind of tears it for me.”
Faulk left a pause.
“I mean if people can really believe they’re going straight to heaven if they kill themselves along with a lot of other people, and that for this the reward in heaven is a bunch of virgins, I mean Jesus, that kind of — that kind of carnal idea of reward — well, I don’t know … that’s a pretty venal thing for us run-of-the-mill believers to deal with.”
“Run-of-the-mill believers,” Faulk repeated.
“But — the martyrs, then. You — you see what I’m getting at?”
Faulk nodded at him.
The other stared, head tilted slightly. “Anyway — your sermons were very eloquent. You could be a writer.”
He was faintly chagrined by the pleasure he took in the remark. “I’m sure whatever you heard came from some other source.”
“Yeah, but the thing itself.” The younger man smiled. “You have a nice way with words.”
Faulk smiled back. “You’re very kind.”
“Well. Thank you.” The other seemed abruptly embarrassed and moved his chair back across the space to his own desk, with its tomes and the strewn paper.
“Is that what you want to do,” Faulk asked him. “Write?”
The younger man seemed baffled. “No.”
It was a long morning. One man after another with a bad history, each of them hoping for work. Yet they seemed cheerful, determined, even brave. He saw very little discouragement; and everyone wanted to talk about the attacks — where they were when it happened and how they learned of it.
Regarding jobs, most of the time there was nothing at all available anywhere. Each man appeared more unemployable than the last, as if the computer were cutting away possibilities by the minute. He could have sworn he saw openings for one thing while looking for another, and yet when he tried to return to the listing, it wasn’t there. At lunchtime, he drove over to the house to find Natasha in the second bedroom, painting, wearing one of his old shirts over a pair of faded denims. He had never seen anyone so beautiful.
She was working on the faded color photograph of the sad-eyed lady as he had called her. She had spent most of the morning painting, after helping Iris exercise her sore knee. Seeing him coming up the walk startled her in a troubling way, as if it would be an unwanted intrusion, but she suppressed the feeling as best she could and waited for him to come to her. He kept his arms around her for some time, she with the wet paintbrush in one hand and patting his shoulder with the other.