He bent over her. Perhaps he would touch her shoulder; her skin tingled in anticipation, and she believed she could distinguish each freckle and pore, and that, after, she’d be able to recall the exact spot on which his fingers had rested.
But he straightened. “You’ll be a natural on the water.” With his shoe he tapped the glass he’d left behind, making it ring. “You might take that, in case anyone else bothers you.”
That he’d been watching her so long surprised her. She’d been about to give him her phone number, which was unlisted again, but by the time she recovered he’d turned and walked away. She started to reach out after him, stifled the gesture, took up her hat, stood, and smoothed her dress while she watched him go.
The wedding photographer had come upon them and snapped a few shots. He caught the motion of her reaching hand, and though Jean never saw the picture, Claudia did, yet it was the one he’d taken earlier, just before Steven stepped away, that Claudia would always remember. It showed the two of them in profile, Jean seated on the grass and Steven looming above her, the long swell of the lake rising between them, their faces blotted out by the sun. The barge with the dancers had just floated into the top of the frame, black because it was backlit, and it seemed to be a mistake in the photograph or a flaw in the negative, a dead spot. This was the one picture from her own wedding that Claudia never forgot.
She threw out the print early on, even before her divorce, but its image appeared to her quite often, especially during the warm days of late spring when the spicy vanilla scent of viburnum drifted into her open bedroom window and the afternoon sunlight slanted across the maple floorboards, turning them a butterscotch orange. At night, dreaming, she saw herself taking the picture, though of course that was impossible. When it had been snapped, she’d been far out on the lake, dancing over the placid water.
HE DID NOT PHONE ON MONDAY or Tuesday. Wednesday, determined not to think about him, Jean left her office at lunch for a new Thai restaurant across town, then hurried back without eating—despising herself for doing so—convinced she’d miss his call; Claudia must have told him where she worked. Thursday she decided that the champagne had given him false courage and that he’d come to regret his boldness, and by Friday she was certain that his change of heart no longer bothered her. In celebration, she wore a new perfume to work, Savoir, which to her seemed both subtle and distinctive—one noticed it only if one stood close to her, but then its crisp citrus scent was unmistakable. She found herself sniffing the insides of her wrists to take it in.
In the early afternoon, a slack time, she doodled over the cover of a folder on her desk, and, studying the markings, saw that she’d written Steven’s name dozens of times, the initial double loops of the S, the jagged t, the near circles of the vowels. She called the receptionist to ask if anyone had left her a message, and after being told for the second time that no one had, she began to hate her office.
It was spare and elegant, nearly bare of decoration, and she’d fought to keep it that way, throwing out the occasional plant or poster coworkers gave her around holidays, and refusing her boss’s standing offer to replace the simple wooden and metal trestle table she worked on with something “more refined.” From Bonnie, she knew, that would mean a desk both massive and ornate. But now the room’s cell-like qualities oppressed her: it was small, it smelled of chemicals, and it had no window, nothing to catch her eye and distract her restless mind from turning in on itself. Some of her old work hung on the walls—her first successful ads, framed in unfinished wood—and she understood now that all of it was stupid, obvious and shallow and dull, a poor imitation of work others had done earlier and better. What was there in it that distinguished it, that distinguished her? Nothing. That she’d thought it fit to mount galled her, she could imagine it being laughed at.
She tried to recall the scent of crushed grass, the feel of champagne bubbles bursting against the roof of her mouth, the color of Steven’s eyes, but all of the sensations were faded and indistinct, like images in sun-bleached pictures. Rubbing the spot on her knee where he had touched her, she smudged her blouse with a drafting pencil, and when she flicked at the leaden smear to clean it, managed only to work it deeper into the fabric. Cursing, she turned back to her desk, where the comps for the Pettigrew account—due on Monday and almost finished—were stacked in leaning piles. They depressed her. Fat, clumsy bodies, a nearly invisible product logo, sloppily done letters; she was meant to create the ads, not execute them, and here was the all-too-obvious proof.
She folded one of the drawings in half, in quarters, in eighths, and she was tearing it neatly along the folds when she smelled patchouli and looked up to find Bonnie standing in the doorway, holding a stack of files. Patchouli had a dusty, androgynous smell that Jean hated; it reminded her of the attics she’d played in as a child, and of her Aunt Sally.
“Plans this weekend, Jean?” Bonnie said, miming a knock and entering.
Jean had disliked Bonnie upon first meeting her, a feeling whose origins she traced to the scent and whose strength had never abated, and now she watched Bonnie stop in front of the desk and put on a smile. Being pleasant was something Bonnie was working at, remembering to ask after her coworkers’ lives before launching into whatever it was she really wanted. Jean had seen the tattered management book stuffed into Bonnie’s purse: Connections to Success, The Human Verbal Touch Is Business Magic.
“Yes. I’m afraid so,” Jean said. “I do have plans.”
“Oh really?” Bonnie lowered the files to her side and fiddled with her necklace, a gaudy silver thing whose pendants rattled at her touch. Jean guessed from the awkward pause it was not the answer Bonnie had expected. “What might those be?”
Haven’t got to the “Workers Who Give Surprising Answers” chapter yet, have we? Jean thought. She swiveled in her chair.
“Sailing.” She’d been preparing to let people know all week, and it pleased her to hear the word come out sounding so smoothly indifferent.
“Sailing?”
“Yes.”
“Down to the river? At the place with lessons?” Bonnie sat, face brightening, and Jean remembered that Bonnie had given her a flyer the year before from an outfit along the esplanade that offered lessons. “RANK (BUT NOT RANK!) BEGINNERS TO ABLE-BODIED SEA PEOPLE!” Who wrote these things? she wondered. Bonnie had wanted the whole office to go, as a way to bond with her, the new boss; Jean alone had demurred.
“God no,” Jean said. She wanted to look out a window, but she stared instead at the blank wall opposite her open door and picked out strands of color glinting in the textured paper that covered it. Forest green, sky blue, perhaps a bit of indigo. “Nothing like that. On a friend’s boat.”
Bonnie leaned toward Jean’s desk, smiling, red lipstick slanting across one canine. The files were in her lap now, forgotten. “An old friend?” Her voice was lowered, her head cocked, as if Jean might whisper her response.
“New.”
Bonnie raised her eyebrows, expectant, but Jean smiled back resolutely, unwilling to say more. A phone began to ring in one of the outer offices, four rings, five rings, six, and after it stopped Bonnie sat back and tapped the files on her thighs with the fingernails of both hands. “Well,” she said. “Sounds exciting. I won’t weigh you down with these.” She winked and gathered up the files and stood. “You’ll have plenty to do, I guess.”
“Thank you,” Jean said. “And if you don’t mind, I’d like to leave a little early today.”
Bonnie paused before answering, and Jean leaned forward and whispered, “Supplies.”
Bonnie’s face flushed, probably with pleasure, all the way up to the fine lines around her eyes, the added color causing her foundation makeup to look caked.
“Fine, Jean, go right ahead. I’ve often said you should make more time for yourself. Take the whole afternoon if you need it.”
At the door she turned, and Jean’s