Foreign Affairs - Alison Lurie [89]
“Go away,” Vinnie says to Fido in a half whisper. “This is just a bad cold, it’ll be gone soon. Get off my bed. Get out of my flat. Go find Mr. Mumpson, why don’t you?” she adds suddenly aloud, visualizing Chuck alone in the depths of the country, without friends, searching among faded dusty records for his illiterate ancestors.
In her mind, Fido considers the suggestion. He raises his head, then his chest, from the comforter, and sniffs the air. Then he slides off the bed and makes for the door, without even looking back.
Encouraged, Vinnie pushes away the covers and stands up dizzily. She stumbles into the kitchen, pours a glass of orange juice, and drops a black-cherry-flavored Redoxon tablet into it. Though an agnostic, she has faith in the power of Vitamin C; like most believers, she worships her god more devoutly when things go ill. Now she downs the fizzy, acid-magenta beverage and returns to bed, blows her nose again, pulls her sleep-mask down and the comforter up, and sinks into a snuffly, headachy slumber.
About an hour later she is roused by the telephone.
“Vinnie? This is Chuck, in Wiltshire. How’re you doing?”
“Oh, all right.”
“Sounds like you have a cold.”
“Well, I do, actually.”
“Aw, that’s tough. How bad is it? I’m coming up to London this afternoon, I was hoping we could have supper.”
“I don’t know. I’ve been in bed since day before yesterday. I’m feeling fairly awful, and I look a wreck.” Vinnie feels no hesitation in telling Chuck this. He isn’t important in London or in her life, so it doesn’t matter what he thinks. “God knows how I’ll be tonight.”
“I’m real sorry to hear that. Tell you what. You stay in bed now and keep good and warm, okay?”
“Okay.” It is years since anyone has told Vinnie to stay in bed and keep good and warm.
“I’ll phone you when I get in, about seven-thirty. Then, if you’re up to it, I can bring something over for us both to eat.”
“That’s very kind of you.” Vinnie has a mental picture of her cupboard and refrigerator, now more or less bare except for three quarts of cold soup. “But you certainly don’t have to. This flat is probably teeming with germs.”
“Aw, I’m not scared. I’m tough.” Chuck guffaws.
“Well . . . All right.”
Vinnie hangs up, flops back into bed, and returns to oblivion.
By eight that evening, when Chuck arrives with beer and a complete Indian takeout supper, enough for at least four people, she feels considerably better. It is only the second time that he has been to her flat, and she is struck again by how out of place he looks there, how large and clumsy and Middle American.
Chuck himself, naturally, is not aware of any incongruity. “Nice place you have here,” he says, looking toward the bow window, which frames a sweep of London back garden, brilliantly and variously gold and green in the declining sun. “Nice view. Real pretty flowers.” He gestures at a teapot overflowing with overblown yellow roses.
“Thank you.” Vinnie smiles uneasily, aware that her roses were not bought at a shop, but instead removed at dusk two days ago from various nearby front gardens. This petty theft, her first in nearly three months, occurred the day after she heard the story of L. D. Zimmern and her grant renewal, and—like her cold—may be related to it. “Let me take that shopping bag,” she says, changing the subject.
“Naw. You sit right there and rest. I’ll manage.”
In spite of her doubts, Chuck does manage, warming and serving the supper with skill and dispatch. In her present low mood Vinnie finds his clumsy concern soothing, his plodding conversation almost restful. He had a real productive trip to South Leigh this time, Chuck tells her, putting away two-thirds of the Indian dinner and most of the beer as he talks. “Y’know, this research, it’s not like business. Sometimes you do a hell of a sight better if you don’t try to zero in on a problem. You start looking for one thing, you come across something else important by accident.”
“Serendipity,” Vinnie says.
“What?”