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By Root 538 0

sat drinking their coffee under a veil of cigarette smoke. “Sit,” Morgan said, guiding her to a table. He settled opposite her. “Do you know what this means, this Robert Roberts business? Do you see the implications? Why, it’s wonderful! First the years go by and Brindle stays in her bathrobe, moping, scuffing about in her slippers, wondering when the next meal is. ‘Fix it yourself, if you’re hungry,’ I’ve told her, but she says, ‘Well,’ she says, ‘I don’t know where anything’s kept, the food and utensils and such.’ Understand, this is a house she’s been living in since nineteen … was it sixty-four? Or maybe sixty-five, she moved in. Kate was already in school, I remember. Sue had started her piccolo lessons … Then here comes Robert Roberts! Here he comes, out of the blue. He says his wife is dead now. And anyhow, he says, his heart was always with Brindle. I can’t imagine why. She’s very plain to look at and she’s not at all good-natured. But his heart was always with her, he says. And he was the very person she’s been telling us about at the dinner table, every night of our lives. Why, our children knew Robert Roberts’s name before they knew their own! They knew all his favorite board games and his batting average. And here he comes, with an armload of roses, the most colossal heap of roses; the whole entrance hall took on that rainy, dressed-up smell that roses have … and asking her to marry him! Isn’t life … symmetrical? I’d really underestimated it.”

A waitress stood over them, tapping her pencil. Emily cleared her throat and said, “I’ll have coffee, please.”

“Me too,” said Morgan. “Yes, it was quite a night. The two of them sat up till dawn, discussing their plans. I kept them company. They want to get married in June, they say.”

“You certainly have a lot of weddings in your family,” Emily told him.

“Oh, not really,” he said. He reached across the table for her purse, opened it, and peered inside. “There was Amy’s, of course, and then Jean’s, but I don’t count Carol’s; she got divorced before she’d finished writing her thank-you notes.” He turned the purse upside down and shook it. Emily’s wallet fell out, followed by a key ring. He shook the purse again, but it was empty. “Look at that!” he said. “You’re so orderly.”

Emily retrieved her belongings and put them back in her purse. Morgan watched, with his head cocked. “I too am orderly,” he told her.

“You are?”

“Well, at least I have an interest in order. I mean, order has always intrigued me. When I was a child, I thought order might come when my voice changed. Then I thought, no, maybe when I’m educated. At one point I thought I would be orderly if I could just once sleep with a woman.”

He took a napkin from the dispenser and unfolded it and smoothed it across his knees.

Emily said, “Well?”

“Well, what?”

“Did sleeping with a woman make you orderly?”

“How can you ask?” he said. He sighed.

Their coffee arrived, and he seized the sugarbowl and started spooning out sugar. Four teaspoons, five … he stirred after each spoonful, and dripped coffee on the tabletop and into the bowl. Caramel-colored beads grew up across the surface of the sugar. Emily looked at them and then at Morgan. Morgan bared his teeth at her encouragingly. She looked away again.

Why put up with him? He was really so strange that sometimes, out in public, she felt an urge to walk several paces ahead so that no one would guess they were acquainted. Or when the three of them were together, she’d make a point of taking Leon’s arm. But it was funny how he grew on a person. He added something; she couldn’t say just what. He made things look more interesting than they really were. Sometimes he accompanied the Merediths when they went to put on a puppet show, and from the squirrel-like attention he gave to all they did she would understand, suddenly, how very exotic this occupation was—itinerant puppeteers! Well, not itinerant, exactly, but still … and she’d look at Leon and realize what a flair he had, with his deep, dark eyes and swift movements. She herself would feel not quite so colorless;