We got a parking spot in front, a bad omen to my mind. In Chicago, the enjoyment of a restaurant seemed inversely related to how far away you had to park. To me, walking a few blocks or more usually meant good food and service.
“How do you know this place?” I asked Michael. He opened my door and helped me from the car. Scott had never done such a thing.
“The owner is an old friend. In fact, he might invest in my restaurant.”
“So, I better be on good behavior?”
Michael grinned, his hand still light on my arm. “You don’t have to impress anyone, Kate. You’re already marvelous.”
I flushed deeply. In my recent existence, compliments were as rare as a solar eclipse.
The door was a black industrial thing, scarred and nicked. The hallway was dark with low-hanging ceilings, the kind you might see in a tenement house. But when we reached the end of the hall and Michael threw open the inside door for me, the world opened up. The space was small and looked like a moonlit courtyard. The ceiling was painted with vines and a half moon and decorated with strings of tiny lights. The tables were covered with crisp white linen. Spotless silverware and vases of vivid blue irises adorned the tables. Violin music twisted elegantly through the room.
A man in a black suit approached us. “ Benvenuto, Michael!” he said loudly.
He and Michael kissed on both cheeks. “Tomaso,” Michael said. “How are you?” Michael’s words seemed strangely overenunciated.
They exchanged a few words, and I noted the man had an odd way of speaking, as if he had something in his mouth, but then he was clearly Italian, so possibly it was a language thing.
Michael turned to me and introduced me as “A new but very dear friend.”
I smiled and shook Tomaso’s hand. “So nice to meet you.”
As I commented on the restaurant, Tomaso bent his head slightly, his eyes intent on my mouth, his face close to mine. I almost pulled back in surprise.
Tomaso caught my expression. “I am sorry,” he said. “I read lips.”
“Oh, you’re…” I stopped short of uttering the word deaf, afraid such a term might not be PC somehow.
Tomaso and Michael both broke into laughs. “I don’t hear so good,” Tomaso said. He pointed to his ears, making Michael laugh harder.
“He’s one hundred percent deaf,” Michael said. “But be careful, because he’ll read your lips across the room.”
“Only with friends who I suspect might say something unkind about me.”
Tomaso led us to a table near the center of the room and pulled out a chair for me. “Champagne to start?” he said.
Michael looked at me. I nodded.
Michael and I began with champagne and moved to Chianti. After the glass of Merlot we’d already had at home, I immediately caught a wine buzz. I enjoyed the slight fuzziness of my brain and the electric stars over my head. Michael told me how he’d met Tomaso in Italy when he was still working in the pharmaceutical business.
“That’s how you met Liza, too, isn’t it?” I asked.
Michael nodded, pouring me more Chianti. “Liza is an exceptional young woman.”
I chuckled. “She’s not so young anymore. Neither of us is.”
“Well, you’re both young to me.”
There was a moment of silence. This was the first time we’d acknowledged our age disparity.
“I’m sorry,” Michael said. “Is that not appropriate first-date banter? I have no idea anymore.” He gave me a shy smile that melted me.
I laughed. “I can’t remember either.”
“Vive la différence?”
“I’ll toast to that.” When I thought about it, I really didn’t mind being younger than Michael. In fact, I was enjoying it. He’d already introduced me to a new person and a new place, all within the span of half a date. And I could tell that Michael was filled with such people and places—he had an air of worldly experience that appealed immensely.
“So, you and Liza have known each other since you were kids?” Michael asked.
“Seventh grade.”
“You two must have made quite the pair.”
“Yes, hormones and the power of a new best friend will make you do just about anything when you’re thirteen.” I told Michael of the time I’d dyed Liza’s normally auburn hair jet-black because she wanted to try out for the role of Velma in the school’s production of Chicago, and the time we stole her brother’s bike and accidentally rode it into a pond.
“Her brother, Colby,” Michael said. “He’s no longer around, right?”
I shook my head. “Colby died when Liza and I were seniors in high school. Car accident. Drunk driving on the part of the other guy. I’ve always hated that, aside from the obvious reasons, because it seems almost a clichéd way to die, and Colby was so special.”
I thought of Liza’s older brother—a tall, big guy. He’d shared Liza’s smattering of freckles, but his hair had been a darker auburn, and he had a crooked way of smiling, one side up. His eyes were devious and fun. We both adored him, looked up to him. He was a few years older than us, while all my own brothers were much older and long gone from the house.
After Colby died, something crumpled in Liza. I didn’t know how to help her, and this failing of mine was one of the reasons I grabbed the opportunity to participate in an exchange program in France for six months. I left Liza alone, hoping that when I came back she might be better and we could return to the way we’d been for years. It was a coward’s way out, and I still feel guilty about it, particularly when Liza was the one who got me through my divorce. But we had been young when Colby died, and my time away seemed to have worked. Liza was never exactly the same—how could she be?—yet by the time I returned, she had lost the sad tinge to her eyes and the slow way of moving.
I took a sip of Chianti and looked at Michael. He was studying me, almost the way Tomaso might if he was trying to read my lips.
“ You’re special, Kate,” he said.
I opened my mouth to protest, to say I certainly hadn’t felt special for a very long time. But I stopped, because I realized that something had shifted over the last week since I’d met Michael. Instead of protesting, instead of telling this man that there was nothing unique about me at all, I smiled.
“Thank you,” I said. And then before I could think twice, I leaned across the table and kissed him.
5
Moscow, Russia
T he day after his date with Kate, Michael Waller entered the passport control area of the Sheremetyevo airport. He reached into his carry-on bag and removed a Russian passport, then he got in the line marked for Russian citizens. It was only minutely shorter than the massive, slow-moving line for foreigners. Some things about Russia would never change.
Michael lifted and dropped his shoulders to release the muscle tension and rolled his neck to try to shake away the headache he felt coming. He simply wasn’t the traveler he used to be. Rarely had he noticed his age all these years crisscrossing continents, but now he felt all of his fifty-five years.
He thought then of Kate. God, how unlikely that he should be thinking of her. That he should be thinking of any woman. He’d learned from his divorce that his life did not lend itself to marriage. While secrecy was everything in his business, he simply couldn’t stomach