Sang returned from London with presents for the house, KitKats in red wrappers, tea from Harrods, marmalade, chocolate-coated biscuits. A snapshot of her nephew went up on the refrigerator, his small smiling face pressed against Sang's. Paul, from his room, saw that it was Farouk who dropped her off at the house. Eventually, Paul had gone downstairs, down the magnificent staircase, which he was now unable to descend without a fleeting image of Farouk naked on top of a woman who was not Sang. In the kitchen he opened his cupboard and pulled down the Dewar's.
"Wow. Things have really changed around here," Sang said, smiling, her eyebrows raised in amusement, watching him pour the drink.
"What do you mean?"
"You're drinking Scotch. If I'd known, I would have bought you some single malt in duty-free, instead of the KitKats."
The thought of her buying him a gift depressed him. They were friendly, but they were not friends. He offered her a glass of the Scotch, which she accepted. They sat together at the table. She clinked her glass against his.
She began sorting through the mail Paul had collected for her. Her hair was a few inches shorter; she smelled intensely of a spicy perfume.
"I don't know any Deirdres," she said, reading her messages on the legal pad. "Did she say why she was calling?"
He'd drained his glass and was already pacified by the drink. He shook his head.
"I wonder what I should do."
"About what?"
"Well, should I call her back?"
He stood up and opened the freezer to get ice cubes for a second drink. When he returned to the table, she was crossing out the name with a pencil. "Forget it. She's probably a tele-marketer or something."
Avoiding Sang was easy. The university library, which Paul normally found so charmless, with its cement floors and gray metal shelves and carrels full of anonymous ballpoint philosophy, was where he began to spend his days. At home, he discovered that it was just as easy to take a sandwich up to his room. Winter gave way to a wet, reluctant spring, full of wind and slanted rains that lashed the window by Paul's bed. Whenever the phone rang, he didn't answer. In the first few days after Sang's return, he was convinced, each time, that it would be Deirdre, demanding to talk to Sang. But Deirdre never called. He waited for her voice, the things she had told him, to fade from his memory. But the conversations had lodged themselves stubbornly in his mind, alongside all the plays and poems and essays. He saw two people swimming in Walden Pond, their heads above the surface of the water. But then there was Sang, day after day, disappearing to eat dinner at Farouk's. There she was, sitting at the kitchen table, booking Farouk's tickets to Cairo for the summer, his credit card number written on a sheet of paper. After two months, Deirdre still hadn't called, and Paul finally stopped fearing that she would.
Paul took the week of his spring break off from studying. "Stop cramming. That's probably what happened the first time. Go to the Caribbean," his adviser suggested. Instead, Paul stayed at home, but declared himself officially on vacation. He went to movies at the Brattle, spent two days making a cas-soulet. He drove to Wellfleet one day, forcing himself not to take a book. He decided to ride out to Concord on his bike, to see Emerson's house; on Saturday morning, he discovered that the chain needed to be fixed, and he brought the bike up to the deck. When he looked up, Sang was standing there, the phone in her hands, the cord stretched as far as it could go. "Something weird just happened, "she said.
"What?"
"It was that Deirdre woman. The one you took the message from when I was away."
Paul bent down, pretending to root around for something in his toolbox. "She was asking for Farouk," Sang continued. "She says she's a friend of his, visiting from out of town."
"Oh. So that must have been why she was calling," he said, relieved to hear that this was all Deirdre had said.
"He's never mentioned a Deirdre."
"Oh."
Sang sat down in a beach chair, the phone in her lap, her body leaning into it. She straightened, staring at the phone, pressing numbers at random without picking up the receiver. "Farouk doesn't have any friends," she said. "Ever since I've known him, he's never introduced me to a single friend. I'm his only friend, really." She looked intently at Paul, and for a second he feared she was about to draw some sort of parallel, point out that Paul didn't have friends, either. Instead, she said, "How did she get my number, anyway?"
She'd looked it up in Farouk's address book; Deirdre had confessed this to Paul. Farouk had made it easy for her, writing it under "S" for Sang, the name of the cousin he had mentioned in a way that made her suspicious. Paul shook his head, standing up, squeezing the hand brakes on the bicycle. "Don't know. I guess I'd ask Farouk."
"Right. Ask Farouk." She stood up and went back into the house.
That evening, when Paul returned from Concord, he found Sang at the kitchen table. She said nothing as he went to the refrigerator to pull out the remains of the cassoulet.
"Farouk isn't in," she said, as if responding to a question on Paul's part. "He hasn't been in all day."
He lifted the lid of the baking dish and sprinkled a few drops of water on top of the cassoulet. "You want some of this?"
"No, thanks." She was frowning.
Paul put the cassoulet in the oven and poured a Scotch. The muscles in his arms and his thighs ached pleasantly. He wanted to take a shower before eating.
"So, when exactly did this Deirdre person call?" Sang said, stopping him as he walked out of the kitchen.
He turned to face her, pivoting on his heels. "I don't remember. It was when you were away."
"And did she say anything to you?"
"What do you mean?"
"What did she say to you, exactly?"
"Nothing. I didn't talk to her," he said, his pulse racing; he was thankful that he was already coated with sweat. "She just wanted you to call her back."
"Well, I can't call her back. She didn't even leave her number. It was weird. Did she sound like a weird sort of person to you?"
He remembered Deirdre's tears. "I love him," she'd told Paul, a perfect stranger. He looked at Sang, manipulating his face into an uncomprehending expression. "I'm not sure what you mean."
She sighed impatiently. "Can you hand me that?" she said, pointing to the message pad.
Paul watched as Sang began flipping through the pages that had been turned over, running her finger down each line.
"What are you looking for?" he said after a moment.
"Her number."
"Why?"
"I want to call her back."
"Why?"
She looked up at him, exasperated. "Because I want to, Paul. Is that a problem with you?"
He went upstairs to take his shower. It wasn't his business, he told himself as the hot water washed over him, and, later, as he dried himself, then combed back his hair, enveloped in steam. When he came downstairs again, he found her on her hands and knees, going through the recycling bin, newspapers and magazines piled around her.
"Damn it," she said.
"Now what are you looking for?"
"The number. I remember ripping out that page for some reason. I think I threw it away." She began to put the newspapers and magazines back into the bin. "Damn it," she said again. She stood up, kicking the bin lightly with her foot. "I don't even remember her last name. Do you?"
He inhaled, as if to seal the information inside himself, but then he shook his head, relieved at the opportunity, at last, to be honest with her. He, too, had forgotten Deirdre's last name. It was a name of one syllable, but apart from that detail it had vanished from his brain.