Noah's Compass

8

Damian came back from his cousin’s wedding with his arm in a cast. He said there’d been a little “contretemps.” Liam was so surprised by his wording that he gave Damian a second look. Was there more to him, perhaps, than met the eye? But Damian sat slouched in his usual C shape on the daybed in the den, his good arm tossed carelessly across Kitty’s shoulders, long ropes of greasy black hair concealing most of his face. They were listening to a song with very explicit lyrics. All Liam had to hear was a single line and he felt himself growing rigid with embarrassment. In addition, this was, after all, an actual bed they were sitting on, and an unmade bed at that. Liam said, “Wouldn’t you two be more comfortable in the living room?” But they just gaped at him, and rightly so; there was no couch in the living room. He’d been noticing that, of late. People couldn’t sit close together there.

Liam and Eunice couldn’t sit close together either. They had to occupy separate chairs and smile across at each other like fools.

Although sometimes, as often as possible, Liam would venture to perch on the arm of whichever chair Eunice was inhabiting. He would bring her, say, a Diet Coke and then as if by accident, while talking about nothing much, he would settle on the chair arm and rest one hand on her shoulder. She had soft plump shoulders that exactly, satisfyingly filled the hollows of his palms. Sometimes he would bend to breathe in the scent of her shampoo; sometimes, even, he would bend lower and they would kiss, although it was an inconvenient angle for kissing. She had to crane upward to meet his lips, and if he wasn’t careful, he could nick a cheekbone on the sharp-edged frame of her glasses.

He didn’t see her nearly as much as he would have liked. She showed up at his apartment at odd hours during the day, and then she came over most evenings, but in the evenings Kitty was usually around and they had to be more circumspect. (What had Liam been thinking, letting Kitty stay with him? Except, of course, that he’d had no way of predicting the turn that his life would take.)

They couldn’t go to Eunice’s place, because right now she didn’t have a place. She was living with her parents. Her father had suffered a stroke in March and she had moved in to help out. Reading between the lines, Liam guessed that this was less of a sacrifice than it seemed. She didn’t earn much of a salary at Cope, and she was clearly not the home-making type. Besides which, there was something of the only child in her character-an air of perennial daughterliness, an excessive concern for her parents’ good opinion of her. Liam cataloged this trait as he did her others, with scientific interest, without passing judgment. They were still in that stage where the loved one’s weaknesses, even, seemed endearing.

Unfortunately, Damian’s broken arm was his right arm, immobilized in a right-angle cast from his wrist to above his elbow. Since his car-really his mother’s car-had a stick shift, this meant that he couldn’t drive. And Kitty couldn’t drive either, because it turned out that the extra insurance was way beyond Liam’s means. He had honestly thought he’d heard wrong when the agent told him what the premium would be.

This put a real crimp in things. Sometimes, Kitty took the bus to Damian’s house directly after work, requiring Liam to pick her up at the end of the evening. Most times, though, Damian’s mother dropped Damian off at Liam’s, and then it was up to Liam to deliver him back home. (Damian’s mother, a widow who seemed much older than her years, refused to drive after dark.) Either way, it seemed Liam was called upon to chauffeur far more than he liked. There were a few blessed occasions when high school friends pitched in, but many of them were off working in Ocean City for the summer, while others were restricted by complicated new laws about driving with peers in the car. Often what happened was that Eunice would volunteer to return Damian on her way home, which was nice of her but it made her leave earlier than Liam wanted her to. And meanwhile, they would have spent the evening with Kitty and Damian; not one minute on their own.

It was no picnic, living with teenagers.

At moments, Liam felt he’d gone back to his teens himself. There was the same lack of privacy, the same guilty secrecy, the same tantalizingly halfway physical relationship. The same lack of confidence, even, for Eunice alternated between shyness and startling boldness, while Liam himself… Well, face it, he was a little out of practice. He had some concerns about looking old, or inadequate, or fat. It had been a long time since anyone had seen him without his clothes on.

Let things proceed at their own leisurely pace, he decided with some relief.

