The Last Time They Met_ A Novel - Anita Shreve [62]
—My desire to talk to you won out, he said, abandoning in the area and just stopping by. Recklessly, for he did not yet know if a man named Peter was within. Though it wasn’t much of a debate.
She moved aside so that he could enter. It was a small room with two paned windows, casements rolled open to the air. A table with two chairs had been snugged up against one window. Armchairs, relics from the 1940s (Thomas imagined war-torn Britain, a Bakelite radio between) faced the other window. There was a low bookcase along one wall. A carpet, old and Persian, underfoot. A single lamp.
There were flowers on a table, a kitenge cloth neatly folded over a chair. Behind the small dining area, a kitchen and an open door in the back. There was a sisal basket on a hook, a Makonde sculpture on the floor against the wall.
The water fell from her hair, hit her shoulder blades and the parquet floor. She wore an elephant-hair bracelet on her wrist. She had amber earrings in her palm, which she hooked into her ears as she stood there.
—You’ve come from Nairobi, she said.
—I was in Limuru.
She was silent.
—I needed to see you.
No man in evidence, despite the two of everything.
—Your presence in the market was a shock, he said. I felt as if I were seeing a ghost.
—You don’t believe in ghosts.
—Having been in this country a year, I think I’d believe in almost anything.
They stood facing each other, not a foot apart. He could smell her soap or her shampoo.
—Your hands shook, he said boldly, and he could see that she was taken aback by this assertion. She moved a step away from him.
—Simple shock doesn’t mean much in itself, she said, not willing to credit the trembling hands. Our time together ended so abruptly, there will always be a certain amount of shock associated with you, no matter what the circumstances.
An adequate defense. They moved further into the room. On the bookcase was a photograph, and he squinted in its direction. He recognized the cousins with whom Linda had grown up: Eileen and Michael and Tommy and Jack and the rest. A family grouping. There was another photograph, of Linda and a man. Who would be Peter, he thought. Not academic and anemic after all, but rather tall and dark and boyishly handsome. Smiling. A proprietary arm snaking around Linda’s slender waist. Her smile slightly less exuberant. Insanely, he took heart from this.
—Can I get you something to drink?
—Water would be good, he said.
The birds outside were a frantic wind ensemble on a Sunday afternoon. They, too, signaled the approaching storm that blackened the kitchen window, even as sun poured in at the front of the house. A cool breeze, gusty, snapped blue-checked curtains. He watched her take a pitcher of water from the half fridge and pour him a glass.
—It’s been purified, she said, handing it to him.
He drank the ice-cold water and realized only then the terrible thirst his nerves had produced. How are you? he asked.
—How am I?
Having come — having, against all the odds, found her again — he could not now speak. He sought desperately for a reference point.
—Do you remember anything from the accident? he asked.
She was silent, perhaps surprised by the question so soon.
—I have a blank, he said. It begins with seeing the little girl on the tricycle and ends with my nose filling with water. When I couldn’t see you, I felt a sense of panic so terrifying that even now it can make me sweat.
She smiled and shook her head. You were never any good at small talk.
She sat at the table, an invitation to join her. He shed his jacket, the sweat drenching him.
—What happened to your jacket? she asked.
—It got washed by mistake in the bathtub.
She gave a small laugh. And for a moment, lit the room with sound. But then the light went out as abruptly as it had come. Is the scar from then? she asked.
He nodded.
—It must have been bad, she said.
—I hardly noticed at the time. I didn’t feel a thing. Didn’t even realize the extent of it until my mother started screaming.
—I remember the car tumbling, she said, offering