Fortune's rocks_ a novel - Anita Shreve [131]
“You waiting on the trolley yourself?”
“No,” she says politely. “I am just resting.”
“Well, aren’t I the one in luck then?” the man says jovially. “Because I was just saying to myself, ‘Lyman, that is a fine-looking bench with a fine-looking woman sitting upon it, so why don’t you just make yourself an introduction?’”
Even with her head turned slightly away, Olympia can smell alcohol on the man’s breath. He settles himself back against the bench and in doing so contrives to inch even closer to Olympia.
She removes a perfumed handkerchief from her purse and puts it to her nose, hoping he will take the hint. But the man seems impervious to her distress.
“Now I would say,” he begins speculatively, and she can sense the man’s eyes upon her, “that you are not from these parts, which causes me to wonder and even to be so bold as to inquire what a fine young woman such as yourself is doing sitting on a bench on Alfred Street, which, though not without its charms, is not a fit location for a lady?”
From the corner of her eye, Olympia can see the blue door between the dentist’s office and the drugstore open. A woman in a mauve cotton dress leans against the door, apparently holding it open for someone else. She has her hand extended into the building.
“No,” the man beside her continues, “I can safely assume that you are from over to Fortune’s Rocks, where all those fancy cottages are. Am I correct in this assumption?”
Olympia watches the woman in the doorway bend slightly to speak to someone in the interior of the building.
“Miss?”
“What?” Olympia asks distractedly. “Oh. Yes. I am.”
“Well now,” the man beside her says, chuffed to have made such a good guess. “And may I ask your name?” he adds, perhaps emboldened by his success.
The woman in the doorway touches her dark hair, which is arranged in a pompadour with fringe at the front. She smooths her hand over the bodice of her dress, three tucks extending from the yoke to the waist. She might be thirty, Olympia guesses. Over the skirt of her dress, the woman has on a black apron. She steps back into the building, letting the door swing almost shut. She emerges with a boy.
“Or perhaps I am being overforward,” the man beside Olympia is saying.
The mother and the boy, hand in hand, stand at the top of the cement steps, as though assessing the scene before them. Olympia can see clearly the child’s features.
Walnut hair. Hazel eyes. The resemblance is unmistakable.
Olympia presses her knuckles to her mouth.
The man beside her looks over sharply. “Are you ill, miss?” he asks.
The want is instinctive and overwhelming. Later, she will recognize this strange sensation within her as a double want: for the boy as well as for the father before him.
She watches the woman and child descend the stone steps. The boy has on faded blue short pants with a matching jacket. He turns and begins to walk with his mother away from Olympia. She can see only the back of the child now, the neatly cut hair, the scuffed brown leather shoes, the short plump legs. Olympia stands.
“Oh now, miss,” the man beside her says, standing as well. “There is no need for this. I hope I have not offended you. Perhaps I am being too forward? If so, please forgive a weary salesman in this heat.”
Olympia is losing sight of the woman and the boy in the crowd on the sidewalk. Panicky, she takes a step forward.
“May I start again by suggesting that we dip into that drugstore over there, where I am bound to tell you I am rather well known, and have ourselves two of those cold sarsaparillas they are advertising in the window, which, I may assure you, will be given to us free of charge?”
Olympia shakes her head distractedly. “Leave me,” she says impatiently, although it is she who walks away.
• • •
She crosses the street and moves briskly, searching for a mauve dress in the crowd. She is jostled rudely, and perhaps she jostles rudely in return. She picks up her pace, nearly running now, until she sees, at the next corner, the figures of a