They liked to talk about their first meeting. Their two different first meetings, really. Liam recalled the waiting-room scene; Eunice recalled their coffee at PeeWee’s. Liam said, “You seemed so professional. So expert. So in charge.”

Eunice said, “You asked me more about myself in one conversation than most men ask in a year.”

“You told Ishmael Cope, ‘Verity,’ and it sounded like a pronouncement handed down from the heavens.”

“Even in the midst of a job hunt, you wanted to know about my life.”

“How could I not?” he asked, and he meant it. He found her fascinating and funny and complex. She was a perpetual astonishment. He studied her like a language.

For instance: She was chronically late everywhere, but she fantasized that she could outwit herself by keeping her watch set ten minutes ahead.

She acted completely besotted whenever she met a small dog.

Direct sunlight made her sneeze.

Among her most deep-seated fears were spiders, West Nile disease, and choral recitals. (She suffered from the morbid conviction that she might suddenly jump up and start singing along with the soloist.)

In fact she disliked all formal occasions, not only recitals but plays, lectures, symphony concerts, and dining in upscale restaurants. Given a choice, she preferred to stay in, and if they ate out she opted for the humblest café or hamburger joint.

She cared little about food in general-made not so much as a gesture toward cooking, and never seemed to notice what he gave her to eat.

She wasn’t used to alcohol and grew charmingly silly after a single glass of wine.

She never wore dresses; just those peasant skirts or balloony slacks.

Nor did she use cosmetics.

She’d had only three serious boyfriends in her entire life-not a one of them, she claimed, worth discussing in any depth.

But her girlfriends, as she called them, numbered in the dozens, reaching all the way back to nursery school, and she was forever rushing off to bachelorette parties or girls’ nights out.

She hated spending money, on principle. She drove illogical distances for the cheapest gasoline and she insisted on taking her leftovers home even from McDonald’s.

She had a cell-phone plan that gave her one thousand free minutes a month, but the only time she answered it was when it played Mr. Cope’s special ring-the “Hallelujah Chorus.” The rest of the time, she ignored it.

She was addicted to bad TV-to reality shows and game shows and spill-your-guts talk shows-and confessed to falling asleep every night to the all-night shopping channel. She couldn’t understand why Liam didn’t own a television set.

She made a habit of leaving love notes for him to find after she left, always signed with a smiley face topped by a curl and a hairbow.

She was refreshingly indifferent to domestic matters. She didn’t try to rearrange his furniture, or spruce up his wardrobe, or balance his diet. She thought his tightly made bed was comical. She demonstrated (standing discreetly outside the threshold of his bedroom) the shimmying motion that she imagined he must have to use in order to worm his way between the sheets every night. Liam had to laugh at that.

He laughed a lot, these days.

He knew that many of her traits (her lateness, her over-cuteness with the smiley faces and the little dogs) would ordinarily have called forth his most scathing sarcasm, but instead he found himself laughing. And felt, therefore, a bashful sense of pride. He was a better man than he’d realized.

She routinely left stray belongings behind at the end of the evening, sprinkled about like Hansel and Gretel’s bread crumbs-an umbrella and a stack of bracelets and her glasses case and once, even, her purse. A homely black cardigan of hers stayed draped over a chair back for days, and whenever he passed it he found an excuse to straighten a sleeve or smooth the fabric before he moved on.

Barbara phoned to ask how things were going with Kitty. It was a good three weeks, by then, since Kitty had moved in. “Very well,” Liam said. “No problems whatsoever.”

“Is she keeping to her curfew?”

“Of course.”

“And you’re not leaving her and Damian unchaperoned.”

“Certainly not,” he said.

Or not any more than he could help, he added privately. He failed to see how anyone could be chaperoned every everlasting minute.

“How about you?” he asked. “Everything going okay?”

“Oh, yes.”

“I guess it feels odd to be living on your own,” he said. For the first time, it occurred to him that on her own, she could see more of Howie the Hound Dog. He gave a light cough. “Are you managing to keep busy?”

