Safire tipped her head and smiled.
In a moment, Darien was back with the last client and then took his leave. The man he brought owned a small business that was just beginning to break even. He was having trouble with a contractor hired to do some renovations for expansion. The job had been botched, but the contractor blamed the subcontractor and refused to fix it or pay for it to be fixed. Safire refocused and got through her interview. Then she packed up her things and waved to the student at the receptionist’s desk as she headed out.
There was life in the halls now. People were on their way to various activities. Rooms were being used for tutoring, workshops, music lessons, art class.
Safire paused near a room where small children were engaged in what seemed to be an art class. She listened for Darien’s voice, and when she heard it, she peeked inside. The scene was one of mild chaos. She saw empty chairs for bigger children at the back of the room. One was near her and partially obscured by the open door. She tiptoed inside and took a seat.
On observation, there was some order to the anarchy. Children with protective aprons tied about them and large goggles on had flat slabs of clay in front of them, which had been cut into four-inch tiles. Darien was instructing them on how to make decorations in the tile.
“They don’t all have to be the same. If you want them to be similar, that’s fine, but each will have some variation because these are handmade. Go to the front to look at the pictures if you still need more ideas.”
He walked around giving the littler ones assistance and commenting on the pieces being made by the bigger children. Ages seemed to range from four or five to ten or twelve.
“Look at Kathy’s. You can make holes in them if you’d like. That’s fine. If you make a mistake, you can build the tile back up, but make sure not to leave seams. A bit of water helps. If you engrave the tile by drawing a design in it, use water to soften the edges of the engraving.”
Darien was circling the room and was now in a position to see her. Safire wasn’t sure what to do. She remained where she was, and he might have missed her except that while he was busy giving comments to one of the older boys, one of the younger girls came over to Safire. She might have been five, and she approached with a slab of clay plastered to her hand.
“Are you our teacher, too?” the little girl asked.
Her query drew Darien’s attention, and he began watching them.
“No, little one, I’m visiting your class today.”
“Look,” the girl said, holding out her tile. “This one is a woman. I can’t get it.”
“That’s very good,” Safire said, “but if you draw in a dress here—” she used her finger to gently trace on the tile “—then it will look more like a woman, if that’s what you like. It can be anything you want, and it doesn’t have to look like what other people think a woman is.”
The little girl ran back to her space at the table and used a blunt stick to etch in the line that Safire had traced. Then she ran back to Safire.
“Look, look! How’s this? It’s a woman now.”
“That’s very nice. Are you going to decorate the dress? You could draw little flowers or—”
“I’m going to use the thing to make dots,” she said and took off again to her seat.
Darien kept circling the room and punctuating it with comments, but he nodded and smiled at Safire for a second, letting her know she had done okay. Safire was glad to have done a good job. She relaxed then and enjoyed the class until it was finished.
“Okay, all of your tiles should be nearly done. When you’re finished, bring your cardboard with all the tiles and put them on the shelf to dry. I’ll fire them in the kiln, and next class we paint them, so you’ll be wearing aprons and goggles again.” He laughed.
When class was over, parents or siblings came in to get the children, and they started filing out. Darien started on the cleanup and Safire got up to help.
“No way,” he said. “Not in that outfit. You’ll get this stuff all over you, unless you want me to wrap you in a plastic bag.” He chuckled.
She settled back down and watched him.
“You handled Lucy well. You know, we always need help in our after-school programs. You have to get fingerprinted and all that, but it can be fun. You can assist a teacher with a class, or you can start your own in whatever specialty you have. And it doesn’t have to center on little kids. We have programs for folks all the way up to adults.”
“I’ll have to consider the idea. It looks like fun.”
Actually, Safire had already made up her mind. She wanted to know more about working with young people—teaching them. Her desire to work with children had her torn between law—with a focus on children—and teaching—with a focus on literature. She was already exploring law, but Darien’s comment had just given her a way to explore teaching—working with young people directly. She was secretly thrilled by the possibility. But she didn’t want it to be Darien’s class, and she wasn’t planning to launch a new class as a way of getting to him. She would call the director the next day and make arrangements on her own. Darien might not even have to know.
When he was finished, Darien turned to her. “Since you stayed through my class, I’d like to invite you out for dinner.”
“That sounds good, but let me call my girls. We had talked about a club tonight.”
“While you do that, I’ll go put things back in my office and collect what I need.”
Safire made a quick call and was waiting for Darien when he returned.
Darien knew of an Italian place nearby where he could order vegetarian lasagna, so they went there for dinner. Safire had regular lasagna. She teased Darien with a forkful, and he teased her with a forkful of his.
“It’s much sexier when you tease me,” Darien said. “But no meat for me.”
“Don’t you miss it?”
“Sometimes. But I feel healthier this way. Only my mom can really tempt me on that front.”
“Do you ever surrender to temptation?” Safire asked, turning her head and looking at him suggestively out of the corner of her eye.
“I’m not sure which question to answer—the one that you asked or the one that you implied.”
They both laughed.
Over dinner they talked about his work at the Heritage Center and her work at Benson and Hines and where they overlapped. It went so well that they decided afterward to go to a place called Aunt Joe’s, which had wine and coffee as well as foods and desserts. It had music videos playing on monitors and even dancing, though the floor was small.
Over his chai tea latte and her merlot, they split a piece of carrot cake.
“I guess this answers your question about me being a strict vegetarian.”
“How so?”
“Latte and carrot cake—milk and eggs.”
“You must have a sweet tooth,” Safire speculated, thinking again of chocolate and how sweet this man would be on the palate.
“I do,” Darien said. “But I don’t do this often, and when I cook, I use substitutes.”
“So you do give in to temptation sometimes.” Safire winked at Darien and smiled, wondering if she could get her name added to the menu.
Suddenly, Safire asked Darien to dance. A slow song had come on, and she didn’t want to miss a chance for a slow dance with this man.
There