Anne Tyler - Noah's Compass

It was true that Tumbleweed wasn’t fancy. The lights were fake kerosene lanterns, the decor was Old West (dark, slightly sticky wooden booths and framed Wanted posters), and most of the other diners were Towson University students. Liam couldn’t imagine that Eunice would find it intimidating.

Through the front window he saw Bundy striding toward him, a long-legged figure scissoring down the sidewalk in a way that didn’t seem particularly heartbroken. A moment later he was settling into the seat opposite Liam. “Where’s your lady?” he asked.

“She’ll be along.”

“See how it works: there’s just a limited amount of romance at any one time in the universe. Naomi dumps me; you get lucky. What’s her name?”

“Eunice,” Liam said.

All at once the name sounded vaguely embarrassing. The u sound reminded him of urine.

“So!” he said brightly. “Why’d Naomi break it off? Or would you rather not discuss it.”

“Not much to discuss. I come in yesterday from the gym, she’s talking on the phone in this low sexy voice. ‘I’m home!’ I call, and quick as a flash she says into the phone, ‘Fine, let’s make that two o’clock. Shampoo and a trim.’ In a voice that’s totally different, real efficient and bossy, like she’d use with her beautician. Then she slams down the receiver. So after she goes off to the kitchen, I press Redial. Man answers. Says, ‘Yo, babe. False alarm?’”

“Plenty of beauticians call people ‘babe,’” Liam announced with authority.

“But ‘False alarm’? Why’d he say that?”

“Uh, maybe…”

“It was her boyfriend, I tell you. The two of them making a fool of me. I tell you, I’ve been stupid . I say to him, ‘No, man. It wasn’t no false alarm.’ Then I go out to the kitchen. ‘Naomi, you got some explaining to do.’ Know what she says? Says, ‘Why you say that?’ Says, ‘That was just Ron at the beauty shop.’”

“Well. See there?” Liam said. “It was Ron at the beauty shop. And when she hung up in a hurry he assumed she must have some emergency, so when his phone rang again he said, ‘False alarm?’”

“How’d he know it was Naomi?” Bundy asked him.

“He had caller ID, of course.”

“Right. What’s a place of business want with caller ID?”

“It seems to me that caller ID would be very useful in business,” Liam said. He considered for a moment. “Interesting,” he said. “If not for modern technology-caller ID and Redial-you would still be a happy man.”

Bundy snorted. “I’d still be a blind man,” he told Liam. He accepted a menu from their waitress. Then he gave her a second look; she was young and blond and her waist narrowed in as gracefully as the stems on their water goblets. “How are you this fine evening?” he asked her.

“I’m good, thanks,” the waitress said. “Will a third party be joining you?”

Liam said, “Yes, she ought to be-”

Then here Eunice was, all at once, rushing in out of breath and saying, “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, I knew I’d never get away in time!”

True to her word, she was wearing black. Or her blouse, at least, was black-plain black cotton with big white buttons like Necco wafers. Around her neck hung a rope of jawbreaker-sized red beads that gave her a sweetly clownish air, and lacy silver earrings shaped like upside-down Christmas trees dangled a good three inches below her earlobes.

“Am I all right?” she asked Liam. He had risen as far as the booth would allow, and so had Bundy.

Liam said, “Yes, you look very-” but already she was hurtling on. She said, “It’s Mr. C.’s fault I’m late. He told me he had to go to the restroom and of course I couldn’t go with him so I said, ‘Fine, I’ll wait out front,’ and then he never came back so I said to this man going in, not even one of ours, I don’t know who he was, I said, ‘Excuse me, if you see an elderly gentleman could you please-’ Well, not to bore you with all the details but by the time I got home I had about two minutes to make it to the restaurant and so I had to change clothes in one split second, which is why I’m wearing what I’m wearing. I mean, I know I shouldn’t be wearing-”

“Eunice, this is my friend Bundy Braithwaite,” Liam said. “Eunice Dunstead.”

“How you doing,” Bundy said, still half standing. He wore a distinctly startled expression, it seemed to Liam.

Eunice said, “I wouldn’t ordinarily combine this blouse with this skirt.”

“Won’t you have a seat?” Liam asked her.

“My mother always tells me,” Eunice said, sitting down next to him, “she says, ‘Eunice, a person’s top half should never, ever be darker than the bottom half. It looks Mafioso,’ she says. And yet here I am-”

“It can if the two halves share some little bit of color in common,” Bundy said.

Eunice stopped speaking.

“Your skirt’s got squiggles of black,” he told her.

“Oh.”

“Case closed.”

Bundy was looking amused now, which Liam didn’t mind in the least. She was amusing; she was charmingly amusing, and she was letting her soft bare arm rest lightly against his own.

“Shall we order a bottle of wine?” he asked. He had an urge to celebrate, all at once.

But it emerged that Bundy didn’t want wine. He wanted hard liquor. “I am a man who’s been shafted,” he told Eunice after they’d placed their drink orders. “I don’t know if Liam mentioned.”

“He did say something about that.”

“So mere wine will just not cut it. My fiancée has dumped me flat. She claims I don’t trust her.”

Liam hadn’t heard this part. He said, “You just now admitted you don’t trust her.”

“I think these earrings are a little too much,” Eunice said.

Liam looked at them. He said, “They’re fine.”

“I can take them off, if you like.”

“They’re fine.”

“Are you listening to this, or not?” Bundy asked Eunice. “I’m telling how my heart was ripped out.”

Eunice said, “Oh, excuse me.” She straightened her back and folded her hands and looked at him obediently, like a child in a classroom.

“I come in from the gym yesterday,” Bundy began all over again, “I hear Naomi on the phone with her boyfriend. Most definitely it was her boyfriend. I could just tell, you know? By her voice. But when I mention something to that effect, she says no, it was her beautician. Right. Then she says well, okay, she only told me it was her beautician because she knew I would be jealous of anybody else. Fact is, she says, it was a guy from work. They were just discussing work. I say, ‘Oh, right.’ She says, ‘See what I mean? You don’t trust me! You don’t give me credit! You never, ever talk to me; you sit watching your dumb sports shows on TV, and then when I meet a man who will have a real conversation, you get all bent out of shape!’”

“Maybe you’re well rid of her,” Eunice told him.

“Say what?”

“Why do you even care? You want to watch TV; she wants to do something else; let her do it! Let her go off with her beautician!”

“He’s not her beautician.”

“Let her go off with whoever! Maybe every day she’s been thinking, What are we together for? Don’t I deserve something better than this? Someone who understands me? And meanwhile, you could be with some woman who enjoys watching sports on TV.”

“Huh,” Bundy said. He rocked back in his seat.

Liam was trying to figure out whether this applied to him in any way. Should he, for instance, buy a television set?

Eunice said, “But I don’t mean to interfere.”

“No, no…” Bundy said. Then he said, “Huh,” again.