As promised, the students were boisterous. A running string of jokes, plenty of harmless interest in Elizabeth, and two beers each, which added to the raucous spirit. After dinner, Thibault and Elizabeth went to the restroom to wash up. When she came back out, she looped her arm through his.
“You ready to shag?” she asked suggestively.
“I’m not sure. How do you do it?”
“Learning to shag dance is like learning to be from the South. It’s learning to relax while you hear the ocean and feel the music.”
“I take it you’ve done it before.”
“Once or twice,” she said with false modesty.
“And you’re going to teach me?”
“I’ll be your partner. But the lesson starts at nine.”
“The lesson?”
“Every Saturday night. That’s why it’s so crowded. They offer a lesson for beginners while the regulars take a break, and we’ll do what they tell us. It starts at nine.”
“What time is it?”
She glanced at her watch. “It’s time for you to learn to shag.”
Elizabeth was a much better dancer than she’d suggested, which thankfully made him better on the dance floor, too. But the best part of dancing with her was the almost electrical charge he felt whenever they touched and the smell of her when he twirled her out of his arms, a mixture of heat and perfume. Her hair grew wild in the humid air, and her skin glowed with perspiration, making her seem natural and untamed. Every now and then, she’d gaze at him as she spun away, her lips parted in a knowing smile, as if she knew exactly the effect she was having on him.
When the band decided to take a break, his first instinct was to leave the floor with the rest of the crowd, but Elizabeth stopped him when the recorded strains of “Unforgettable” by Nat King Cole began to waft through the speakers. She looked up at him then, and he knew what he had to do.
Without speaking, he slipped one arm behind her back and reached for her hand, then tucked it into position. He held her gaze as he pulled her close, and ever so slowly, they began to move to the music, turning in slow circles.
Thibault was barely conscious of other couples joining the dance floor around them. As the music played in the background, Elizabeth leaned into him so close that he could feel each of her slow, languid breaths. He closed his eyes as she put her head on his shoulder, and in that instant, nothing else mattered. Not the song, not the place, not the other couples around him. Only this, only her. He gave himself over to the feel of her body as it pressed against him, and they moved slowly in small circles on the sawdust-strewn floor, lost in a world that felt as though it had been created for just the two of them.
As they drove home on darkened roads, Thibault held her hand and felt her thumb tracking slowly over his skin in the quiet of the car.
When he pulled into his driveway a little before eleven, Zeus was still lying on the porch and raised his head as Thibault turned off the ignition. He turned to face her.
“I had a wonderful time tonight,” he murmured. He expected her to say the same, but she surprised him with her response.
“Aren’t you going to invite me in?” she suggested.
“Yes,” he said simply.
Zeus sat up as Thibault opened Elizabeth’s door and stood as Elizabeth got out. His tail started to wag.
“Hey, Zeus,” Elizabeth called out.
“Come,” Thibault commanded, and the dog bounded from the porch and ran toward them. He circled them both, his cries sounding like squeaks. His mouth hung half-open in a grin as he preened for their attention.
“He missed us,” she said, bending lower. “Didn’t you, big boy?” As she bent lower, Zeus licked her face. Straightening up, she wrinkled her nose before wiping her face. “That was gross.”
“Not for him,” Thibault said. He motioned toward the house. “You ready? I have to warn you not to expect too much.”
“Do you have a beer in the fridge?”
“Yes.”
“Then don’t worry about it.”
They made their way up the steps of the house. Thibault opened the door and flipped the switch: A single floor lamp cast a dim glow over an easy chair near the window. In the center of the room stood a coffee table decorated only with a pair of candles; a medium-size couch faced it. Both the couch and the easy chair were covered in matching navy blue slipcovers, and behind them, a bookshelf housed a small collection of books. An empty magazine rack along with another floor lamp completed the minimalist furnishings.
Still, it was clean. Thibault had made sure of that earlier in the day. The pine floors had been mopped, the windows washed, the room dusted. He disliked clutter and despised dirt. The endless dust in Iraq had only reinforced his neatnik tendencies.
Elizabeth took in the scene before walking into the living room.
“I like it,” she said. “Where did you get the furniture?”
“It came with the place,” he said.
“Which explains the slipcovers.”