“Oh, yes,” she said again.

She was a fine one to complain about other people’s unforthcomingness.

It was difficult to tell, from her tone, whether she knew about Eunice. Had Kitty happened to mention her? But he wasn’t sure that Kitty and Barbara even kept in touch these days. Of course, Louise could have said something. He definitely sensed that Louise had her suspicions.

One evening toward the end of July, Louise and Jonah dropped in unannounced. She claimed they had been shopping at the mall across the street. Well, obviously they had been shopping; Jonah was wearing a new type of combination sneaker and roller skate that he took great pride in showing off. But dropping in was not Louise’s usual style. She arrived as Liam was setting the table for supper. He had placed an order for Indian food-Kitty’s idea-which hadn’t come yet. Eunice was sitting in the living room, reading aloud from the want ads. (Even though they had abandoned the résumé pretext, Eunice made a point of swinging into job-hunting mode whenever Kitty was in earshot.) “Experienced medical assistant,” she read. “But really, you wouldn’t need that much experience if all you had to do was assist somebody.” And Kitty and Damian were in the den, where Kitty’s radio was shouting something like I want it I want it I want it.

When Louise rang the doorbell, Liam assumed it was their food. Then while Jonah was struggling to demonstrate his roller skates on the carpet, the doorbell rang again and it was their food, and Liam had to spend several minutes dealing with it. By the time he had spread an array of curry-smelling foil containers across the table, Louise was deep in her interrogations. “You don’t like to cook?” she was asking Eunice.

Very clever: the question implied that Eunice played a regular role in this household, which she would have to either confirm or deny. But Eunice was too cagey for that-or maybe just oblivious. “Cook?” she said, looking bewildered. “Who, me?”

“I don’t feel Dad gets enough vegetables,” Louise told her.

Although, in fact, Louise was never around during Liam’s meals and had no inkling what he ate.

Liam said, “There are plenty of vegetables in Indian food, might I point out.”

“Listen to this,” Eunice said, raising her newspaper. “Wanted: Driver for my 90-year-old mother. Days only; flexible hours. Must be sober, reliable, punctual and HAVE NO PERSONAL PROBLEMS! OR IF YOU DO, DON’T DISCUSS THEM WITH HER!”

Liam laughed, but Louise didn’t seem to see the humor.

“You could do that,” Eunice told him.

“I’ll keep it in mind,” he said.

Jonah had decided to try his skates on the kitchen linoleum. He was holding on to the sink while his feet slid away from him in opposite directions. “Help!” he called. By now Kitty had emerged from the den, although Damian was still in hiding, and she rescued Jonah by one elbow. “Hey, Louise,” she said.

“Hi.”

The doorbell rang a third time. Jonah said, “Maybe that will be some better kind of food.”

But already the door was opening (a sure sign it was one of Liam’s daughters; they never waited to be admitted), and in walked Xanthe. She still had on her social-worker clothes, matronly and staid. “Good grief,” she said. “What have you got going here, Dad, some kind of salon?” She gave him a peck on the cheek and then stepped back to study him. “That’s healed up nicely,” she told him.

For a second, he couldn’t think what she was talking about. Oh, yes: the last time she had seen him, he was still in bandages. “What brings you here?” he asked her.

“I came because I’ve been phoning for days and the line is always busy. I thought you might be dead.”

She didn’t seem to have lost any sleep over it. She trilled her fingers at her sisters. Then she turned to Eunice, who had lowered her paper.

“Xanthe, meet Eunice,” Liam said.

Xanthe cocked her head. “A neighbor?” she asked Eunice.

Eunice said, “Sort of,” which was not just cagey, it was an outright lie. (She lived in Roland Park.) She smiled at Xanthe blandly. From where Liam stood, it seemed her glasses were doing that opaque thing they did with reflected light.

Xanthe turned back to Liam and said, “I called several times last night, and then I called twice this evening. Is something wrong with your phone?”

“It’s the Internet,” Kitty told her.

