Love Invents Us - Amy Bloom [53]
Elizabeth stared like it had turned from hand to snake as he spoke. “Bless my heart?”
Huddie slid into the booth and leaned forward.
“Elizabeth? Liz? You still go by Liz? I work in this town, I own a business here now. I have customers in here, Nikos and I are on the same delivery run. You have no goddamned idea. You never did. I am a model minority businessman. I am a family man, I give to the church, hell, I give to the synagogue. You want me to stick my tongue down your throat by way of hello? Bad enough you showed up in my store like the Ghost of Christmas Past.”
“What are you so pissy about? It’s been seven years and you’re the one that’s married, not me. You’ve got babies, I don’t. Excuse me, I would have written when you were in Buttfuck, Alabama, but you didn’t. And I didn’t know you were back.” Elizabeth looked down. “Running your father’s store. Christ.”
The waiter stood by the table, grinning at Huddie.
“Hey, George, how’s it going?”
“Good, Hud. Going good now.” He licked the tip of his pencil, willing to wait for twenty minutes if that was how long Huddie took. George worked two nights at week at Nassau Produce, Huddie’s store, and Huddie paid for twenty-two English classes, something his cousin Nikos didn’t give a good goddamn about. If Huddie Lester wanted to take his time about ordering coffee, and then take this angry, sort of pretty girl to the motel next door, that was fine with George Pascopolous. Huddie Lester was his man.
“Give us a few minutes, buddy.”
“Okay, Hud, when you want me, you do like so.” George raised one finger discreetly.
She would have kicked Huddie under the table if he hadn’t made her feel that everyone in the diner was watching them, completely fascinated. All that time apart, and now together, and it was not the same, of course, and this conversation would do nothing for them.
His jacket cuff rode up on his sleeve, showing a half-circle of brown skin through the white shirt.
“Are we having a conversation?” Elizabeth ran her palm over the Formica, rolling sugar granules with her fingertips.
“No,” he said. “Lets get out of here. Let’s not run out of here, but let us, by all means, get the hell out of here.”
Elizabeth drove blind to Wadsworth Park, and he followed, watching the oncoming cars for familiar faces, composing a businesslike, everyday expression. She didn’t even look at him getting out of the car, just slammed the door and walked into the woods like an Indian widow. Huddie looked around the empty lot and called to her.
“How about a blanket?”
“I didn’t come that prepared.”
“To sit on. I’m wearing a suit. We could talk in the car.”
“You’re killing me, Huddie. Let’s just go for a walk.”
They went past the rays of gravel tossed up from the parking lot, past the soda cans, candy wrappers, hot dog bun plastic and aluminum foil clumps, bits of old and crumbling forest suspended in the gelling, bug-speckled light. Huddie caught a yellowing condom on the toe of his shiny loafer and kicked it toward the stream.
“I don’t have that little problem anymore.”
“Is that right?”
He loosened his tie with one hand, and she sighed.
“We’re not talking,” he said, and he laced his fingers through hers. They both looked down, caught by what always caught them, what captured them when Huddie put his hand on the bleacher in the high school gym, resting the side of his palm so close to her leg that they both felt the soft prickling of the tiny hairs on her thigh. The absolute aesthetic harmony of their skin flared up and then subsided, outshone by the infinite exploding light of what came next, a beauty living only in each other, separate from their attractive, everyday faces, from body parts they liked or didn’t like, from the lives they would have. Only their mothers, at the first moment of seeing, had ever read their souls so plain on their faces.
“You saw the store’s bigger now,” he said. “You ought to check it out. That front porch is for coffee and pastry, and we’ve got this big mother dairy case.”
“I’ll come again when your father’s not there. Unless he’s changed.