“Exactly.”
“No television?”
“No.”
“No radio?”
“No.”
“What do you do when you’re here?”
“Sleep.”
“And?”
“Read.”
“Novels?”
“No,” he said, then changed his mind. “Actually, a couple. But mostly biographies and histories.”
“No anthropology texts?”
“I have a book by Richard Leakey,” he said. “But I don’t like a lot of the heavy postmodernist anthropology books that seem to dominate the field these days, and in any case those kinds of books aren’t easy to come by in Hampton.”
She circled the furniture, running her finger along the slipcovers. “What did he write about?”
“Who? Leakey?”
She smiled. “Yeah. Leakey.”
He pursed his lips, organizing his thoughts. “Traditional anthropology is primarily interested in five areas: when man first began to evolve, when he started to walk upright, why there were so many hominid species, why and how those species evolved, and what all of that means for the evolutionary history of modern man. Leakey’s book mainly talked about the last four, with a special emphasis on how toolmaking and weapons influenced the evolution of
Homo sapiens.
”
She couldn’t hide her amusement, but he could tell she was impressed.
“How about that beer?” she asked.
“I’ll be back in a minute,” he said. “Make yourself comfortable.”
He returned with two bottles and a box of matches. Elizabeth was seated in the middle of the couch; he handed her one of the bottles and took a seat beside her, dropping the matches on the table.
She immediately picked up the matches and struck one, watching as the small flame flickered to life. In a fluid motion, she held it to the wicks, lighting both candles, then extinguished the match.
“I hope you don’t mind. I love the smell of candles.”
“Not at all.”
He rose from the couch to turn off the lamp, the room now dimly lit by the warm glow of the candles. He sat closer to her when he returned to the couch, watching as she stared at the flame, her face half in shadow. He took a sip of his beer, wondering what she was thinking.
“Do you know how long it’s been since I’ve been alone in a candlelit room with a man?” she said, turning her face to his.
“No,” he said.
“It’s a trick question. The answer is never.” She seemed amazed by the idea herself. “Isn’t that odd? I’ve been married, I have a child, I’ve dated, and never once has this happened before.” She hesitated. “And if you want to know the truth, this is the first time I’ve been alone with a man at his place since my divorce.” Her expression was almost sheepish.
“Tell me something,” she said, her face inches from his. “Would you have asked me inside if I hadn’t invited myself?” she asked. “Answer honestly. I’ll know if you’re lying.”
He rotated the bottle in his hands. “I’m not sure.”
“Why not?” she pressed. “What is it about me—”
“It has nothing to do with you,” he interrupted. “It has more to do with Nana and what she might think.”
“Because she’s your boss?”
“Because she’s your grandmother. Because I respect her. But mostly, because I respect you. I had a wonderful time tonight. In the past five years, I can’t think of a better time I’ve had with anybody.”
“And you still wouldn’t have invited me in.” Elizabeth seemed baffled.
“I didn’t say that. I said I’m not sure.”
“Which means no.”
“Which means I was trying to figure out a way of asking you in without offending you, but you beat me to the punch. But if what you’re really asking is whether I wanted to invite you in, the answer is, yes, I did.”
He touched his knee to hers. “Where’s all this coming from?”
“Let’s just say I haven’t had a lot of luck in the dating world.”
He knew enough to stay silent, but when he lifted his arm, he felt her lean into him. “It didn’t bother me at first,” she finally said. “I mean, I was so busy with Ben and school, I didn’t pay much attention to it. But later, when it kept happening, I began to wonder. I began to wonder about me. And I’d ask myself all these crazy questions. Was I doing something wrong? Was I not paying enough attention? Did I smell funny?” She tried to smile, but she couldn’t fully mask the undercurrent of sadness and doubt. “Like I said, crazy stuff. Because every now and then, I’d meet a guy and think that we were getting along great, and suddenly I’d stop hearing from him. Not only did he stop calling, but if I happened to bump into him sometime later, he always acted like I had the plague. I didn’t understand it. I still don’t. And it bothered me. It hurt me. With time, it got harder and harder to keep blaming the guys, and I eventually came to the conclusion that there was something wrong with me. That maybe I was simply meant to live my life alone.”
