Walking on Broken Glass - Christa Allan [49]
The first few times they asked, he always found a reason to refuse. Dates arranged by married couples were much more suspect than those arranged by single friends. He was suspicious of the hidden agenda—like the date interviewing for a spouse in the house. Brea reassured him I wasn’t searching for happily ever after. So, Carl relented and made dinner reservations at Marsala's. Italian food would compensate for any dating disaster.
If I didn’t have to see Brea every school day for the next four months, I would have refused this setup. And if she and Nick hadn’t already spotted me at the entrance and waved me over to the table, I would have bolted out the leaded glass doors I had just walked through.
“I’m not ready,” I had told Brea when she first suggested this date.
“This is a training wheels date. Nobody expects you to take off on your own yet,” she said.
Fifteen minutes past reservation time. No Carl. Thirty minutes. No Carl. Nick had Carl's cell phone number on speed dial and left dozens of messages on voice mail. A bottle of wine and almost an hour later, Carl arrived.
Brea pointed him out to me. He stood at the bar, shaking hands with the badly toupeed man who had seated them. Carl's relaxed
confidence annoyed and intrigued me as he smiled in our direction and maintained an unhurried conversation with the wildly gesturing gentleman. The Gundlach Bundschu merlot had long since soothed the tenseness that accompanied me to the restaurant. Carl and the man I’d come to know as Emil, the owner, ended their talk. Carl walked to their table—a man with the easy stride of someone comfortable in his own body.
“Leah,” he said my name as if we’d been childhood friends. “I hope you’ll give me a second chance at a first impression.” His grin poured itself out and warmed my bare shoulders.
His ash grey sweater seemed dyed to match his eyes. He sat and looked only at me, as if Nick and Brea had disappeared.
“I would have been here on time but I was in the ER with my mother,” Carl said. He turned to the waiter at his elbow and ordered a dry martini and another bottle of merlot.
Carl held up his hands to quiet the obligatory stirrings of the sympathy choir.
“She fell getting off the sailboat at the Yacht Club. She needs to be careful.” He paused and thanked the waiter for the bottle of wine and the drink he’d just delivered. “I don’t think we can get a handicapped boat slip.” He smiled to let us know laughter would be an appropriate response.
Carl reached for the wine and said to me, “May I refill your glass?”
A sense of humor. Polite. And he cares about his mother. Perhaps he's worth a second chance.
21
The elevator doors closed.
Finally.
Carl and Molly had been transported to the universe beyond the locked doors, beyond the winding entrance, to the life I had plucked myself from, but from which my disappearance seemed only a speed bump. I’d expected more drama. Carl didn’t look like a gaunt victim of emotional terrorism, pleading for my return. Molly's carbonated enthusiasm fizzed as though her energy compensated for Carl's indifference.
After Carl zapped me with the news of my dad arriving for family group night, Molly looked back and forth at us, like a Wimbledon spectator. She watched guilt and anger and disappointment volley between us.
I exited the elevator, clutching the gifts Molly had produced from the bowels of her purse to distract Carl and me from each other.
“Whatcha got there, girlie?” Theresa yawned her way into the rec room. Her zebra-striped slippers were on the wrong feet, but they navigated her to the sofa.
“Unfortunately, not candy.” I handed her the two boxes. I paced.
“A book with nuthin’ in it? What's up with that?” She opened the leather journal, lifted it to her face, and breathed in. “This smells rich.” She closed it and gently massaged the embossed paisley designs on the cover with her pulpy little fingers. “Soft. What's in this other box?”
She handed me the journal.
“Your friend gave you a Bible?” Theresa eyed it like she