A Wedding in December_ A Novel - Anita Shreve [30]
Harrison’s good mood was marred only slightly with the arrival of the salad and the presence of a dead fly lurking at the perimeter under a spinach leaf. The waitress had missed this at first, and since Harrison did not want to embarrass her (or Nora, for that matter), he decided not to point it out. It wasn’t until the girl came to clear the mostly uneaten salad away that she noticed the fly.
“Oh God,” she said at once, “you should have said something.”
“No trouble,” he said.
“Can I bring you another salad?”
The waitress had blond hair pulled tight to her head and fastened at the back. A prominent eyetooth was smudged with lipstick. She seemed so flustered that Harrison wished he had hidden the fly simply to save her the confusion.
“Really,” he said, “it’s no trouble at all. You could bring me another glass of the cabernet, though, if you really want to.”
The girl seemed relieved and whisked away the offending plate, which had given little offense, Harrison thought, the presence of the fly in mid-December but one more indication of the freakishness of the season. Almost immediately, she brought another glass of wine, which he took his time enjoying as he ate his raclette. He thought again about the day he’d met Nora.
Without a backward glance, Harrison had entered the gate, returned to his room, and waited until 1:00 so that he could wake Stephen. Harrison was beset with a nagging sense of irresolution. He longed to crawl back into the moment he’d passed Nora and do it over, to choose not to walk straight past the girl in the blue cloth coat but to begin a conversation, or, even less subtly, to wait for her at the gate. But having missed his chance, he did not, as another boy might have, seek immediate redress. Harrison saw Nora in the dining hall that afternoon but did not speak to her, the sheer dazzle and demands of Stephen’s presence gradually obliterating Harrison’s view of her in the corner (when Harrison looked up, she was gone). And later, as the day progressed, there was the weekly poker game at 3:00, then a quick supper followed by study hall at 8:00, during which time Harrison read The Old Man and the Sea, having finished all of his homework that morning.
Harrison could remember that day well, but he could not see the next or the next, and whole months were lost to him now. He could recall certain key moments at Kidd, most having to do with sports and later with Nora, and if pressed and given a few hints, he could recall a given incident—but huge segments of his last two years at school remained a blur. He remembered another girl, Maria, with whom he’d gone skiing during Christmas break of his junior year, staying at Maria’s parents’ condo at Sunday River. Much to Harrison’s surprise, he’d been awakened shortly after 1:00 in the morning by an athletic Maria slipping into his bed. He’d at first been hyperalert to the sounds of parents waking and walking along the corridor, an alertness that had competed with and lost out to the excitement of the girl in his bed and to the thrill of her remarkable expertise, not, as it happened, much needed, since Harrison was a willing if bumbling partner, eager to relieve himself of his virginity. And having done that together, Harrison and Maria were for a time something of a couple, though Harrison sensed that Maria, with