“There’s nothing wrong with you,” he said, giving her arm a reassuring squeeze.
“Give me a chance. I’m sure you’ll find something.”
Thibault could hear the wound beneath the jest. “No,” he said. “I don’t think I will.”
“You’re sweet.”
“I’m honest.”
She smiled as she took a sip from her beer. “Most of the time.”
“You don’t think I’m honest?”
She shrugged. “Like I said. Most of the time.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
She put the bottle of beer on the table and gathered her thoughts. “I think you’re a terrific guy. You’re smart, you work hard, you’re kind, and you’re great with Ben. I know that, or at least I think I do, because that’s what I see. But it’s what you don’t say that makes me wonder about you. I tell myself that I know you, and then when I think about it, I realize that I don’t. What were you like in college? I don’t know. What happened after that? I don’t know. I know you went to Iraq and I know that you walked here from Colorado, but I don’t know why. When I ask, you just say that ‘Hampton seems like a nice place.’ You’re an intelligent college graduate, but you’re content to work for minimum wage. When I ask why, you say that you like dogs.” She ran a hand through her hair. “The thing is, I get the sense that you’re telling me the truth. You’re just not telling all of it. And the part you’re leaving out is the part that would help me understand who you are.”
Listening to her, Thibault tried not to think about everything else he hadn’t told her. He knew he couldn’t tell her everything; he would never tell her everything. There was no way she would understand, and yet . . . he wanted her to know who he really was. More than anything, he realized that he wanted her to accept him.
“I don’t talk about Iraq because I don’t like to remember my time there.” he said
She shook her head. “You don’t have to tell me if you’d rather not. . . .”
“I want to,” he said, his voice quiet. “I know you read the papers, so you probably have this image in your mind of what it’s like. But it’s not like what you imagine, and there’s not really any way I could make it real to you. It’s something you had to have experienced yourself. I mean, most of the time it wasn’t nearly as bad as you probably think it was. A lot of the time—most of the time—it was okay. Easier for me than for others, since I didn’t have a wife or kids. I had friends, I had routines. Most of the time, I went through the motions. But some of the time, it was bad. Really bad. Bad enough to make me want to forget I’d ever been there at all.”
She was quiet before drawing a long breath. “And you’re here in Hampton because of what happened in Iraq?”
He picked at the label on his bottle of beer, slowing peeling away the corner and scratching the glass with his fingernail. “In a way,” he said.
She sensed his hesitation and laid a hand on his forearm. Its warmth seemed to release something inside him.
“Victor was my best friend in Iraq,” Thibault began. “He was with me through all three tours. Our unit suffered a lot of casualties, and by the end, I was ready to put my time there behind me. And I succeeded, for the most part, but for Victor, it wasn’t so easy. He couldn’t stop thinking about it. After we were out, we went our separate ways, trying to get on with life. He went home to California, I went back to Colorado, but we still needed each other, you know? Talked on the phone, sent e-mails in which both of us pretended we were doing just fine with the fact that while we’d spent the last four years trying every day to avoid being killed, people back home were acting as if the world was ending if they lost a parking spot or got the wrong latte at Starbucks. Anyway, we ended up reuniting for a fishing trip in Minnesota—”
He broke off, not wanting to remember what happened but knowing he had to. He took a long pull on his beer and set the bottle on the table.
“This was last fall, and I . . . I was just so happy to see him again. We didn’t talk about our time in Iraq, but we didn’t have to. Just spending a few days with someone else who knew what we’d been through was enough for the both of us. Victor, by then, was doing okay. Not great, but okay. He was married with a kid on the way, and I remember thinking that even though he was still having nightmares and the occasional flashback, he was going to be all right.”
He looked at her with an emotion she couldn’t name.
“On our last day, we went fishing early in the morning. It was just the two of us in this little rowboat, and when we rowed out, the lake was as still as glass, like we were the first people ever to disturb the water. I remember watching a hawk fly over the lake while its mirror image glided directly beneath it, thinking I’d never seen anything more beautiful.” He shook his head at the memory. “We planned on finishing up before the lake got too crowded; then we were going to head into town later and have some beers and steaks. A little celebration to end our trip. But time just sort of got away from us and we ended up staying on the lake too long.”