Eventually, I reached under her shirt to run my fingers up her spine, to massage the small of her back and then to reach under her panties to gently squeeze her closer to me. She drew up against me, our eyelashes practically touching. I kissed her nose and cheekbones softly. I wanted to say something, but was afraid that anything I might say would be overwhelming to her. Instead, I pulled her tighter and kissed her face and the nape of her neck.
I could feel Iris’ body go slack as she put her forehead down on my shoulder. Knowing immediately
that she didn’t want me to continue, I pulled my hand above the waistband of her panties and rested it on her hip, tilting my head to nestle hers.
“Do you think you could just hold me?” she said.
I moved my face down to meet hers. She wore yet another new expression, one that I couldn’t entirely interpret at that moment.
“Anytime you want,” I said.
She touched my face again and then rested her forehead against mine. Without saying another word, she pulled the sheets on top of us and we settled onto a pillow.
“Can you sleep like this?” she asked.
“It might take me a few minutes,” I said, smiling, “but, yeah.”
She kissed me one more time softly and then said, “Thanks.” We repositioned ourselves so that her head was resting on my chest. Surprisingly, I fell asleep almost immediately.
I awoke in the morning when Iris moved off me. She was getting out of bed when she noticed me stirring. She leaned back and kissed me on the cheek.
“Did you sleep okay?” she asked.
“Extremely well, actually.”
“I’m glad I didn’t keep you up. I’m insanely hungry for some reason. I think I’m going to make waffles. Sound okay to you?”
“Waffles would be great,” I said.
She smiled and turned to get off the bed before turning back to me. “Last night meant a lot to me,” she said. “All of it. Is it okay if we give this some time?”
“Of course it is,” I said.
She reached over and squeezed my hand before leaving the room. In that simple gesture, I understood that this wasn’t going to be like the last two times.
And yes, we both needed to wait a bit to understand where we were going to go from here.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
This Isn’t a Job Interview
When Howard Crest called to tell me that he had a potential buyer coming in to see the store, he provided all the inspiration I needed to finish the display cases and to install and merchandise them. It required staying up most of the night, but it was likely I was going to be doing that anyway. I’d grown somewhat accustomed to having something to think about after seeing Iris and I certainly had an entire sleepless night’s worth of thinking in store after our last visit. That I could make productive use of the time was a side benefit. That all of the thinking wasn’t going to provide me with any kind of resolution was a given. I felt simultaneously more and less in control of my fate with Iris. More, because she seemed to be inviting me into the process. Less, because her doing so gave Chase a more prominent place in the room in my mind.
The cases, on the other hand, looked great. Simply removing the white Formica and replacing it with oak would have been dramatic enough. But I was genuinely pleased with the work I’d done. After a few false starts, this long-abandoned skill had come back to me readily. And while I hadn’t been doing
anything like this, I’d been doing enough with my hands over the past decade that the extra ten years of experience seemed to make me smarter and more efficient in the workshop. Jenna, one of the three new people I’d hired, helped me stock the shelves. We started with the new merchandise I’d ordered, which had been sitting in the back room awaiting the cases. But even some of the dusty old items my father had been selling (or not selling) for years looked better in this new setting.
“Big improvement,” Jenna said when we stepped back to look at what we’d done. Since she had only started a few days before, she was speaking specifically about the displays. But I wanted to believe that she was talking about the entire minor renovation I’d given the store. Face Melters on the candy shelves. Financial and Men’s Health sections in the magazine rack. A four-foot section of Dave Kringer cards. HuggaGhouls. Mexican tiles. Handmade coffee mugs. Jon McLaughlin on the iPod. Improvement indeed, at least in my eyes, though I wasn’t sure what my father would think of it.
The previous week had been the largest nonholiday week in the store’s history. I’d actually needed to call in backup staff on Saturday. I wanted to believe that the work I’d done had contributed to that, though it could very well have been because of the great tourist summer Amber was having. Regardless, as I looked around, I was pleased.
