Fortune's rocks_ a novel - Anita Shreve [194]
Small colored bowls of food left the guest to guess at their identity: The green might be guacamole, the red was doubtless the decent salsa, and the pink possibly a shrimp or crab dip. But she was stumped as to the grayish-beige, not a good color for food under the best of circumstances. She reached for a small paper plate — the management had not provided for large appetites — and heard the hush before she understood it, a mild hush as if someone had lowered the volume a notch or two. From the corner, she heard a whispered name. It couldn’t be, she thought, even as she understood it could. She turned to see the cause of the reverential quiet.
He stood in the doorway, as if momentarily blinded by the unfamiliar. As if having been injured, he was having to relearn certain obvious cues to reality: pods of men and women with drinks in hand, a room attempting to be something it was not, faces that might or might not be familiar. His hair was silver now, the shock of that, badly cut, atrociously cut really, too long at the sides and at the back. How he would be hating this, she thought, already taking his side. His face was ravaged in the folds, but you could not say he was unhandsome. The navy eyes were soft and blinking, as if he had come out of a darkened room. A scar, the old scar that seemed as much a part of him as his mouth, ran the length of his left cheek. He was greeted as a man might who had long been in a coma; as a king who had for years been in exile.
She turned around, unwilling to be the first person he saw in the room.
There were other greetings now, a balloon of quiet but intense attention. Could this be his first public appearance since the accident, since he had taken himself into seclusion, retired from the world? It could, it could. She stood immobile, plate in hand, breathing in a tight, controlled manner. She raised a hand slowly to her hair, tucked a stray strand behind her ear. She rubbed her temple softly with her finger. She picked up a cracker and tried to butter it with a crumbly cheese, but the cracker broke, disintegrating between her fingers. She examined a fruit bowl of strawberries and grapes, the latter having gone brown at the edges.
Someone said, too unctuously, Let me get you a drink. Another crowed, I am so pleased. Still others murmured: You cannot know, and I am such.
It was nothing, she told herself as she reached for a glass of water. Years had passed, and all of life was different now.
She could feel him moving toward her. How awful that after all this time, she and he would have to greet each other in front of strangers.
He said her name, her very common name.
—Hello, Thomas, she said, turning, his name as common as her own, but his having the weight of history.
He had on an ivory shirt and a navy blazer, the cut long out of style. He had grown thicker through the middle, as might have been anticipated, but still, one thought, looking at him: a tall man, a lanky man. His hair fell forward onto his forehead, and he brushed it away in a gesture that swam up through the years.
He moved across the space between them and kissed her face beside her mouth. Too late, she reached to touch his arm, but he had retreated, leaving her hand to dangle in the air.
Age had diminished him. She watched him take her in, she who would be seen to have been diminished by age as well. Would he be thinking: Her hair gone dry, her face not old?
—This is very strange, he said.
—They are wondering about us already.
—It’s comforting