“Reporters all think they’re persistent and tough,” she said. “But they’re no match for a newspaper-morgue librarian.”
“At least not for this one.”
“Where do you work?” she asked.
“Nowhere right now.”
“Waiting,” she said, instead of anything that anyone else might have said. “Sometimes waiting is the hardest thing.”
“But it’s all you can do.”
She sipped her iced tea. “One day there’ll be a door like any other door, but when you open it, right in front of you will be just the thing you need.”
“It’s nice to think so,” he said.
“Then you forget the pain of waiting.”
Chase had never been party to a conversation half as strange as this – yet it made more sense than any conversation that he’d ever had in his life.
“Have you found that door?” he asked.
“There’s not just one. A series of them. With spells of waiting in between.”
Dinner was delicious: tossed salad, potatoes and pasta layered with spinach and basil and feta cheese, zucchini with slivers of red pepper, and marinated sea bass lightly grilled. For dessert, fresh orange slices sprinkled with coconut.
When they weren’t talking in that strange shorthand that came naturally to them, they fell into silences that were never awkward.
After dinner in the dining area off the kitchen, she suggested that they adjourn to the small balcony off the living room, but Chase said, “What about the dishes?”
“I’ll take care of them later.”
“I’ll help, and we’ll get them done twice as fast.”
“A man who offers to wash dishes.”
“I thought maybe I could dry.”
After the dishes, they sat on a pair of lawn chairs on the balcony in the warm July darkness. The garden courtyard was below. Voices drifted to them from other balconies, and city crickets made a sound as lonely as any made by their country cousins.
When at last it was time to leave, he said, “Is this a magical apartment – or do you make it peaceful wherever you go?”
“You don’t have to make the world peaceful,” she said. “It is to begin with. You just have to learn not to disturb things.”
“I could stay here forever.”
“Stay if you want.”
The balcony had no lamp, only fireflies in the night beyond the railing. In such deep shadows, Chase couldn’t read her face.
He thought of dead women in a tunnel, half a world away, and the weight of guilt in his heart was immeasurable.
He found himself apologizing to Glenda for what she might have thought was a pass. “I’m sorry. I had no right, I didn’t mean-”
“I know,” she said softly.
“I don’t want-”
“I know. Hush.”
They were silent for a while.
Then she said, “Being alone can be good. It’s easy to find peace alone. But sometimes … being alone is a kind of death.”
He could add nothing more to what she’d said.
Later she said, “I only have one bedroom, one bed. But the armchairs in the living room were all bought secondhand, here and there, and one of them is a lounger that pretty much folds into a bed.”
“Thank you,” he said.
Later still, as he sat in the lounger, reading a book from her shelves, she reappeared, dressed for bed in a T-shirt and panties. She leaned down, kissed his cheek, and said, “Good night, Ben.”
He put down his book and took her hand in both of his. “I’m not sure what’s happening here.”
“Do you find it strange?”
“I should.”
“But?”
“I don’t.”
“All that happened is – we both found the same doorway from different sides.”
“And now?”
“We give it time, enough time, and see if this is what we need,” she said.
“You’re special.”
“And you’re not?”
“I know I’m not,” he said.
“You’re wrong.”
She kissed him again and went to bed.
And later still, after he had converted the chair into its fullest reclining position, turned off the lamp on the end table, and settled down, she returned in the darkness and sat across from him. He did not hear her coming as much as feel the serenity that she brought with her.
“Ben?” she said.