Bird in Hand - Christina Baker Kline [49]
Charlie took a deep breath. “How would you like company for a night?”
“Are you serious? How could you?”
“Her parents are here,” he said, finding the pronoun easier than Alison’s name. “They’re staying for five or six days. Maybe these new clients of mine need some hand-holding.”
“Oh, yes,” she said. “They do need hand-holding. Come.”
Chapter Two
May 1998
On a clear Friday evening at seven, the moon a faint night-light in the sky, Charlie locked his bike to the stair rail and pushed the doorbell at Claire and Ben’s house. A slim woman opened the door. Her back was half-turned to him, and she was in the middle of a sentence. “I’m sorry,” she said, turning back. “You must be Charlie. I’m Alison.”
She held out her hand for him to take. It was small and cool, her grip surprisingly strong. Her large eyes were chestnut colored, and her hair was straight and dark brown. She had clear skin and a wide mouth, almost too wide for her face. Her ass, in faded Levi’s, was, he noticed, small and firm. “Ben’s in there cooking snails, of all things,” she said, and now Charlie could detect her soft southern accent, more pronounced than Claire’s. She shook her head. “I don’t know what this country is doing to you people.”
“Turning us into snobs and pedants and raging Europhiles,” Charlie said. “It’s the Brits’ revenge on us for defecting two hundred fifty years ago.”
She laughed. “Then I suppose you’ll want a sherry.”
He followed her inside, where Ben was chopping garlic on a tiny board with a tiny knife, hunched over it like a dressmaker.
“I brought some hard stuff,” Charlie said, holding up a paper bag.
“What is it?” Ben paused, looking up, while Charlie unsheathed a bottle of Dalwhinnie. “ ‘A superior Highland Scotch,’ ” Ben read off the label. “Ex-cellent. Let the wild rumpus start,” and went back to chopping.
Charlie felt a glow of pleasure at having pleased the notoriously exacting Ben. “You, too?” he said to Alison.
She wrinkled her nose, hesitating, and then said, “When in Rome, I suppose,” with a shrug.
Opening the cabinet, Charlie found four mismatched glasses and took them down. “And Claire?”
“Better not,” Ben said. “I don’t know when she’ll be back.”
“Isn’t she coming?”
“Don’t know.” Ben didn’t look up.
Charlie glanced at Alison questioningly. She raised her eyebrows but didn’t say anything. They both watched Ben throw the garlic in a pan with some butter. “Almost done,” he said, stirring the sizzling beads with a wooden spoon. “Then we can sit down for a few minutes and enjoy that Scotch.”
“Straight up, or rocks?” Charlie asked, going to the freezer.
“Straight up. Always straight up,” Ben said.
“Bartender’s choice,” said Alison, smiling.
“Umm—I’ll give you rocks,” Charlie said. “You might want the water if you nurse this all night.”
“Sorry, I’m a total flyweight,” she said. “My college experience consisted of keg beer and Sutter Home. And the occasional Sunday morning Bloody Mary.”
“Wow, that sounds familiar. Where did you go?” Charlie asked, remembering that Claire had filled him in on Alison’s vital statistics, and wishing he’d paid better attention.
“Chapel Hill. University of North Carolina.”
“I know what Chapel Hill is.” Charlie grinned. “It’s practically Ivy.”
“So they insist,” she said. “And you’re from Kansas. Lawrence, right? I’ve heard it’s a great college town.”
“Yeah, it’s this bizarre oasis. Albeit with a Wal-Mart the size of Delaware.”
“How does this compare?” she asked, gesturing vaguely toward Ben, or perhaps toward the university beyond him.
“It doesn’t. A whole other world.” He handed her a drink, ice clinking in the glass, and looked in her eyes. They were darker now, lively and warm. I could do this, he thought. He wondered, fleetingly, if Claire had stayed away on purpose, to give Alison a fighting chance.
“All right.” Ben turned the flame down to low and lifted his Scotch. “Cheers. Here’s to public education.” He clinked their glasses with his own.
Claire did show up around ten o’clock, after the snails and the salad and the pan-fried trout with a cornmeal