Howard came in with his client about an hour later. Pat Maple owned several stationery stores in Westchester County. He seemed to be a couple of years younger than my father, but he was decidedly
more entrepreneurial. Within the first ten minutes of our meeting, he’d explained to me why he’d chosen each of his six locations and who his target customers were.
“I’ve got great spots,” he said. “Scarsdale, Larchmont, Rye. People with lots of money who don’t mind spending four bucks for a three-subject spiral bound. We don’t have as much – ” he glanced around him “ – different stuff as you have here. I tend to think you stick to the basics: school supplies, cards, candy, newspapers. But I guess this is a different kind of neighborhood, huh?”
“People seem to like the other stuff around here,” I said.
“Yeah, well from what Howard’s told me, your old man has done okay with this place, so I guess he knew what he was doing. Sorry to hear about his heart attack, by the way.”
“Thanks.”
We walked around the store and Pat asked me a number of intelligent questions. I’d prepared so many details about the store over the past few months in expectation of a debriefing that hadn’t come. It was refreshing to talk to someone who wanted this information, even if I got the impression that he was sneering at the carving on my display cases.
“We’re not exactly around the corner from Scarsdale up here,” I said. “What made you come to Amber?”
“The daughter. She’s twenty-four and she’s been out of school for a few years and still doesn’t know what she wants to do with her life. She likes it around here. I figure I can install her in this area if I find a
store I like. I guess she’ll want to come look at this herself. She’ll probably like all the things you have in here. She’s like that. Tell me about the water problem.”
“It’s not a problem. Some pipes gave way long before they were supposed to. We did extensive work on it. Extensive. I have all the documentation.”
“I’m sure you do. You been running this place for your old man long?”
“Just a few months.”
“You seem to know your way around.”
“Grew up with it.”
“Ah,” he said, laughing. “It’s in the blood. I wish my daughter was more like that. What’re you gonna do after the place sells.”
“I really haven’t decided yet.”
“Well if you wanna come down to Westchester, I might have a store for you to run.” He laughed again, though it wasn’t clear what he was laughing at. “But this isn’t a job interview. Let’s go look at the books.”
We spent another forty-five minutes together. There was little question that Pat Maple knew his business and when he saw that some of the toy and gift merchandise sold especially well, I could almost see him recalibrating. Maybe the Mexican tiles would survive after all.
As we walked out of the office, he said, “Can Patrice come to take a look tomorrow?”
“Yeah, of course.”
He nodded and pulled out a cell phone to call his daughter. Howard Crest smiled at me and I tilted my head in his direction. While it certainly seemed that Pat liked the store and that this was the kind of
playpen he’d been looking for, I wasn’t about to get overly excited until we had an offer on the table.
That afternoon, Tyler walked into the store carrying a bag of truffles from the chocolate shop.
“You have to stop coming in here on your off days,” I said when I saw him.
“Just a quick stop, I promise. You said you were going to put the displays in today and I wanted to come by to take a look at them and to give you these.” He handed me the truffles. “Congratulations.”
“Thanks,” I said, touched by the gesture. “The cases look pretty good, huh?”
“They look terrific. You’re good at this. Maybe the next profession?”
“I’ll add it to the list. Hey, a guy came in to look at the store today. He seemed kind of interested.”
“Great. Time to go west, young man.”
“Well, I’m not so sure about that anymore, but that’s a story for another day.”
“Sounds like we’ll be having an extra drink tomorrow night.” He looked around the store and I could see a mix of emotions on his face. Pride. Satisfaction. Maybe a hint of nostalgia, though I might have been imagining that one. Then he flipped his eyes back to me and pointed to the bag. “Those are champagne truffles.”
I opened the bag and tilted it in his direction. “Want one?”
“Actually, the truffle part is for you. The champagne part is for me.”
“Meaning?”
“I got a job in the City.”
I pulled the bag back and threw an arm around his
shoulders. “That’s great. That place you really wanted?”
