“Curiouser and curiouser,” Robert said.
ii
He hadn’t asked her advice. She supposed he’d looked in some gasoline company’s travel guide for a good restaurant in this unpopulated corner of Pennsylvania, and the Virginia Grove Inn had probably sounded pretty good. It was also on a numbered highway, and less than twenty-five miles from Eustace, so he’d be likely to be able to find it without too much trouble. From his point of view it had undoubtedly seemed like the best bet. Unfortunately, Evelyn knew from sad experience that there were a total of three bearable restaurants in this part of the world, and the Virginia Grove Inn was none of them.
More than the name was deceptive. The restaurant looked beautiful. Atop a hill up its own private road from the highway, the rambling two-story brick building had once been a private home and still implied a kind of Colonial hospitality. Night had settled fully by the time they arrived, but Evelyn knew that by day there was an impressive view down the valley toward Maryland between the Tuscarora and Blue mountains on one side and South Mountain on the other.
The first crack in the image was the interior. Whatever the true original appearance of the inside of the house, it had all been stripped away and replaced by the cheapest and gaudiest of fake Colonial. The plastic has not been made that looks like pewter, and the attempts were just painful.
“Ah!” Robert had said, on driving up the hill toward the floodlit building, but, “Hmmm,” he said now, as a stocky middle-aged woman in a Colonial mini-skirt led them to their table and left without lighting the candle.
The room was large, and about half full, none of the patrons giving the appearance of being local residents but all looking to be passing-through tourists. This section of the state was pretty much a backwater, but the Gettysburg carnival was not too far away, and some Virginia Grove Inn billboards over there drew a share of flies to this side-street pot of honey.
Robert looked around and said, “Have I made a mistake?”
He was perceptive enough to deserve an honest answer, but she tried nevertheless to soften the blow. “Well, I haven’t been here for a while.”
“How was it the last time you were here?”
“Not very good,” she admitted.
“Food? Service?”
“Both.”
“We could leave now,” he suggested.
“No, don’t. The food wasn’t that bad last time, and if we’re not in a hurry what do we care how slow the service is?
He looked around the room again, considering, and then nodded. “Done,” he said. “Next time, you pick the place.” And with a flourish, he lit the candle.
iii
When at last he kissed her, her first thought was, I hate that rotten little Frenchman! But then he too faded, like the trouble with her hairdo and the unsatisfactory parting from Dinah and the mysterious interruption at the gate and the really dreadful food and service at the Virginia Grove Inn, any one of which could have spoiled the evening if it had been an evening that could be spoiled. But it was turning out not to be an evening that could be spoiled, which was astonishing and delightful enough in itself, and when at last, in the remotest corner of the floodlit Virginia Grove blacktop parking lot, he reached for her and kissed her, not even the Jaguar’s English reluctance to countenance romance stood in the way, though the shift lever did. But she ignored that too, and as he kissed her she felt all the stored-up tension she’d been toting (for so long it had come to seem a natural part of her) draining away out her knees and fingertips, and her lips became steadily softer.
After the kiss they murmured together about nothing in particular, just words to fill the spaces until they would kiss again, and when she heard her own bemusement echoed in his voice — he too had expected nothing and had been surprised! — she laughed, from pleasure as much as amusement. He wanted to know what she was laughing at and she shook her head and said, “We’re funny.”
“Funny?”
“You almost didn’t take me out tonight.”
He hesitated, but not for very long, and then smiled and said, “I didn’t think there was any reason to.”
“I was better than nothing,” she said, laughing at them both.
“A little,” he conceded, and kissed her again. He was more aggressive about it than Fred had ever been, which startled her this time and made her hesitant in her own reaction. He noticed, and broke off to look at her and say, “What is it?”
“Nothing.” Her mind was full of Fred, in very confusing ways. She was remembering something she’d long ago put out of her mind, that her first reaction on hearing of his death had been to be angry at him, enraged, furious. And just before Christmas, too, she’d thought, as though he’d died on purpose and had deliberately chosen the most inconvenient time. Shock and grief had quickly buried that reaction and she hadn’t thought of it again until just this minute.
“You’ve gone away,” Robert said. “Your mind is drifting.”
“It was,” she admitted. “But it’s back now, I promise.” And when she saw he was still doubtful, she bracketed his face with her hands and kissed him back.
And this time, at last, it was him, it was Robert Pratt she was aware of, nothing out of the past, no irrelevancies at all. The strange specificity of him, his being different from anyone else she’d ever kissed. He seemed bulkier, broader, and at the same time harder. And his smell was different, like... like a new book. Fred had always smelled of leather and soap, had felt taut and slender and controlled, had always been at arm’s-length no matter how close they—
No more comparisons. No more past. She pressed against him, and when the kiss was over she rested her cheek on his scratchy shoulder. “My bear,” she whispered. (She knew she would feel self-conscious and silly later on for having said that, but it didn’t matter. It was the way she felt now.)
“My bird,” he answered. His voice was gruff, as though he should have cleared his throat first.
“Bird?” She sat back, delighted, to look at him and see if he’d really meant it. She thought of herself as a plainer, dowdier, more earthbound creature. A bird? Really?
“A beautiful bird,” he said, and no matter how hard she looked she could see no guile in his eyes. He reached out and laid his palm against her cheek and ear, his fingers curving against the side of her head, and all at once she did feel birdlike, delicate and fragile and precious, held in his large hand.
He said, “What are you crying for?”
“I’m not crying,” she said, though she knew full well she was. “It’s just a shower with the sun shining,” she said, and turned her face to kiss his palm.
iv
All was quiet at the gate. The old man was off-duty now, and a younger man shone his flashlight in Robert’s eyes, then saw Evelyn and shifted the light away with a quick apology. He walked briskly away to open the gate.
Evelyn found herself growing nervous all over again. She was tempted to ask the guard what had finally happened this evening, but in the first place he more than likely wouldn’t know and in the second place the person with the answers would be Bradford.