“Dad was on the Internet?”

“No, I was,” Kitty said. “He doesn’t have broadband and so I have to dial up.”

“But why are you doing it here?”

“I’m living here.”

“You’re living here?”

“I’m spending the summer.”

Xanthe seemed about to say something, but at that moment Damian appeared. He looked a little sheepish, and no wonder. Probably he’d figured out he would be discovered, sooner or later, skulking in the den. “Yo. Jo-Jo,” he said to Jonah. He tipped sideways against the wall, jammed his hands in his jeans pockets, and stared defiantly at the others.

Xanthe said, “Damian.”

“Hey,” he said.

“Hello,” she said. She made it sound as if she were correcting him.

Then she turned to Liam and said, “I’ll be going now.”

“You just got here!”

“Goodbye,” she told the room in general.

She walked out.

There was a silence. Liam looked from Louise to Kitty. Louise shrugged. Kitty said, “Well, so anyhow, Lou. Do you have your car?”

“Of course I have my car.”

“Could you give me and Damian a ride to Towson Commons?”

“Sure,” Louise said.

“And then pick us up when the movie’s done?”

“What? No! What kind of life do you think I’m living?”

Adjusting seamlessly, Kitty turned to Liam and said, “Poppy, could you pick us up?”

“What time?”

“The movie lets out at eight forty.”

“I guess I can do that.”

Damian straightened up from the wall and said, “Okay!” and Kitty told Louise, “Let’s go, then.”

“This minute?” Liam asked. “What about your supper?”

“We’re in a hurry. Come on, Jonah.”

“I can skate much better outdoors,” Jonah told Liam. “Your floors are all wrong.”

“You should show me the next time you come,” Liam said.

“I’ll bring my coloring book, too. Yesterday I did Daniel in the lion’s den.”

“Oh, good.”

“Come on, Jonah,” Kitty said. “Bye, Poppy. Bye, Eunice.”

Then everybody was gone. Louise was the last one out and she let the door slam behind her.

Liam looked at Eunice. Eunice refolded her newspaper and laid it on the coffee table.

“So that was Xanthe,” she said in a musing tone.

“You’re thinking it’s a misnomer, aren’t you,” Liam said.

“What?”

“Xanthe. It means ‘golden.’”

“Well, I’m sure she’s very pleasant as a rule,” Eunice said.

Liam had been referring to Xanthe’s coloring-her brown hair and level dark eyebrows. He was so accustomed to her manner that he hadn’t felt the need to comment on it, but now he said, “She was upset on account of Damian, I guess. She thinks he was the one who attacked me.”

“Damian?”

“That’s what she thinks.”

“He wasn’t, was he?”

“No, of course not,” Liam said.

In a grudging way, he was beginning to like Damian. And he’d seen enough of such boys at St. Dyfrig to know he wasn’t bad at heart.

“Maybe it’s me,” Eunice said.

“Pardon?”

“Maybe Xanthe was upset to find me here.”

“Oh, that can’t be it. Not at her age.”

“If it came as a surprise, it could,” Eunice said. “But wouldn’t someone have told her? Do she and Kitty not talk?”

“I don’t think any of them talk,” Liam said. This struck him as odd, all at once. He said, “But I may be mistaken.”

“At least I can say now that I’ve met your entire family,” Eunice said.

He didn’t know why he felt a momentary impulse to correct her. He wasn’t thinking of his sister, surely. Was it Barbara? No, how ridiculous. He said, “So you have.” Then he said, “And I’ve met exactly zero of yours.”

Eunice looked unhappy. She said, “Oh. Right.”

Although Liam couldn’t really work up much interest in her family. It was just her parents, after all-a couple of right-wing Republicans, from the sound of it-and he felt that he was long past the meet-the-parents stage of life. Besides which (here was the real thing), he was uncomfortably aware that he and Eunice’s father were members of the same generation, more or less. What a bizarre scene: one gray-haired man playing Daughter’s Boyfriend while the other played Stern Dad. Further proof of just how unsuitable this romance really was, at least in the eyes of the outside world.

