Bonnie Nadzam: Lamb

“I know what you have.” The heat rose in her face. She was a beautiful girl. Woman. He checked his watch. “I don’t think I can wait for dinner.”

“You say.”

He lowered his voice. “Will you open your raincoat for me?”

“David. We haven’t had a proper conversation in two weeks.”

“We had a proper conversation last night.”

Her face reddened. He loved to see it. “Come,” he said and took her hand. “Let’s take the stairs.”

In the stairwell she twisted her hand from his. “You know there are plenty of guys who would be happy to come sample my wine.”

“Lin.” He kissed her mouth. “You knew how this was going to be.” He kissed her neck. “Would you rather I just leave you alone?” He backed up. “This is just hurting you, isn’t it?”

Nothing.

“Am I just hurting you, Lin? Am I ruining your life?” She slouched into her hips and reached her arms around his neck. He untied the belt of her raincoat. “Okay?” The coat swished in the stairwell and her shoes echoed as she adjusted her feet. They listened and watched and moved slowly. He held her head in his hand to keep it off the cinder-block wall behind her. “Right?” he said. “Is this what we do?” She nodded her head in his hand. “Say yes.”

“Yes.”

“Say this is what we do.”

“This is what we do.”

She was retying her hair when Lamb pulled her in by the loose ends of her belt and pressed his forehead to hers. Both their faces damp and warm, their breath quickened. “You should let the world have you a little more than it does,” he said. “Go find your local alum chapter. Hang out with some of those young Princeton guys. Do it. Have them over for your wine. It hurts me to say, but it’s the truth. You should let one of them take you to the Nine and you should share a dessert and let him put his arm around you while you walk through the city.”

“Don’t.”

“Let me say this, Lin. It’s important for me to say it. You should. You should let him walk you to the end of the pier.”

“The pier is yours.”

His eyes filled. “Do you mean it?”

“It’s just how it is.”

He looked down at his hands. “It isn’t easy for me to say these things.”

“I can’t share myself like that David. I’m not like that.”

“Oh.” He let her go and leaned against the metal rail behind him. “I see.”

“No, come on. I wasn’t… I just need you to know that. It’s important for me to have you know it.”

“What do you want me to do with that information?”

“Just keep it for now.”

“Okay. You’ll tell me if there’s something else I ought to do with it?”

She nodded, and again he kissed her mouth and her neck and her throat and told her she was the prettiest girl on the block, and that someday the world would be theirs and they’d have every day and every hour and every minute.

“Make your calls from here,” she said, the curled fray of her bangs dry now. Her eyes big. “We can do lunch here. On the stairs.”

He looked at his watch. “I’m already on my way to being late.”

“Okay.”

“I have a life, Lin. There are certain things I need to do.”

“I know.”

“Listen. I’m not stupid. I know I don’t deserve you. No. I don’t. And I know I’m lucky to have you now.”

“Come over tonight. Please.”

He went down the stairs where his box of papers and junk sat propped against the heavy door. “If you don’t hear from me tonight or for a couple of days, you’ll know I’m thinking of you, right? Doing the things I have to do so we can take a couple of days together.”

“We should go to the Michigan dunes before it gets too cold.”

“Bucket of chicken?”

“Bottle of champagne.”

“Good. Pick one out. And wait for me.” He opened the heavy door of the stairwell and went out.

Two blocks from the triplet apartments Lamb found the girl, alone at her bus stop and soaked beneath a small, sagging pink umbrella.

“How did you know to come here early?” He grinned.

“How did you?” She pulled the door shut and set the umbrella at her feet. Rain dripped from her nose.

“You and me,” he said. “We seem to talk without talking.”

“I know. It’s totally weird.”

“I think maybe you were strategizing,” he said. “You don’t have a crush on me, do you?”

“I just like rain.” Pink behind her freckles.

“I see.”

“Are you driving me to school?”

“I thought we’d skip school today. Want to?”

“Duh.”

“Do we need to call in? As a kindness to your worried teachers?”

“I’ll just tell my mom I was sick and stayed home and she’ll write me a note tomorrow.”

“You’ve done this before?”

“Once.”

He gave her a look.

“Okay, twice.”

“So I’m not corrupting you.”

“Nope.”

“You sure?”

“Yep.”

“I’m going to trust you on that.” He glanced sideways at her. “Can I trust you?”

“Yes.”

“Shake on it?” They shook.

He drove twenty miles west to a little town at the falls of the Fox River, where every house sat alone on a soft green hill strewn with yellow leaves. The center of town made a crooked stripe of brick and stone storefronts, of windows strung with colored glass beads or draped in damask. The sidewalks were bare and wet; no one was out. The sky was a lightless pewter and lamps inside the shops shone bright yellow. He removed his coat and put it over the girl’s head and shoulders to shield her from a fine, cold rain, and he lifted his face and throat into the weather, smiling with all his teeth. He took her into a candy store and filled a little brown paper bag with Coke bottle gummies and lemon drops and sour red licorice coated with sugar. The woman behind the counter folded the bag and sealed it with a golden sticker and gave them each a vanilla buttercream. Outside he took her elbow like a gentleman, which made her laugh, and he handed over the bag.

“I would just like to draw your attention to the fact, my lady”—he cleared his throat and furrowed his brow—“that you are taking candy from a stranger.”

She took the bag. “Am not.”

“This is a lesson for you,” he said, holding her forearm. “A man should always take your arm and let you have the inside of the walk.”

“Why?”

“It’s a tribute to your delicacy.” He lifted their hands and twirled her in her tennis shoes. “You see?”

He walked her down two narrow flights of wooden steps stained with rainwater that ended just before a mossy falls, the wide muddy river gliding through the trees.

“Look,” he said. “If you squint your eyes and plug your ears, it almost looks like an unexplored woods.”

“Almost.”

He stooped and held up a cold, flat stone. “Kiss it.”

“The rock?”

“I’m going to make a wish on it.”

She kissed the stone and he skipped it three, four, five times over the water.

“I won’t even ask what you wished for.”

“Smart girl.” He handed her a stone. “You need a beautiful young woman to kiss it for you,” he said. “But good luck finding one. I got the last one on the planet.”

Say he then bought her an expensive rain jacket of her own. It was nice to buy a girl a jacket. Hers was the color of oak leaves burnt red with seven pockets and a neat little hood and pale, striped silk lining.

“It’s a little grown-up,” she said.

“Well. You’ll grow into it.” He held open the shop door, liquid music of little silver bells strung about the handle, and pulled the hood up over her head. “What will you tell your mother when she asks you where this came from?”