14. Jett #4
I sat at the island in the dark another hour and didn't move.
The valley below was alight. The city below was alight.
The house was quiet. Somewhere down the hall a woman was either sleeping or not sleeping in a bed that had never been slept in, in a house I'd never let anyone see, and I sat with the fact of her presence the way I'd sat with the photograph an hour earlier.
Slowly. Taking it in. Letting the reaction belong to the air around me and not to my mouth.
Around midnight I went to bed.
I didn't sleep right away.
When I did, I slept the deepest I'd slept since before Monday morning in the conference room two and a half weeks ago.
In the morning I woke up at six.
I made coffee.
I waited.
She came out of the guest room at six forty-three in the same clothes she'd come in.
She hadn't slept much. I could tell from the corners of her eyes. She also hadn't cried, which I'd been bracing for and which she hadn't done, and the not-crying was its own form of information about who she was and how she'd been raised. I poured her a coffee without asking. Slid it across.
"Saturday," I said.
"Saturday."
"Dinner tonight. Somewhere downtown. Not here.
I'm going to take you out, Hartley. In public.
I have not been on a date in three years and I'm not going to do the first one in this house with you, because if I do it here we're going to do it the wrong way, and I'd like to do it the right way at least once. "
She looked at me over the rim of her cup. She said nothing.
"Are you asking me to dinner," she said.
"I am."
"After last night."
"Especially after last night."
"With my father on his way into the city."
"Especially with your father on his way into the city.
I'm going to handle that. I've already started to handle that, and I'll tell you what that means before we leave this kitchen this morning, and you'll tell me what you want about how to handle it from here.
That's the conversation I'd like to have over a second cup of coffee.
The first cup is for asking you to dinner. "
She set her cup down. Looked at me. She had not yet said yes.
I waited.
"What time," she said.
"Seven. Pick you up at Brynn's."
"Seven."
"Yes."
"Okay," I said.
"Jett."
"Yeah."
"You called somebody last night."
"I did."
"I heard you."
"I figured."
"We're going to talk about that."
"Over the second cup of coffee."
"That's the deal."
I poured a second cup. She picked it up.
Outside the wall of glass the valley was coming up gold the way it always did at six fifty in November, and the man in Tennessee was somewhere out there with a rented car and a deadline he didn't yet know I knew about, and a woman who'd spent twenty-six years being told she had no power over the men in her life was sitting at my kitchen island with her hand around a coffee cup, deciding in real time how much of the next twelve hours she was going to let me share.
She let me share some of them.
By eight she'd agreed to drive herself back to Brynn's.
Agreed to let me pick her up at seven. Agreed to a quiet conversation with Brynn that would tell Brynn only that there was an old family situation and Dani was handling it and didn't want to talk about it yet, which Brynn would respect, and which Brynn would also clock, but which Brynn had told her over an onion two nights ago she wouldn't push on.
By eight thirty she was in the SUV in my driveway, ready to leave.
I stood next to the open driver's door. I hadn't yet said the thing I knew I had to say.
"Hartley."
"Yes."
"Last night. The thing I called about."
"Yes."
"I have a man on your father from this morning forward.
He won't approach. He won't be seen. He'll report to me twice a day until your father leaves the city.
I will not let your father near you. I'm telling you this now because you asked me to, and because I'm not going to do anything in this from here forward that you haven't been told about. "
She looked at me from the driver's seat. She held it.
"Okay," she said.
"You're not angry."
"I'm not angry."
"You're allowed to be."
"I know. I'm not. Not at you. I have other places to put it."
"Okay."
"Jett."
"Yeah."
"Thank you."
"You're welcome, Hartley."
She closed the door. She drove away.
I stood in the driveway in the morning sun and watched the SUV go down the canyon road, and I thought about a date downtown at seven and a man on her father by noon and a guest room down the hall with a coffee cup on the nightstand, and I thought about the very small clean thing I'd managed to do the night before.
And the fact that the very small clean thing was, possibly, the most important thing I'd ever done in this city.
I went back inside.
I sat at the island with my own second cup.
I thought about what I was going to wear at seven.
I had not, in eight years of dating in this city, given a single thought to what I was going to wear at seven for anything other than a media obligation.
I gave it twenty minutes.
I figured I'd earned twenty minutes.