So he said, “Maybe when your father’s a little stronger,” and Eunice said, “Yes, maybe when his speech improves.” She looked relieved. “Then you could come for a drink,” she said. “They’ve been dying to meet you. We could all sit out on the terrace and have a nice long visit. You would have so much to talk about! Once they got to know you they would love you, I’m just positive.”

With every word she uttered, she sounded less convincing. Liam said, “No point rushing though, when he’s been so ill.”

“Oh, no.”

“Plenty of time to meet later.”

“Oh, yes.”

“How is his speech, by the way?”

“It’s going well,” she said. “Bit by bit, I mean.”

“Is he getting any sort of professional help?”

“Oh, yes, every week. I’m the one who takes him, because my mom has her aerobics class then. He sees this cute little girl who talks with a lisp. Can you believe a speech therapist would lisp?”

“Maybe that’s why she went into it,” Liam said.

“She calls him ‘Mithter Dunthtead,’” Eunice said with a giggle. “‘Mithter Thamuel Dunthtead.’”

She looked pretty cute herself, Liam noticed. Laughter always turned her cheeks pink.

He tried to picture the four of them sitting on the terrace. Her parents would ask him where he worked, just making polite conversation, but when he said he didn’t work, their expressions would cloud over. Where was he thinking of working, then? Nowhere. And he was twenty-some years older than their daughter, and he’d flubbed up two marriages, and he lived in a rented apartment.

They would exchange glances. Their eyes would narrow in a certain way he knew well.

But things were not as bad as they seemed! he wanted to tell them. He was a better man than he looked!

He did somehow feel, these days, that he was a good man.

She was even less social than Liam, if you didn’t count those girlfriends of hers. That was another of her traits. When Liam’s old philosophy professor came through town, she claimed Mr. C. had an evening meeting that would keep her from going to dinner with them. When the guidance counselor at St. Dyfrig threw his annual barbecue, she declined on the grounds of the high pollen count.

But one Friday afternoon, Bundy phoned and asked Liam if he felt like going out for a bite to eat. His fiancée had dumped him, he said, and he was tired of sitting home brooding. In view of the circumstances, Liam felt he couldn’t refuse, although he had already arranged to spend the evening with Eunice.

“Would you mind if I brought somebody?” he asked.

“Who’s that?”

“Oh, just a woman I’ve gotten to know.”

It occurred to him to wonder if demonstrating his new couplehood at that particular moment showed a lack of tact, but Bundy seemed to find the prospect entertaining. “Whoa!” he said. “This I’ve got to see. Why not? Bring her along.”

So Liam called Eunice’s cell phone and left a message about the change of plans. He was conscious as he spoke that he was not delivering welcome news; and sure enough, when Eunice called back she sounded less than thrilled.

“I thought we were eating in tonight,” she said.

“Well, yes, we were, but Bundy’s getting over a breakup.”

“You never mentioned any Bundy before,” she told him accusingly.

“Didn’t I? Oh, Bundy and I go way back. He’s African American,” he added as an enticement.

But still Eunice said, “Maybe I’ll skip it. I’m not sure how late Mr. C. will be needing me.”

Liam groaned. From time to time, he had the feeling that Ishmael Cope and he were engaged in a sibling rivalry of sorts. He said, “He’s got to allow you some private life.”

“Well, but, and also, Tumbleweed, you said. I don’t want to eat at Tumbleweed! It’s too fancy. I don’t have the right clothes.”

“Tumbleweed is not fancy,” Liam said. “I’m not even wearing a tie. I doubt Bundy owns a tie; he isn’t old enough for a-”

But then he saw underneath to what was really bothering her. “Eunice,” he said. “Sweetheart. You would look fine, whatever you wore. I’m going to be very proud to introduce you.”

“Well, I do have something black,” Eunice said. “Black always seems more elegant.”

“Black would be perfect,” he told her.