“They were still trying to make a decision as of this morning. And then out of nowhere I got a call from one of the guys I saw that first trip after graduation. The guy at that independent marketing firm? Something opened up and he’d been holding my resume on his desk since I went in to talk to him. I’m starting in three weeks.”
“That’s fantastic. I’m really happy for you.” I paused and threw him a semifacetious look of disappointment. “Even though you’re abandoning me.”
Tyler laughed, though his eyes traveled down to the floor as he did so. “I’m not abandoning you. That guy who came in today is going to make a great offer and soon both of us will be on to new conquests.”
I put my arm around him again and walked him toward the back of the store. “Yeah, you’re still abandoning me, but I’ll pretend that what you just said makes me feel better. Let’s go eat some chocolate and you can tell me all about it and then I can tell you how you’re going to hire your own replacement.”
I closed the door to the back office and we talked for nearly a half hour while Jenna guarded the store up front. I was very happy for Tyler and I had certainly known that this moment was in the offing, but I couldn’t help feeling a little saddened by the fact that he was leaving. It wasn’t about losing him as an employee. The store didn’t need anyone nearly as competent as he was in order to run effectively. It was about losing his presence, especially on closing nights. For as long as I stayed in Amber after he left, it was going to be emptier without him.
While we talked, Howard called. Even before having his daughter come to see the store, Pat Maple was making an offer. It was a lowball and not one that Howard was asking me to take to my father, but he was certain that Maple was serious. We discussed strategy for a short while – it was the first time I’d been impressed with the way Howard’s mind worked – and then he hung up to call Maple back.
When I got off the phone, I told Tyler what was happening.
“Looks like you’d better start packing, Hugh,” he said.
That certainly seemed to be the case. The clock was ticking down on my days in this town. That meant that all notions about where to go next would need to stop being fanciful ones.
It was daunting and it was stimulating.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Planning Ahead
The distance from which I saw Iris’ expression after our very first kiss ten years ago was no more than twelve inches. It might as well have been twenty miles. Throughout the spring, though, that distance continued to expand. I had never been entirely sure whether this was a product of my imagination or if Iris was in fact as reluctant to face me as I now was to face her. I felt a combination of guilt, validation, and frustration over the events of that afternoon. Much as I tried to convince myself that I hadn’t betrayed Chase in any way, this was by far the most significant thing I’d ever done to him behind his back. Before this, the most selfish act I’d performed to his detriment was giving myself the largest slice of pizza in the box. But at the same time, I took some consolation from the fact that Iris had at least felt enough of the things about me that I was feeling about her to allow the kiss to happen. This spoke to me on a number of levels: I hadn’t imposed myself upon her, she’d told me that I meant something to her, and kissing her had been even more thrilling than I’d expected it to be. But this was more disconcerting than the
fantasies that preceded it. Kissing Iris was so overwhelmingly powerful, so soul satisfying, that it would forever change the meaning of the act or the interaction that led to the act. Kissing Iris felt the way it did because it was Iris. And yet Iris was inextricably linked with the only person in the world who meant more to me than she did. As a result, I was compelled to come down less often on weekends and to spend less time with the two of them when I was in Amber. Everything was easier that way.
At the wedding of my mother’s goddaughter, however, I had little choice but to be with them for an entire evening. I actually considered begging off with the excuse of a term paper (I’d used the one about my “independent studies” too often already), but Lisa’s family and ours had been close since before I was born and at the time it seemed ridiculous to change all of my plans because of my brother and his girlfriend. So the three of us drove together in my car and I made as little eye contact with Iris as possible without being obvious.
That doesn’t mean that I didn’t look at her. I found myself taking every opportunity to glance over at her in the reception hall while I was engaged in other conversation. Iris was wearing a strapless navy dress that ended just below the knee and she looked spectacular. Though she didn’t know many people at the wedding, she carried herself gracefully through conversations with relative strangers on the occasions when Chase was playing with someone else. Admiring her, I found it impossible not to think about how we had been together or the conversation that had led up to it. Just as it was impossible for me to fool
myself into thinking that what I was feeling for her wasn’t real desire.