She went into town often enough that people began to be friendly (beyond the general sense) to her, speak to her by name, know what she liked to order in the cafés. She would fast beforehand as always, so as not to worry about that. And so they were relatively normal outings. Driving her yellow coupe in her high fog was a kind of dreamy delight. She drove slowly, the world going by like a slow-motion moving picture in color.
Mercury had become populous enough that she was not thought strange for appearing only now and then. Even the somewhat scary-looking woman who ran the ticket booth at the movie theater, pale and skinny with garish makeup, knew her and made small talk. The woman had the voice of a crow. The Phipps couple who owned and ran the Triangle Restaurant were so nice to her — they had known her father — she often had to argue before they would let her pay for a meal. She threatened to stop coming if they didn’t stop doing that, and they laughed and complied.
She never ate or drank much, in case she wanted to linger in town a little longer, later.
It was inevitable that men would start to notice her. She wasn’t the greatest beauty, not as pretty as she’d been as a girl, but she wasn’t plain and certainly not ugly, so she noticed a fair number of men taking notice of her. And they would make eye contact, smile, nod, tip a hat, say, “Morning,” or “Afternoon.” She learned to give the faintest smile and nod in return, so as not to encourage anyone if she could help it.
But one man started to stand out, and she thought he might be running into her — or passing by, she supposed — on purpose. Then he seemed to show up wherever she had her lunch. Whether the Triangle, or Schoenhof’s, Pointer’s Grill, the diner in Woolworth’s, he seemed to show up soon after she’d taken a seat — generally she sat at the counter, being alone — and sat a few stools from her, and if she glanced over he would catch her eye, smile, and nod. He was a slim gentleman, somewhat older than her but hard to say how much, as he had a young face even though his short-clipped hair was beginning to show some gray. He wore eyeglasses, the small and round wire-rimmed kind. Clean-shaven. Nice suit. His hands, she noticed once, were slim and looked strong without bulk. Hands used to handling things but not workingman’s hands.
Finally one day as she left the grill he came out behind her and said, “Excuse me, Miss Chisolm?”
She startled. How did he know her name? Which she asked him.
“I beg your pardon,” he said. “I asked Mrs. Phipps.” He held out his hand. “My name is Gordon Ray, I work at Citizens Bank. I knew your father, and was sorry to hear of his passing.”
“Thank you,” Jane said. “Did you do business with my father?”
“Not much. I was just a teller back then. Before everything got so hard. We’re lucky to still be in business, I guess.”
“Yes. Well, my father wasn’t so keen on banks there toward the end, I guess.”
“No one was, Miss Chisolm.”
They stood there awkwardly for a moment. She emboldened herself and took a good, frank look at him then. He was handsome in a clean, precise, and conservative way. His eyes seemed intelligent and even kind. But she was wary of what seemed his persistent interest in her. She sensed he was a man who would be kind to a woman. But the question was always there: What did he, or would he, expect in the long run?
“Well, it was good to meet you, Mr. Ray.”
“Gordon, please.”
“Well, you can call me Jane, then. I have noticed you around.”
“Yes.” He laughed, a bit awkward. “Not a whole lot of options in the lunch department downtown, I guess. And I’m not married so I usually eat out at noon.”
“Yes.”
“And you? Do you live in town?”
“No, I live on my family’s farm, but the sharecroppers are doing all the farming these days, so I’m free to come in every now and then.”
“Would you ever like to stay for dinner? I would be honored to treat.”
She hesitated. But then her family’s tendency to be direct won out.
“Mr. Ray, I must tell you that I have never been on a date with a man in my life, dinner date or whatever kind of date.”
He kind of laughed.
“Better late than never.” Then added, “Truth is, I haven’t had a whole lot of dates myself.”
Jane looked at him. Yes, he was the friendly, awkward type.
“Living up in the country as I do, I have to be home early,” she said. “Or in any case I don’t like to arrive near or after dark.”
“I eat early,” Gordon Ray said.
All right. She pushed the family bluntness further.
“Mr. Ray, have you not heard anything about me? There must be lots of single young women in this town you could ask out to dinner.”
“Not as many as you might think, Miss Chisolm,” he said, with a kind of wan smile. “Especially if, like me, you don’t put on the he-man act. I come from Tennessee, and believe me I’m all man, but I’m not the kind to go strutting around like some circus wrestler, if you know what I mean. I’m a quiet type. Sometimes Southern women, if you’ll forgive me, don’t quite know what to make of men like me. Sometimes they get the wrong idea. But I assure you I like women very much.”
She stared at him for a second, then laughed, and he joined in.
“Well, I got your dander up, didn’t I?” she said. “But you didn’t answer my question.”
“I’m sorry.”
“I said have you not heard anything about me, and since you are sensitive to people making assumptions about you, surely you won’t mind the direct question.”
“I’ll answer you, if you’ll let me do it over dinner at Schoenhof’s.”
“Are you sure you’re not a lawyer instead of a banker?” Jane said. But then, for some reason she did not entirely explore in the moment — as close as she would come to a whim — she didn’t exactly decline, said she would try to make it but that she had to be home by seven and had a busy afternoon scheduled already. “I hope you won’t be offended if I’m not able to come,” she said.
“I do hope you can, though. I’ll hope to see you there,” he said, with a big smile. He shook her hand, touched the brim of his hat, and strode off the one block to his bank with a good bounce in his stride.
Well, she thought, he’s an optimistic fellow, if nothing else.
She felt like she’d just participated in something like an emotional boxing match, and it felt good, like good exertion. But it had also made her anxious. She was glad of her earlier fasting that day, more than ever.
She occupied herself that afternoon at the new Carnegie library, browsing books and magazines. At around four-thirty she looked up, went outside, and was surprised to realize that the anxiety she’d felt earlier had disappeared. She felt an odd calm in her blood. She felt hungry now and a bit faint, but not dangerously so. She walked slowly back into the center of town. Thinking, if in a cloudy way. She went down to Front Street and into the pharmacy on the corner across and one block down from Schoenhof’s. Where she could see out the window from the magazine rack and have little risk of being seen back. In a while, she saw him walk up and stand near the restaurant’s door, looking up and down the street. Hands in the pockets of his nice suit. He didn’t pull out a cigarette to smoke. Didn’t seem like a man of vices, anyway.
She mulled the question, Just what would come of this? Surely it could be simple friendship. That was possible between a man and a woman, wasn’t it? Yet he had said he was “all man,” and just what did that imply? Well, she knew perfectly well what it implied. Especially given the way he had shadowed her, the way he introduced himself to her, the way he had been so politely insistent upon this “date.” And, possibly, he was a man with something to prove.