They arranged to meet at the restaurant, because Eunice had to stop off at her parents’ house to change. Since she and Bundy didn’t know each other, Liam made a point of showing up first, and he requested a table in front where he could watch the street for her arrival.

It was true that Tumbleweed wasn’t fancy. The lights were fake kerosene lanterns, the decor was Old West (dark, slightly sticky wooden booths and framed Wanted posters), and most of the other diners were Towson University students. Liam couldn’t imagine that Eunice would find it intimidating.

Through the front window he saw Bundy striding toward him, a long-legged figure scissoring down the sidewalk in a way that didn’t seem particularly heartbroken. A moment later he was settling into the seat opposite Liam. “Where’s your lady?” he asked.

“She’ll be along.”

“See how it works: there’s just a limited amount of romance at any one time in the universe. Naomi dumps me; you get lucky. What’s her name?”

“Eunice,” Liam said.

All at once the name sounded vaguely embarrassing. The u sound reminded him of urine.

“So!” he said brightly. “Why’d Naomi break it off? Or would you rather not discuss it.”

“Not much to discuss. I come in yesterday from the gym, she’s talking on the phone in this low sexy voice. ‘I’m home!’ I call, and quick as a flash she says into the phone, ‘Fine, let’s make that two o’clock. Shampoo and a trim.’ In a voice that’s totally different, real efficient and bossy, like she’d use with her beautician. Then she slams down the receiver. So after she goes off to the kitchen, I press Redial. Man answers. Says, ‘Yo, babe. False alarm?’”

“Plenty of beauticians call people ‘babe,’” Liam announced with authority.

“But ‘False alarm’? Why’d he say that?”

“Uh, maybe…”

“It was her boyfriend, I tell you. The two of them making a fool of me. I tell you, I’ve been stupid. I say to him, ‘No, man. It wasn’t no false alarm.’ Then I go out to the kitchen. ‘Naomi, you got some explaining to do.’ Know what she says? Says, ‘Why you say that?’ Says, ‘That was just Ron at the beauty shop.’”

“Well. See there?” Liam said. “It was Ron at the beauty shop. And when she hung up in a hurry he assumed she must have some emergency, so when his phone rang again he said, ‘False alarm?’”

“How’d he know it was Naomi?” Bundy asked him.

“He had caller ID, of course.”

“Right. What’s a place of business want with caller ID?”

“It seems to me that caller ID would be very useful in business,” Liam said. He considered for a moment. “Interesting,” he said. “If not for modern technology-caller ID and Redial-you would still be a happy man.”

Bundy snorted. “I’d still be a blind man,” he told Liam. He accepted a menu from their waitress. Then he gave her a second look; she was young and blond and her waist narrowed in as gracefully as the stems on their water goblets. “How are you this fine evening?” he asked her.

“I’m good, thanks,” the waitress said. “Will a third party be joining you?”

Liam said, “Yes, she ought to be-”

Then here Eunice was, all at once, rushing in out of breath and saying, “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, I knew I’d never get away in time!”

True to her word, she was wearing black. Or her blouse, at least, was black-plain black cotton with big white buttons like Necco wafers. Around her neck hung a rope of jawbreaker-sized red beads that gave her a sweetly clownish air, and lacy silver earrings shaped like upside-down Christmas trees dangled a good three inches below her earlobes.

“Am I all right?” she asked Liam. He had risen as far as the booth would allow, and so had Bundy.

Liam said, “Yes, you look very-” but already she was hurtling on. She said, “It’s Mr. C.’s fault I’m late. He told me he had to go to the restroom and of course I couldn’t go with him so I said, ‘Fine, I’ll wait out front,’ and then he never came back so I said to this man going in, not even one of ours, I don’t know who he was, I said, ‘Excuse me, if you see an elderly gentleman could you please-’ Well, not to bore you with all the details but by the time I got home I had about two minutes to make it to the restaurant and so I had to change clothes in one split second, which is why I’m wearing what I’m wearing. I mean, I know I shouldn’t be wearing-”

“Eunice, this is my friend Bundy Braithwaite,” Liam said. “Eunice Dunstead.”

