He reached into the milk case for a couple gallons of two-percent. “Got to give them some damn thing to talk about.”
“Casanova of Garfield County. How many woman have you taken for a spin through the grocery store there, Mr. Singer?”
“Three or four the last ten years or so. Counting you.”
She hadn’t expected honesty. “Really?”
“Guess I don’t get out much.”
She felt the tension. The disconnect, the . . . subtext. Was this a vacation or a seduction? Was she following her nose or her libido? She had recently trimmed her bangs, and couldn’t stop trying to hook the newly absent hair over one ear. The movement toward her ear, then the hesitation, had become a tic, a tell. She was aware of how it betrayed her nervousness but couldn’t stop herself.
They stood in a brief line at the register. “Hey, Grace. Looking well.” He leaned across the conveyer to give the cashier an awkward, one-armed hug. “This is Chloe. Came all the way from New York to see how a Montana ranch works. Chloe, Grace here used to teach me English back in high school.”
If it weren’t for the hug, Chloe would have thought Grace a man. Short, thin as weeds, white hair going yellow, stray whiskers curling around her ears, the same faded jeans as Singer, the same polyester, pearl-buttoned shirt washed to near translucency. “I never taught you a thing, Eli. Unless it was spelling. You never could spell your way out of a paper bag.”
Chloe said, “He’s a magnificent poet, though, isn’t he?”
Grace, bagging their milk, snorted. “I don’t know about magnificent. But he could sure write the piss out of a term paper.” She handed Singer the bag. “You ask me, poetry should rhyme. Robert Frost, William Blake. Everything else is just . . .” she waved her hands. “Anyway, meetcha, Chloe. Eli, glad you got somebody to talk to down there on that ranch, especially these days.” She shook her head. “Good Lord, the things people will say.”
It stopped her. These days?
Singer was already heading out the door. “Thanks, Grace. We’ll see you around.” He didn’t quite glance back. “Coming?”
She’d had sex for the first time when she was seventeen. That was, what . . .? Eleven years and thirteen men ago. God, just exhausting to think about. So many first glasses of wine, so many fumbling kisses goodnight. Flirtations and numbers exchanged, first rustlings of cotton and denim, the awkward unzippings, the smell of latex and the inadvertent groans and snorts, farts and sighs. No disease or pregnancy, thank God, just her own increasingly jaded heart.
All the different varieties of men—clothes horses, computer nerds, accountants—and they all dissembled in precisely the same manner. But the act itself? In a secular world, it was her one sacrament. The notion of opening yourself to another human being. A literal opening, of course, but metaphorical as well. The spread of knees and thighs, the unpeeling of skepticism, of irony. It was not to be taken lightly.
He’d tried to clean up for her. In the thick dust of the fireplace mantel, she noted fresh swipes of a rag; the smell of wood polish. She was touched by the effort, amused by the futility of it. His drapes were smudged with dog hair, and a cobweb waved ceiling to lampshade.
She hadn’t expected wealth, but the poverty took her by surprise. In the living room, a television but no satellite. An ancient VCR the size of a hassock. No microwave in the kitchen. An overstuffed easy chair and, through a cracked door, an unmade bed and computer monitor, a small desk. And books. Everywhere, books. This, and only this, felt familiar. On the windowsills, tossed askew on the floor, stacked into twisting towers. She found a hardcover of Station Island. “Are you a Seamus Heaney fan?” Dog-eared, underlined, it was inscribed to Eli Singer. “With admiration.” Fifty miles from the nearest stop light, here was a personal inscription from a Nobel laureate.
They ate in his kitchen. She’d brought several expensive bottles of wine; downplayed their importance even while hoping he might notice. “They’re maybe a little bruised, but hey, it’s booze, right?” Her and her goddamned insecurities. His table wobbled on metal legs, laminate veneer peeling. She looked down at baked potatoes and asparagus, a buffalo steak swimming in red juice.
He tucked a cloth napkin into his shirt collar. “We got a neighbor raises buffalo. Don’t tell anybody, but I’ve gotten to where I like it over beef.”
It was so quiet, she could hear the candle burning. The wind belled at the window screens. “Smells great.” She put a small piece in her mouth. Chewed. Glanced up. She couldn’t stop being startled by the blue eyes.
He slurped carelessly at the wine.
She said, “That’s a ’98 Malconsorts.” What she didn’t mention? Hundred and twenty fucking dollars.
“French?”
“Burgundy. It’s not a La Tache, but it’s not bad, right?” She swirled her glass. “See how it opens up?”
He wiped his mouth, pretended interest in the label. “Bottle looks fancy enough.”
“Uh huh.” So that didn’t go well.
The scrape of cutlery on dishes, the tick of a grandfather clock. “What’s the story with that funny little town you’ve got there?”
“Funny?”
“I mean, does everybody just wake up in the morning all excited for another day in Jordan, Montana?”
“There’s good people in that town.”
“Yeah, and I’m not . . . it’s just. What do people do?”
“Same as whatever anybody does.”
“See, now. No. Now you’re offended.”
He found his snoose can. “People are just people. That’s my opinion. Good ones, bad ones. Scrape out a living here instead of there. Every decision has a price tag. Don’t assume people are less than you just because they made decisions you wouldn’t have made.”
“That’s the most you’ve talked all day. I think I punched a button.”
He stood up with his plate. “Ice cream?”
His living room was narrow as a rail car. A floral-patterned couch and tarnished-brass floor lamps and family photos framed in stamped leather. Such an odd little house. They went from wine to whiskey, from the kitchen to his couch, a cushion’s worth of space between them. He played LPs on an ancient turntable. Dave Brubeck, Coltrane, Lefty Frizzell. He held the vinyl reverently with fingertips. She said, “New York’s got all these vintage record shops showing up. It’s kind of a thing. You get me a list, I’ll go shopping.” Not quite drunk, she felt a tension between them. A guitar string of eventual sex vibrating in a rising note. If they were sleeping with each sooner or later, why not sooner? She stood, touching the arm of the couch to steady herself. “I should get to bed.” Her fingertips went to his shoulder, the back of his neck.
His hand briefly covered hers. And if he’d kept it there . . .? But he took it away. “Good night, Chloe.”
She’d brought her own coffee beans (a favorite roaster in Brooklyn), and the next morning she sat with a mug on his back porch, eyes closed against the sun. Fifty yards off, blackbirds flitted through the reeds of a stock pond. A killdeer tiptoed around the fringe. Singer’s dogs dozed beside her. He’d said, “Dante’s the big one, but Beckett’s the one you got to watch out for. Just give him a kick if he gets too close.” They were cow dogs, inclined to bite, but she found them charming. She missed dogs. Her fingers found Beckett’s head, his ears.
If she lived here, she would take up painting. She would bake, she would read Dostoyevsky. She would