“How you doing,” Bundy said, still half standing. He wore a distinctly startled expression, it seemed to Liam.

Eunice said, “I wouldn’t ordinarily combine this blouse with this skirt.”

“Won’t you have a seat?” Liam asked her.

“My mother always tells me,” Eunice said, sitting down next to him, “she says, ‘Eunice, a person’s top half should never, ever be darker than the bottom half. It looks Mafioso,’ she says. And yet here I am-”

“It can if the two halves share some little bit of color in common,” Bundy said.

Eunice stopped speaking.

“Your skirt’s got squiggles of black,” he told her.

“Oh.”

“Case closed.”

Bundy was looking amused now, which Liam didn’t mind in the least. She was amusing; she was charmingly amusing, and she was letting her soft bare arm rest lightly against his own.

“Shall we order a bottle of wine?” he asked. He had an urge to celebrate, all at once.

But it emerged that Bundy didn’t want wine. He wanted hard liquor. “I am a man who’s been shafted,” he told Eunice after they’d placed their drink orders. “I don’t know if Liam mentioned.”

“He did say something about that.”

“So mere wine will just not cut it. My fiancée has dumped me flat. She claims I don’t trust her.”

Liam hadn’t heard this part. He said, “You just now admitted you don’t trust her.”

“I think these earrings are a little too much,” Eunice said.

Liam looked at them. He said, “They’re fine.”

“I can take them off, if you like.”

“They’re fine.”

“Are you listening to this, or not?” Bundy asked Eunice. “I’m telling how my heart was ripped out.”

Eunice said, “Oh, excuse me.” She straightened her back and folded her hands and looked at him obediently, like a child in a classroom.

“I come in from the gym yesterday,” Bundy began all over again, “I hear Naomi on the phone with her boyfriend. Most definitely it was her boyfriend. I could just tell, you know? By her voice. But when I mention something to that effect, she says no, it was her beautician. Right. Then she says well, okay, she only told me it was her beautician because she knew I would be jealous of anybody else. Fact is, she says, it was a guy from work. They were just discussing work. I say, ‘Oh, right.’ She says, ‘See what I mean? You don’t trust me! You don’t give me credit! You never, ever talk to me; you sit watching your dumb sports shows on TV, and then when I meet a man who will have a real conversation, you get all bent out of shape!’”

“Maybe you’re well rid of her,” Eunice told him.

“Say what?”

“Why do you even care? You want to watch TV; she wants to do something else; let her do it! Let her go off with her beautician!”

“He’s not her beautician.”

“Let her go off with whoever! Maybe every day she’s been thinking, What are we together for? Don’t I deserve something better than this? Someone who understands me? And meanwhile, you could be with some woman who enjoys watching sports on TV.”

“Huh,” Bundy said. He rocked back in his seat.

Liam was trying to figure out whether this applied to him in any way. Should he, for instance, buy a television set?

Eunice said, “But I don’t mean to interfere.”

“No, no…” Bundy said. Then he said, “Huh,” again.

Their waitress arrived with their drinks. She set a Scotch in front of Bundy, and he took hold of it immediately but he waited until their wine had been poured before he raised his glass to Liam and Eunice.

“Cheers,” he said. And then, “So. Eunice. How did you meet our boy, here?”

“Well,” Eunice said. From her declarative tone of voice, and the important way she resettled herself in her seat, it was clear that she was about to embark on a serious narrative. “One day about a month ago,” she said, “I am walking down the street with my employer. My employer is Ishmael Cope? Of Cope Development? I take notes for him at meetings and such. And we are just walking down the street when up comes Liam out of nowhere and stops to say hello to him.”

“Liam knows Ishmael Cope?” Bundy asked.

“Just a nodding acquaintance,” Liam told him.

“They’d met at this charity ball for diabetes,” Eunice said.

“Liam went to a charity ball?”

“Yes, and so… wait, I’m telling you what happened. Liam stops to talk to him but Mr. C. is a little… like, absentminded these days but Liam is just so considerate with him, just so sweet and diplomatic and considerate-”

“Liam?” Bundy said. “You’re talking about our boy Liam?”

Liam was starting to feel annoyed with Bundy, and maybe Eunice was too because she said, very firmly, “Yes, Liam. I guess you don’t know him well. Liam is just this… very thoughtful kind of person, not your usual kind of person at all. He is not like any other man I’ve ever known. There’s something different about him.”

“That I’ll agree with,” Bundy said.

Liam wished Bundy didn’t seem to be enjoying this so much. But Eunice smiled at him, and a dimple dented her cheek as if someone had poked her gently with an index finger. “It was love at first sight,” she told him. Then she turned to Liam. “For me it was, at least.”

Liam said, “For me too.” And he saw now that that was the truth.

Through drinks, through soup, through their entrées (steaks for Eunice and Bundy, rockfish for Liam), Liam was mostly silent, listening to the other two and taking secret pleasure in the warmth of Eunice’s thigh pressed against his. Bundy returned to his breakup; Eunice made appropriate murmuring sounds. She tsk-tsk-ed and shook her head, and one of her Christmas-tree earrings landed on her plate with a clatter.

It wasn’t that Liam didn’t know her shortcomings. He saw the same woman Bundy must see: plump and frizzy-haired and bespectacled, dumpily dressed, bizarrely jeweled, too young for him and too earnest. But all these qualities he found lovable. And he pitied poor Bundy, who would have to go home alone.

Although he too, as it happened, went home alone that evening. (Eunice had promised to get back to the house in time to help her father to bed.) Even so, Liam left the restaurant feeling unspeakably lucky.

As he was crossing the street to his car, he was very nearly knocked down by some halfwit driver turning without stopping, and his reaction-his thudding heart and cold sweat and flash of anger-made him realize how much, nowadays, he did not want to die, and how dearly he valued his life.

Then he went to Eddie’s grocery store.

He went to the Charles Street branch of Eddie’s on a Monday afternoon. He needed milk. Milk was all he got, and so he assumed he would be through the checkout line in a matter of minutes. Except, wouldn’t you know, the woman in front of him turned out to have some trouble with her account. She wanted to use her house charge but she couldn’t remember her number. “I shouldn’t have to remember my number,” she said. She had the leathery, harsh voice of a longtime smoker, and her pale dyed flippy hair and girlish A-line skirt spelled out Country Club to Liam. (He had a prejudice against country clubs.) She said, “The Roland Park Eddie’s doesn’t ask my number.”

“I don’t know why not,” the cashier told her. “In both stores, your number is how we access your account.”

“Access” as a verb; good God. The world was going to hell in a handbasket. But then Liam was brought up short by what the woman said next.

She said, “Well, perhaps they do ask, but I just tell them, ‘Look it up. You know my name: Mrs. Samuel Dunstead.’”

Liam gazed fixedly at his carton of milk while the manager was called, the computer consulted, the account number finally punched in. He watched the woman sign her receipt, and then he cleared his throat and said, “Mrs. Dunstead?”

She was putting on her sunglasses. She turned to look at him, the glasses lowered halfway from the top of her head where they had been perched.

“I’m Liam Pennywell,” he told her.

She settled her glasses on her nose and continued to look at him; or at least he assumed she did. (The lenses were too dark for him to be sure.)

“The man who’s been seeing your daughter,” he said.

“Seeing… Eunice?”

“Right. I happened to overhear your name and I thought I’d-”

“Seeing, as in…?”

“Seeing as in, um, dating,” he said.

“That’s not possible,” she told him. “Eunice is married.”

“What?”

“I don’t know what you’re trying to pull here, mister,” she said, “but my daughter’s a happily married woman and she has been for quite some time.”

Then she spun around and seized her grocery bag and stalked off.

The cashier turned her eyes to Liam as if she were watching a tennis match, but Liam just stared her down and so eventually she reached for his milk and scanned it without any comment.